B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012

20 12 SURVE Y RESULT S

Marketing Trends Sponsored by

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

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INTRODUCTION
Content marketing is a big buzz word in 2012. Most marketers
will agree that the purpose of content marketing is to engage B2B buyer behavior has
B2B buyers with compelling content to educate, inform, been changing dramatically
entertain and guide them along their buying journey. And over the last few years
while you want to help buyers make pragmatic and informed as buyers become more
decisions, your ultimate goal is to persuade them to select your sophisticated, ﬁnd new
solution over competing alternatives. ways to gather information
online and via social media.
But what’s behind the buzz? We conducted a survey with the 90% of business buyers say
30,000+ member B2B Technology Marketing Community on when they’re ready to buy,
they’ll ﬁnd you.
LinkedIn to get answers to key questions like:
*DemandGen Reports

What’s working and what’s not?
Who is creating content and what are they creating?
How do you measure content marketing results?

We received over 740 responses in less than 3 weeks and are
happy to share the results with you.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey!
Holger Schulze
B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | READ THE 2012 SURVEY RESULTS 1

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SURVE Y HIGHLIGHTS
Top-5 Trends in Content Marketing

1. Content marketing is expanding dramatically in terms of tactics, forms and volume of content.
• 84 percent of marketers say content production is on the rise
• Over half of the participants are using 10 or more formats and tactics that they deem “effective”
• These same respondents are spreading content creation across 6 different functional roles

2. Content is at the heart of B2B marketers top 3 goals—lead generation, market education and
brand awareness.

3. The fastest growing content format is Infographics, whose use increased 1.5x from last year.

4. Biggest challenge for marketers is time and bandwidth to create content.
• 94 percent of B2B marketers create new content from scratch

5. Most B2B marketers are trying to measure content engagement.
• Web trafﬁc, views & downloads and lead quantity & quality are the top 3 measurements


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

The next highest content marketing goal is thought Lead nurturing

Customer acquisition
leadership and market education with 50 percent of Sales
responses (up from 37 percent in last year’s survey). This Website traffic

pattern is also consistent with the promise of content Customer loyalty
/ retention

marketing as a strategy to educate and inﬂuence buyer Social media engagement

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


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WHAT CONTENT MARKETING E?
Q2 TACTICS DO YOU ACTIVELY US
The leading content marketing tactics are case
studies (62 percent) followed by white papers / What tactics and forms of content marketing do you actively use?

ebooks (61 percent) and press releases (58 percent). Case studies -

In contrast, the least commonly used content White papers / ebooks -

Press releases -
marketing tactics are advertorials (11 percent), e-newsletters -
community management & threading (12 percent), Blogging -

and virtual events (18 percent). Webinars -

Videos -

Social content -

In-person events -

Online articles -

Slideware -

Product demos -

Infographics / images -

Polling / research -

Virtual / online events -
Community management -
& threading
Advertorials -

0% 20% 40% 60%


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HOW EFFECTIVE ARE CONTENT TS?
Q3 M ARKETING TACTICS & FORMA
These content formats are considered
most effective in engaging prospects How effective are the following content marketing tactics and formats?

and delivering message. Case studies

White papers / ebooks

In-person events
Marketers consider case studies most effective Online articles

(78 percent) — unchanged compared to last year’s Videos

Webinars
survey. This is also the most commonly used tactic
Product demos
(see previous chart). White papers take the number e-newsletters

two spot with 73 percent (up from number three last Blogging

Press releases
year), followed by live, in person events (72 percent Slideware

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

least effective content formats are advertorials (18 Infographics / images

Polling / research
percent), community management & threading (20 Virtual / online events

percent), and virtual events (31 percent). The fastest Community management
& threading

rising content format are infographics with 43 Advertorials

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


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ARE THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT
Q4 WHAT
ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE CONTENT ?
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?

Engaging and compelling storytelling
Originality
Custom content
Well edited copy
Professional writing
Written for SEO
Low cost
High volume production

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%


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SOCIAL MEDIA PL ATFORMS DO YOU?
Q5 WHAT
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 include curating third party content
(39 percent), re-using existing content (32
percent) and encouraging user-generated
content (30 percent).

How do you create content?

Create content from scratch

Curate third party content

License / re-use existing content

Encourage user generated content

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%


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METRICS DO YOU USE TO MEASURE
Q7 WHAT
THE SUCCESS OF YOUR CONTENT ?
Web trafﬁc (64 percent) is 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 lead quantity and lead What metrics do you use to measure the success
of your content marketing program?
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 Who determines content marketing strategy at your company?
dedicated marketing department.
Corporate marketing

Product marketing

CEO / President / Owner

PR / Communications

Sales

Demand generation

Product management

Field marketing

External agency / Freelancer

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%


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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?

