B2B Content Marketing Trends Report

2 0 1 2 s u r v e y re s u l t s

Marketing Trends
Sponsored by

by Holger Schulze NetProspex | Optify | Maximizer Software | Solution Publishing

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survey highlights
Here is a quick snapshot of the survey ﬁndings:
Content marketing is growing dramatically in popularity with over 84 percent of respondents
increasing content marketing over the next 12 months

The biggest motivator for content marketing is its ability to drive leads, thought leadership and
brand awareness, to compensate where traditional tactics are falling short

The top 3 goals for content marketing are lead generation (68 percent), thought leadership and
market education (50 percent) and brand awareness (39 percent)

The most popular content formats are case studies, white papers, press releases and newsletters

The biggest challenge: time and bandwidth to create content (56 percent)

94 percent of B2B marketers create new content from scratch

The top performance metric for content marketers is web trafﬁc (64 percent) followed by views
and downloads (59 percent). Lead quantity and lead quality are tied at 52 percent each.

This report is intended to provide benchmarks for busy B2B marketers
who are looking for guidance on how to approach content marketing.

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | READ THE 2012 SURVEY RESULTS 1

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Introduction

The purpose of content marketing is to engage B2B
buyers with compelling content (in the form of webcasts,
B2B buyer behavior has been
videos, eBooks, white papers, blog posts, etc) to educate, changing dramatically
inform, entertain, and guide them through each step in over the last few years
the buying cycle. And while you want to help buyers as buyers become more
make pragmatic and informed decisions, your ultimate sophisticated, ﬁnd new
ways to gather information
goal is to persuade them to select your solution over
online and via social media,
competing alternatives. and increasingly refuse to
be interrupted by outbound
It may sound easy to create crisp deﬁnitions of market marketing tactics.
segments, buyer personas, and buying stages, and then
build compelling content for each relevant intersection of
these dimensions.

However, the reality of implementing content marketing
initiatives is a bit more complicated.


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And as they embark on content marketing strategies, B2B
marketers are asking themselves questions like:

What types of content should I create?
Should I outsource content creation?
What forms of content work better than others?

We conducted a survey with the 30,000 + member
B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to
provide answers, better understand the current state of
content marketing in the B2B space, and to identify key
challenges as well as best practices.

We received over 740 responses in less than 3 weeks –
and here are the results of the survey.

Content
Thanks to everyone who
participated in the survey!


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what are the goals
Q1 of content marketing?
#1 Lead Generation #3 Brand Awareness
With 68 percent of responses, the most mentioned goal Brand awareness, with 39 percent of responses
for content marketing is lead generation. This is up from (up from 34 percent last year), has replaced last
62 percent in last year’s survey. No major surprises here year’s number three content marketing goal,
considering that content marketing has emerged as a lead nurturing.
critical B2B strategy to drive inbound lead generation (in
response to outbound B2B tactics becoming increasingly
ineffective). In other words, lead generation is the ultimate
What are your top-3-goals for content marketing?
promise of content marketing.
Lead generation
Thought leadership
#2 Thought Leadership & Market Education / Market education
Brand awareness

The next highest ranked content marketing goal is Lead nurturing

Customer acquisition
thought leadership and market education with 50 percent Sales

of responses (up from 37 percent in last year’s survey). Website traffic
Customer loyalty
This pattern is also consistent with the promise of content / retention
Social media engagement
marketing as a strategy to educate and inﬂuence buyer Channel enablement

behavior in the vendor’s favor. 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%


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what content marketing se?
Q2 tactics do you actively u

Leading the ranking are case studies (62 percent)
followed by white papers / ebooks (61 percent) What tactics and forms of content marketing do you actively use?

and press releases (58 percent). In contrast, the Case studies -

least commonly used content marketing tactics are White Papers / ebooks -

Press releases -
advertorials (11 percent), community threading e-newsletters -
(12 percent), and virtual events (18 percent). Blogging -

Webinars -

Videos -

Social content -

In-person events -

Online articles -

Slideware -

Product demos -

Infographics/images -

Polling/Research -

Virtual/online events -

Community management -

Advertorials -

0% 20% 40% 60%


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how effective are contemt ts?
n
Q3 marketing tactics & for a

These content formats are considered
most effective in engaging prospects How effective are the following content marketing tactics and formats?

