Study Finds More B2B Spending On Content Marketing Programs

Virtually all B2B marketers now engage in content marketing, and the use of various content formats is up across the board, according to a new study.

The 2013 B2B Content Marketing study, conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, and sponsored by Brightcove, surveyed more than 1,400 marketing professionals. More than 90% of the respondents say they use content marketing, and they spend an average of 33% of their budgets on the practice compared to 26% last year.

According to the study, the fastest growth has been in the use of research reports, videos, mobile content and virtual conferences. Most companies, however, employ multiple content marketing tactics – an average of 11 tactics for smaller firms, and an average of 18 at large enterprises.

In addition, 87% of B2B marketers now say they use social media to distribute content, up from 74% last year. LinkedIn has replaced Twitter as the most commonly used social media channel for distributing content, with Facebook, YouTube and Google+ rounding out the top five channels.

In terms of content marketing challenges, 64% of B2B marketers say they find it difficult to produce enough content to meet their campaign needs. This year, 29% cited this as their biggest content marketing challenge, up from 20% last year. By comparison, just 18% of those surveyed said that producing engaging content is their biggest challenge – a major drop from 41% last year.

Perhaps because of these trends, fewer firms (38%) produce content entirely in-house, while 62% now outsource some or all of their content creation.

Join Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute at the 2013 B2B Content2Conversion Conference.

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