Corporate marketing

Product marketing

PR / Communications


Product management


Field marketing

Sales

Demand generation

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%


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CONTENT MARKETING TACTICS
Q10 WHAT
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 papers / Which types of marketing content or tactis do you currently outsource,
or expect to outsource in the future?
ebooks (32 percent) and case studies
Videos
(26 percent). In contrast, the least White papers / ebooks

outsourced tactics are product demos Case studies
Press releases
(6 percent), community management & Infographics / images
Online articles
threading (6 percent) and slideware / Webinars

presentations (6 percent). Blogging
Polling / research
E-newsletters
Social content
Advertorials
Virtual / online events
In-person events
Slideware / presentations
Community management
& threading
Product demos
We don’t outsource any

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 Who owns the content marketing budget?
in most companies: external agencies and
freelancers (1 percent), sales (5 percent), and Corporate marketing

product management (6 percent).
Product marketing

PR / Communications

Field marketing

Demand generation

Product management

Sales


0% 10% 20% 30%| 40% 50% 60%


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T IS
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF BUDGEKETING?
Q12 A LLOCATED TO CONTENT MAR
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%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%


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WHAT CONTENT MARKETING ?
Q13 TACTICS IS BUDGET SPENT ON
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
website (21 percent) and email marketing
(17 percent). What percentage of your budget do you allocate to content distribution channels.

Tradeshows & in-person events
Company website
Email
Print media
Social media
PPC / Paid search
PR
Webinar
Blog
Organic search
Online Display Ads
Online directories

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


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IS CONTENT PRODUCTION VOLTHSE
UM
Q14 HOW
CHANGING OVER THE NEX T 12 MON ?
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
picking up steam.
How is your content production volume going to change
over the next 12 months?

53.0% | Increases

30.5% | Increases significantly

15.0% | Stays flat

1.5% | Decreases
percent of marketers 0.0% | Decreases significantly
say content production
is on the rise.


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ARE YOUR BIGGEST CONTENT
Q15 WHAT
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
marketing challenges – here are the results: What are your biggest content marketing challenges?

Time / bandwidth to create content

The number one challenge is having enough time and Producing truly engaging content
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
percent). The next biggest content marketing challenge No consistent content strategy
Creating segment-specific content
is producing enough content to serve the needs of your Lack of budget to produce content
Understanding buyer personas
marketing programs (45 percent). This points to a lack and decision stages
Finding enough targeted contacts
to offer content to
of resources in B2B marketing organizations, which is Lack of process
Buyers don’t want to register to
consume content
conﬁrmed by 33 percent of respondents who selected Buyers’ attention span too short
Localizing content for
lack of talent as their marketing challenge. The least international markets
Getting executive buy-in

pressing problem for marketers is poor content quality Finding domain experts
Poor content quality
(12 percent) tied with ﬁnding domain experts (12 percent). 0% 20% 40% 60%


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HOW DO MARKETERS SEGMENT
Q16 A ND PERSONALIZE CONTENT ?
There are many different ways to slice and
organize marketing content. Should you
segment by product, pain point, 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 segmentation dimension
is product category (50 percent), followed 40%

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 don’t systematically segment
content at all.
0%
Product / Vertical Buyer Pain point Stage in Company We don’t
service category persona buying cycle size systematically
segment content


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MANAGING THE COMPLEXIT Y
Q17 OF B2B CONTENT MARKETING
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 emerging 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.
How do you integrate content marketing
57 percent don’t use marketing with marketing automation (MA)?
automation at all.
57.3% | Don’t use MA

25.5% | Actively create content to 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 is the size of your company (employees)? What industry is your company in?

High-tech
Fewer than 10
Software
Advertising / Marketing
10-99
Business services
Professional services
100-999
Manufacturing

1,000-10,000 Telecommunication
Financial services
10,000+ Helathcare
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 / CEO / President Director

Sales
Owner / CEO / 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 (Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, CIO, DEMO, CSO, CIO
Executive Council, ITworld, and CFOworld) 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 | www.netprospex.com
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 | www.maximizer.com
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

Many thanks to everybody who participated in this survey.
If you are interested in co-sponsoring upcoming surveys, or creating your
own survey report, please contact Holger Schulze at hhschulze@gmail.com.

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 30,000 members, the B2B Technology
Join the
Marketing Community is the single largest LinkedIn group B2B TECHNOLOGY
exclusively focused on B2B technology marketing. This
MARKETING
COMMUNITY
group is for marketing professionals in B2B high-tech
industries to enable networking, sharing of ideas, best on LinkedIn
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 inform and educate B2B marketers
about new trends, share marketing ideas and
Email
best practices, and make it easier for you to find
hhschulze@gmail.com
the information you care about to do your jobs
successfully.
Follow Holger on Twitter
http://twitter.com/holgerschulze
Holger Schulze is a B2B technology marketing
executive delivering demand, brand awareness,
and revenue growth for high-tech companies. Subscribe to Holger’s
Technology Marketing Blog
A prolific blogger and online community builder, http://everythingtechnologymarketing.blogspot.com

Holger manages the B2B Technology Marketing
Community on LinkedIn with over 30,000+ members.


B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012

B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012

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B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012