and delivering message. e-newsletters

Case studies

Webinars
Marketers consider case studies most effective Press releases

(78 percent) - unchanged compared to last year’s Blogging

White papers / ebooks
survey. This is also the most commonly used tactic
Sideware
(see previous chart). White papers take the number Videos

two spot with 73 percent (up from number three last In-person events

Product demos
year), followed by live, in person events (72 percent Infographics / images

and down from the number two spot last year). The Social content

least effective content formats are advertorials (18 Online articles

Polling / research
percent), community threading (20 percent), and Advertorials

virtual events (31 percent). The fastest rising content Virtual / online events

format are info graphics with 43 percent compared Community management

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
to 28 percent last year.
Effective Ineffective I don’t use it


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what are the three most importt? t
an
Q4 elements of effective conten

So what are the ingredients
of successful content?

It starts with engaging and compelling
storytelling (81 percent), originality (52 percent)
and customized content (50 percent), followed
by professional writing (39 percent).

What do you consider the three most important elements of effective content?

81.5% | Engaging and complelling storytelling

52.6% | Originality

49.2% | Custom content

38.5% | Well edited copy

38.3% | Professional writing

31.2% | Written for SEO

10.0% | Low cost

5.1% | High volume production


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what social media platforms do you?
Q5 use to deliver content to audiences

LinkedIn tops the list of social media platforms
with 85 percent (although this number is likely
skewed considering the majority of survey
respondents came from the B2B Technology
Marketing Community on LinkedIn). The runner
ups are Twitter (70 percent), Facebook (54
percent) and YouTube (53 percent).

What social media plataforms do you use to deliver content to audiences?

Linkedin

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube

Sideshare
Custom developed
communities
Google+

Pinterest

Flickr

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%


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Q6 how do you create content?

The vast majority of B2B marketers create
content from scratch (94 percent). Other
tactics including curating third party content
(39 percent), re-using existing content
(32 percent) and encouraging users to
generatencontent (30 percent) are still
the exception.

How do you create content?

93.5% | Create content from scratch

39.5% | Curate third party content

32.9% | License/Re-use existing content

30.3% | Encourage user generated content


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what metrics do you use to measure
Q7 the success of your content?

Web trafﬁc (64 percent) is by a wide margin
the number one metric used by marketers to
measure the success of content marketing.
The next most popular metric is views
and downloads (59 percent), followed by What metrics do you use to measure the success
of your content marketing program?
lead quantity and lead quality (tied with 52
percent each). Web traffic

Views/downloads

Lead quantity

Lead quality

Inquires

Opportunities

Sales / Revenue

Customer feedback

Search rankings

Social media engagement

Inbound links

Share of conversation

Don’t measure

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%


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who determines content
Q8 marketing strategy?
The next question is to find out where in
the organization content marketing strategy
is determined. In most companies
(55 percent), corporate marketing sets
content strategy, followed by product
marketing (38 percent), and the CEO/
President/Owner (37 percent) in smaller
companies that often don’t have a
dedicated marketing department. Who determines content marketing strategy at your company?

54.6% | Corporate marketing

37.9% | Product marketing

37.1% | CEO/President Owner

24.0% | PR/Communications

19.5% | Sales

17.6% | Demand generation

15.7% | Product management

12.6% | Field marketing

6.5% | External agency/freelancer


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Q9 who creates content?

Corporate marketing is also the number
one creator of content in most companies
(55 percent), followed by Product Marketing
(47 percent) and PR/Communications (38
percent). About one in three companies
relies on external agencies and freelancers
to create content.

Who creates content at your company?

55.1% | Corporate Marketing

46.4% | Product Marketing





17.9% | Field Marketing

14.4% | Sales



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what content marketing tactics
Q10 do marketers outsource?
The most outsourced form of content
are videos (33 percent). They are hard
to produce and most companies don’t
have the required capabilities in-
house. Videos are followed by white Which types of marketing content or tactis do you currently outsource,
or expect to outsource in the future?
papers / ebooks (32 percent) and case
Videos
studies (26 percent). In contrast, the White papers/ebooks
Case studies
least outsourced tactics are community Press releases

management (6 percent), product Infographics / images
Online articles
demos (6 percent), and in-person events We don’t outsource any
Webinars
(7 percent). Blogging
Polling / Research
E-newsletters
Social content
Advertorials
Virtual / online events
In-person events
Slideware / presentations
Community management
/ threading
Product demos

