According to the recent survey (June 2013) of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on Linked In, B2B content marketing is seen as an increasingly favorable and effective strategy. Key findings of the report include:
The Top 5 Trends in Content Marketing
- Content Marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.
- The popularity of whitepapers as a content marketing format is declining relative to interactive, easily digestible formats like video.
- More than 82% of B2B marketers are increasing their content production over the next 12 months.
- YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.
- Marketing automation is on the rise – 61% of marketers use marketing automation platforms, up from 43% last year.
- Lead Generation (71%)
- Thought-Leadership & Market Education (50%)
- Customer Acquisition (45%)
The Most Effective Tactics
- Customer testimonials (89%) and case studies (88%) are considered the most effective B2B content tactics by survey respondents.
- Whitepapers suffered the biggest drop in perceived effectiveness from last year’s survey—moving down from second place to sixth.
- Videos are now viewed as the fifth most effective content type to reach B2B audiences.
When creating content from scratch, simply writing content isn’t enough to ensure you’ll gain traction and content marketing success. Having a content marketing strategy in place that aligns your goals; your company culture; and SEO keywords that fit your business needs (based on actual SEO data and analysis, not a guess) is imperative to achieve your business goals and experience the engagement with the consumer.
What Content Do Marketers Outsource?
The most outsourced form of content are videos (31%), followed by white papers (30%), and research reports (27%). However, based on the research and our experience, we believe that infographics (currently at 26.7% or 4th on the list) will quickly rise above white papers, etc.
Top Challenges Facing B2B Content Marketers
- Challenge #1: Finding enough time and bandwidth to create content (55%)
- Challenge #2: Producing engaging content (49%)
- Challenge #3: Producing enough content variety to serve the needs of marketing programs (39%).
- Challenge #4: Finding the talent to create the content (35%)
- Challenge #5: Measuring Results (27%)
- Challenge #6: Lack of Budget to Produce Content (26%)
Research: The report was based on a June 2013 survey of 815 members of the LinkedIn B2B Technology Marketing Community. The group has over 50,000 members from a variety of countries, industries, and employers. Survey Author: Holger Schulze
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