I’m a sponge for research. Especially benchmark-able research.
I like nothing better (OK, maybe I like popcorn, movies with my wife, golfing in Scotland and catching fish just a tiny bit better) than to dig into a stack of survey findings to learn how something I care about (myself, my family, the profession I’m in, the company where I work, the place where I live) compares and contrasts with others in the same category.
Call me a benchmarking buff.
That’s why I was so excited this spring when my employer, Hanley Wood, signed on as a sponsor of the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report. It’s a survey planned and conducted by Holger Schulze, group owner of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn. The group boasts 50,000+ members. Holger regularly surveys them to elicit helpful benchmarking data we can all learn and profit from.
I believe it’s Holger’s third annual B2B Content Marketing survey. Although the questions have varied a bit over time, making longitudinal comparisons imprecise in certain cases, it’s still interesting to track changes and consistencies in responses over time. To see for yourself, download the 24-page 2013 report. Or find the last three year’s worth of reports on SlideShare.
Benchmarking bozo that I am, let me note that Joe Pulizzi and team at Content Marketing Institute have joined forces with Ann Handley and the folks at Marketing Profs to produce a similar annual study (B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends) for a few years now. Whether you’re up to your advanced assets in content marketing, or just now thinking about making content a strategic focus, both reports are worth a read.
B2B Content Marketing Data Points
I just got done doing some comparing and contrasting of the two. Here are some findings and figures that jumped out at me:
- Content investment and production is trending up. According to the B2B Content Report, 82 percent of the 815 respondents said their content production will increase over the coming 12 months. The CMI-Marketing Profs report found that 54 percent of those surveyed plan on increasing content marketing spending in the coming year.
- Customer stories are telling. Both 2013 studies rank customer case studies (or testimonials) among the top five most-used B2B content marketing tactics.
- Picture…1,000 words…you know. Not surprisingly, video is climbing the charts as a preferred and considered-to-be effective B2B content marketing tactic. Virtual online events are also growing in popularity over time.
- Research also rising. Apparently B2B content marketers believe members of their target audiences, like me, are research hungry. Research reports as a content tactic also are on the rise in both surveys.
- Congruence around goals. Not surprisingly, both 2013 surveys found some combination of awareness, lead generation, customer acquisition and thought leadership at the top of the list when it comes to reasons why B2B marketers do content marketing. Although it’s interesting to note that lead generation was, far and away, the top reason among the B2B Technology Marketing respondents.
- Choose your social set. Perhaps no surprise here, but LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube sit atop the list of social media platforms used most and considered most effective by B2B content marketers. (NOTE: Year over year, YouTube jumped 20 percentage points in the most recent B2B Content Marketing survey). And if you have bandwidth to factor a fourth and fifth social media channel into your mix? Judging by these surveys, consider Slideshare and Google+ before you decide Facebook is a social slam dunk for B2B.