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%


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who owns the content
Q11 marketing budget?
For 51 percent of companies, the
corporate marketing function owns content
marketing funds, followed by the CEO/
President /Owner (35 percent) in smaller
companies. Product marketing owns the
content marketing budget in 22 percent of
companies. Now let’s look at who clearly
doesn’t own content marketing budgets
in most companies: external agencies and Who owns the content marketing budget?
freelancers (1 percent), sales (5 percent), and
product management (6 percent). 50.4% | Corporate marketing


22.1% | Product marketing


10.0% | Field marketing



5.4% | Sales



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what percentage of budget is g?
Q12 allocated to content marketin

One of the most telling indicators of
the increasing importance of content
marketing is budget allocation. Last year’s
survey showed that the most frequent
budget allocation was 20 percent. In
our latest survey, it has moved up to 30
What percentage of your marketing budget is allocated to content marketing?
percent indicating a strong shift toward
25%
content marketing.

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%
10 30 50 70 90 Don’t Know
0 20 40 60 80 100


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what content marketing n?
Q13 tactics is budget spent o
Now that we know that content marketing
spend is going up, let’s take a look at
what tactics receive the most budget?
The largest share of budget is allocated
to tradeshows and in-person events (23
percent). This is followed by the company
What percentage of your budget do you allocate to content distribution channels?
website (21 percent) and email marketing
(17 percent). Tradeshows
In-person events
Company website
Email
Print media
Social media
PPC/Paid search
Live, in-person event
PR
Webinar
Blog
Organic search
Blogs
Online Display Ads
Online directory

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%


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how is content production volume
Q14 chang ing over the next 12 months?

Over 84 percent of marketers are
increasing content production over the
next 12 months, over 30 percent of them
significantly so. 14 percent of marketers
expect volume to stay flat. In contrast, last
year, over 71 percent of respondents saw
an increase in content production - looks
like the pace of content production is
How is your content production volume going to change
picking up steam. over the next 12 months?

53.0% | Increases

30.5% | Increases significantly

15.0% | Stays flat

1.5% | Decreases

0.0% | Decreases significantly


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what are your biggest content
Q15 marketing challenges?

Top Challenges
Content marketing is complex and requires a very
different approach and skill set compared to traditional
outbound marketing tactics. We asked our marketing
community what they consider the biggest content
What are your biggest content marketing challenges?
marketing challenges – here are the results:
Time/bandwidth to create content
Producing trully engaging content
The number one challenge is Having enough time and Producing enough content

bandwidth to create content (56 percent), replacing last Measuring results
Talent to produce content
years top challenge: producing truly engaging content (53 Getting content delivered to
the right audiences
No consistent content strategy
percent). The next biggest content marketing challenge Creating segment-specific content

is producing enough content to serve the needs of your Lack of budget to produce content
Understanding buyer personas
and decision stages
marketing programs (45 percent). This points to a lack Finding enough targeted contacts
to offer content to
Lack of process
of resources in B2B marketing organizations, which is Buyers don’t want to register to
consume content
conﬁrmed by 33 percent of respondents who selected Buyers’ attention spam too short
Localizing content for
international markets
lack of talent as their marketing challenge. The least Getting executive buy-in
Finding domain experts
pressing problem for marketers is poor content quality Poor content quality

(12 percent) tied with ﬁnding domain experts (12 percent). 0% 20% 40% 60%


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how do marketers segme? t
n
Q16 and personalize content
There are many different ways to slice and
organize marketing content. Should you
segment by product, buyer pain, buyer
persona, buying stage, or vertical – or all of How do you segment and personalize your content?

the above? Here is what the B2B marketing 60%

community thinks:

The most popular and effective segmentation
dimension is product category (50 percent),
40%

followed by vertical (36 percent) and buyer
persona (28 percent).

The least popular segmentation dimension is 20%

company size with 16 percent. And 20 percent
of marketers dont systematically segment
content at all.
0%
by product / by vertical by buyer by pain point by stage in we don’t by company
service category persona buying cycle systematically size
segment content


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managing the complexityg
Q17 of b2b content marketin
B2B content marketing is not trivial. Consider
the multitude of market segments you serve,
with multiple products, each with different buyer
personas that influence the buying decision.
And each buying process comprises a number
of stages that require content to guide buyers
to the next stage.

