Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs have partnered with Brightcove to research and produce a very useful report for North American marketers:
B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends
As with most joint venture reports from CMI and MarketingProfs, this report has been shared and written about pretty enthusiastically in the media and blogosphere. It’s easy to understand why: B2B marketers “get” that they need content as a more substantial part of their overall marketing mix, but they need to know more about how.
There are many sharable nuggets in this report which you can view embedded at the end of this post. I also thought it would be handy for other marketers/authors/speakers like myself that need to write articles, reports and give presentations to break some of the findings out into one line stats that would be easy to copy and share.
91% of B2B marketers use content marketing
Tactics:
- B2B marketers use an average of 12 content marketing tactics
- 11% of B2B companies use over 20 different content marketing tactics
- Companies with 10,000 or more employees use an average of 18 tactics
- 28% of B2B companies use 5-9 different content marketing tactics
Breakdown of B2B Content Marketing Tactics in Use:
- 87% of B2B content marketers us social media (other than blogs)
- 83% of B2B content marketers use articles on their website
- 78% of B2B content marketers use eNewsletters
- 77% of B2B content marketers use blogs
- 71% of B2B content marketers use case studies
- 70% of B2B content marketers use videos
- 70% of B2B content marketers use articles on other websites
- 69% of B2B content marketers use in-person events
- 61% of B2B content marketers use white papers
- 59% of B2B content marketers use webinars or webcasts
- 44% of B2B content marketers use research reports
- 40% of B2B content marketers use micro sites
- 38% of B2B content marketers use infographics
- 38% of B2B content marketers use branded content tools
- 33% of B2B content marketers use mobile content
- 32% of B2B content marketers use eBooks
- 31% of B2B content marketers use print magazines
- 29% of B2B content marketers use books
- 28% of B2B content marketers use virtual conferences
- 27% of B2B content marketers use podcasts
- 26% of B2B content marketers use licensed or syndicated content
- 26% of B2B content marketers use mobile apps
- 25% of B2B content marketers use digital magazines
- 24% of B2B content marketers use print newsletters
- 11% of B2B content marketers use games or gamification
B2B Content Marketing Tactics Usage Trends:
- Use of research reports has risen from 25% in 2011 to 44% in 2012
- Use of video has risen from 52% in 2011 to 70% in 2012
- Use of mobile content has risen from 15% in 2011 to 33% in 2012
- Use of virtual conferences has risen from 10% in 2011 to 28% in 2012
Contact Marketing Tactics Effectiveness:
- 67% of B2B marketers rate in-person events as the most effective content marketing tactic
- 64% of B2B marketers rate case studies as an effective content marketing tactic
- 61% of B2B marketers rate webinars or webcasts as an effective content marketing tactic
- 59% of B2B marketers rate blogs as an effective content marketing tactic
- 58% of B2B marketers rate videos as an effective content marketing tactic
- 58% of B2B marketers rate newsletters as an effective content marketing tactic
- 57% of B2B marketers rate research reports as an effective content marketing tactic
- 57% of B2B marketers rate white papers as an effective content marketing tactic
- 55% of B2B marketers rate eBooks as an effective content marketing tactic
- 53% of B2B marketers rate articles on website as an effective content marketing tactic
- 50% of B2B marketers rate articles on other websites as an effective content marketing tactic
- 50% of B2B marketers rate microsites as an effective content marketing tactic
- 49% of B2B marketers rate social media effective or very effective as a content marketing tactic
Content Distribution and Promotion:
- 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content, up from 74% in 2011
- B2B marketers use an average of 5 social media sites to distribute content
- 83% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content
- 80% of B2B marketers use Twitter to distribute content
- 80% of B2B marketers use Facebook to distribute content
- 61% of B2B marketers use YouTube to distribute content
- 39% of B2B marketers use Google+ to distribute content
- 26% of B2B marketers use Pinterest to distribute content
- 23% of B2B marketers use Slideshare to distribute content
- 12% of B2B marketers use Vimeo to distribute content
- 10% of B2B marketers use Flickr to distribute content
- 10% of B2B marketers use StumbleUpon to distribute content
- 7% of B2B marketers use Instagram to distribute content
- 7% of B2B marketers use Tumblr to distribute content
- 6% of B2B marketers use Quora to distribute content
Organizational Goals:
- 79% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve brand awareness goals
- 74% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve customer acquisition goals
- 71% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve lead generation goals
- 64% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve customer retention and loyalty goals
- 64% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve thought leadership goals
- 63% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve engagement goals
- 60% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve website traffic goals
- 45% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve lead nurturing goals
- 43% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve sales goals
B2B Content Marketing Measurement:
- 60% of B2B marketers use web traffic to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 51% of B2B marketers use sales lead quality to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 45% of B2B marketers use social media sharing to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 43% of B2B marketers use sales quantity to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 41% of B2B marketers use direct sales to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 41% of B2B marketers use qualitative feedback from customers to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 41% of B2B marketers use SEO ranking to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 39% of B2B marketers use time spent on website to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 35% of B2B marketers use inbound links to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 26% of B2B marketers use benchmark lift of company awareness to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 24% of B2B marketers use increased customer loyalty to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 22% of B2B marketers use benchmark lift of product/service awareness to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 13% of B2B marketers use cross-selling to measure effectiveness of content marketing
- 5% of B2B marketers use cost savings to measure effectiveness of content marketing
B2B Content Marketing Budgets:
- 54% of B2B marketers will increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months
- 34% of B2B marketers spend on content marketing over the next 12 months will remain the same
- 2% of B2B marketers spend on content marketing over the next 12 months will decrease
- Content Marketing Budgets:
- 33% of B2B marketing budgets are now allocated to content marketing
- Companies with fewer than 10 employees allocate 42% of their marketing budget to content marketing
- Companies with over 1,000 employees allocate 24% of their marketing budget to content marketing
Content Creation In-House and Outsourcing:
- 56% of B2B marketers create content in-house exclusively, an increase of 18% over 2011
- 1% of B2B marketers outsource all content creation and 43% use a combination of in-house and outsourced content creation
- 65% of large companies outsource content creation and 44% overall outsource B2B content creation
- 91% of B2B content marketers tailor their content in at least one way:
- 59% of B2B content marketers segment content by individual decision maker profiles
- 52% of B2B content marketers segment content by company characteristics
- 42% of B2B content marketers segment content by stage in the buying cycle
- 23% of B2B content marketers segment content by personalized content preferences
- 8% of B2B content marketers do not segment content
Despite listing over 100 statistics above, this isn’t all. Be sure to check out the report below for more. Thanks to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs for conducting the survey and creating the report and Brightcove for sponsoring.
Is your B2B company planning on investing more in content marketing in 2013? Which content types have you found to be the most successful? How are you measuring content marketing success?
One lucky commenter will will a copy of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing.
