TOP B2B CONTENT MARKETING BENCHMARKS AND TRENDS FOR

2015BY

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Content Marketing Institute (CMI) recently carried out an annual survey (B2B content marketing benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America)  in an attempt to understand the ever changing market trends and how content can be integrated into current marketing strategies. Below are some key trends discovered during the survey.

Content marketing takes on a new meaning In 2013, content marketing was seen as a process of

creating and distributing content to potential and real customers. However, this year, the definition has become broadened with a major emphasis on strategic content marketing, valuable and engaging content to a defined and targeted audience. With this definition, 86% of  B2b are using content marketing strategically while 14% are not.

  Few B2B business have a content marketing strategy Content Marketing strategy  is a very important element of

content marketing that must be clearly defined. In the survey carried out by CMI, 35% of b2b organization said they have a documented content marketing strategy while 48% said, they have, but it is not document. 14% don’t even have at all. Those who had a document strategy became more effective in all aspects of content marketing than those who do not have. Developing a content marketing strategy is not difficult, check out my series of posts on the topic. We can also help you to develop one for your business.

A working content marketing group

About 47% of b2b marketers that were surveyed, said they have a dedicated content marketing group. 15% does not have, but planned to have, while 38% does not have and are not planning to have one. Having a dedicated content marketing group is very important to the success of organization’s content marketing.

The significance of having content marketing goalsIt is very important for an organization to have content marketing goals (link). This is what we make it easy to track your return on investment.Among the b2b marketers that were surveyed, it was discovered that brand awareness is the goal with the highest percentage of 84%, followed by lead generation (83%), engagement (81%), sales (75%), Lead nurturing (74%), Customer retention/loyalty (69%) and upsell/cross-sell (52%).

Content marketing metricsMajority (63%) of b2b marketers use website traffic as a metrics for their success in content marketing. With the lowest metrics being subscriber growth with 30%. This statistics implies that a lot of organization are after traffic generation to their website. This, however, need to be tied to each organization’s goal as seen in the previous graph, in order  to generate tangible result.

Content marketing ROI TrackingCreating and distribution content is not enough, you have to tract its return on investment to know whether it is working for you or not. Unfortunately, a lot of b2b marketers are not tracking their organization’s ROI. The survey revealed that only 21% say they are successful.

B2B content marketing tactic usageAmong the different types of content available for marketing, social media content tops them all with 92% usage. It is the tactic used by most marketers. About 88% of marketers used it in 2013, the number is still constant currently, but it is envisage to increase to 95% by 2015.

Social platform usageLinkedin is reported to be the most used platform for b2b content marketing, followed by Twitter, facebook, Youtube, Google+, Slideshare, Pinterest, Instagram and Vimeo.

The frequency of content publishingThe success of content marketing depends on how many times you create and distribute your content. Here, it was discovered that 26% of b2b marketers publish post multiple times a week.

This is the time for you to be serious with content marketing. The survey will help every business marketers to improve their efficiency in content marketing. You can read the full report report here.

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