If you wanted to address all possible
intersections of products, markets, buyer So what is a manageable number
personas, buying stages (and have multiple
of segments, personas, and stages
white papers, webcasts, eBooks, blog posts
for each intersection) – you would quickly B2B marketers can support?
be overwhelmed by the sheer amount and
complexity of content and associated
marketing programs.
We asked our B2B marketing community
and the magic number is …


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integration with
Q18 marketing automation
One of the major trends related to content
marketing is marketing automation as a
way to get targeted content in front of
buying audiences. And while adoption
of marketing automation is growing, only
26 percent of B2B marketers are actively
creating content to feed their marketing
automation campaign. 56 percent doesnt
How do you integrate content marketing
use marketing automation at all. with marketing automation (MA)?

57.3% | Don’t use MA

25.5% | Actively create content feed
automated campaigns

19.0% | Sporadically use content
for MA campaigns


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survey methodology
The survey was completed by 740 marketers in 2012. Here is a detailed breakdown of the survey
participant demographics.

What industry is your company in?
What is the size of your company (employees)?
High-tech

Fewer than 10 Software
Advertising/Marketing

10-99 Business services
Professional services
100-999 Manufacturing

Telecommunication
1.000-10.000 Financial services
Helathcare
10.000+
Government

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

What is your role in your company? What is your job title?

Marketing Manager

Owner/CIO/President Director

Sales
Owner/CIO/President
Product Management
VP
Consultant
Specialist
Engineering

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%


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sponsors We would like to thank our sponsors for supporting the
2012 B2B Content Marketing Report:

IDG Enterprise | www.idgenterprise.com
IDG Enterprise brings together the unique brands (CFOworld, CIO, CIO Executive Council, Computerworld, CSO,
DEMO, InfoWorld, ITworld, and Network World) to serve the information needs of our IT and security-focused
audiences. By leveraging the strengths of each individual brand, while simultaneously harnessing their collective reach
and audience affinity, we provide market leadership and media best practices for our marketing customers to engage
their customers across our portfolio.

NetProspex | http://content.netprospex.com/lets-talk-tm/
NetProspex drives B2B lead generation by providing marketers with targeted prospect lists, data cleansing, and powerful
analytics to understand their data.

Optify | www.optify.net
Optify helps professional B2B marketers reach more buyers and generate more demand. Optify’s Inbound Marketing Suite
brings together enterprise-class SEO, social marketing, website analytics and tools that B2B marketers need to increase
awareness, influence buyers across social networks, and engage with prospects at the earliest point of their buyer’s journey.

Maximizer Software | http://www.maximizer.com/crm-live/CRM-Cloud.html
Maximizer Software delivers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to meet the needs, budgets and access
requirements of entrepreneurs, medium and small businesses and divisions of large enterprises. Easily configurable for
organizations in any industry, Maximizer CRM optimizes sales processes, enhances marketing initiatives, and, improves
customer service to ultimately boost productivity and revenue.

Solution Publishing | www.solpub.com
Solution Publishing utilizes proprietary semantic technologies to deliver exceptionally relevant content to its permission
based B-to-B audiences. Technology professionals and business leaders value our IT Solution Journal as a customized
research department they rely on to remain current and explore business solutions. Technology marketers use IT Solution
Journal for high quality lead and demand generation.


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thank you Technology
Group Partner

Marketing

Bottom line:
Content marketing is rapidly moving along the adoption
life cycle and best practices are rapidly emerging. I hope
you enjoyed this survey report and found the data points
helpful for your own content marketing efforts.

About the B2B Technology
Marketing Community
With over 20,000 members, the B2B Technology
Marketing Community is the single largest LinkedIn group
Join the B2B
exclusively focused on B2B technology marketing. This TECHNOLOGY
group is for marketing professionals in B2B high-tech MARKETING
industries to enable networking, sharing of ideas, best
COMMUNITY
practices and opportunities.


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about the author
Holger Schulze is the author of the syndicated blog
Everything Technology Marketing.

Our goal is to educate B2B marketers on new trends,
share marketing ideas and best practices, and make
Email
it easier for you to find the information you care
hhschulze@gmail.com
about to do your jobs successfully.

Follow Holger on Twitter
Holger Schulze is a B2B technology marketing
http://twitter.com/holgerschulze
executive delivering demand, brand awareness, and
revenue growth for high-tech companies.
Subscribe to Holger’s
A prolific blogger and online community builder, Technology Marketing Blog
Holger also manages the B2B Technology Marketing http://everythingtechnologymarketing.blogspot.com

Community on LinkedIn with over 30,000+ members.


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