• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, December 28, 2011

According to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, who developed and conducted the study “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends,” even though the confidence gap is shrinking this year vs. last, regarding tactics used in content marketing, there is still more education that needs to be done.

For purposes of the research, the survey defined content marketing as follows:

“Content marketing/custom media (sometimes called custom publishing, custom content, or branded content) is the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.”

Key findings in the study...

Just as last year’s survey showed, nine out of ten B2B marketers are using content marketing to grow their businesses, and on average, marketers use eight content marketing tactics to achieve their marketing goals. The most popular tactics are :

• Article posting (79%),
• Social media (excluding blogs) (74%),
• Blogs (65%),
• Enewsletters (63%)
• Case studies (58%)
• In-person events (56%)

Marketers are using content marketing to support multiple business goals, led by:

• Brand awareness (69%)
• Customer acquisition (68%)
• Lead generation (67%)
• Customer retention/loyalty (62%)

Web traffic is the most widely used success metric (58%). And, this year, sales lead quality (49%) is the second-highest used metric (versus direct sales in the previous study). the least widely employed goal for content marketing is lead management/nurturing.

B2B marketers dedicate approximately 26% of their total budgets to content marketing initiatives. This year, a majority of marketers (60%) report they plan to spend more money on content marketing in 2012 (compared to 51% in 2011).

The greatest reported challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” (41% of respondents). And nearly the same percentage of respondents in 2011 as in 2010 reports that “producing enough content” (20%) and “budget to produce content” (18%) are their greatest challenges in content marketing.

• 40% of marketers consider themselves to be more effective in content marketing than their competitors.
• They allocate 31% of their budget to content marketing, compared to less effective marketers who invest 18%.
• They are 50% more likely to consider the “stage in the buying cycle” when developing content, whereas less effective marketers are less likely to tailor content in any way.
• Only 8% of effective marketers complain about lack of buy-in from higher-ups, versus 17% of those who rate themselves as less effective

In general, B2B marketers are using the same mix of tactics as they did in the previous study (average of 8 tactics in both years). Some notable increases:

• Blogs (27% increase)
• White papers (19% increase)
• Videos (27% increase)

Article posting and social media (excluding blogs) are the most popular tactics and are currently used by 79% and 74% of B2B marketers, respectively. However, use of social media actually declined in 2011 by 5 percentage points. Some of the tactics, such as blogs, video and white papers are used much more frequently this year than in the previous study.

While in-person events and webinars are still seen as the most effective tactics, on average, the following ranked notably higher in perceived effectiveness compared to our last report:

• Blogs: 45% increase 
• Case studies: 32% increase 
• Videos: 36% increase 
• Webinars/webcasts: 25% increase

Now that marketers have found ways to use some of these tactics to effectively achieve their goals, the next step is to gain confidence in their use of branded content, digital magazines, mobile content, and podcasts. 

To measure the effectiveness of content marketing, marketers are now relying on slightly different criteria than they did last year. While web traffic and sales lead quality still top the list, we see a 12 percentage point bump over last year in the number of marketers using SEO ranking to measure success.

The largest challenge (for 41% of respondents) is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” While a greater number of respondents are struggling with this in 2011 compared with last, this year’s respondents are also struggling with two challenges that go hand in hand:

• Producing enough content (20%)
• Having the budget to produce enough content (18%)

Marketers were asked to explain what particular challenges they face within their own organizations.

• “Management patience - mgt needs to understand that in today’s B2B environment it takes time to engage prospects.
• “Finding people within my organization to contribute their expertise to relevant content. Nobody outside of marketing seems to see the value in sharing our expertise with the market via content
• “Time and content creation. The ideas are all there, it’s just a matter of finding time to create and write copy.”
• “Producing enough content and distributing it through *all* of the relevant channels.
• “Creating emotionally compelling content and maintaining a consistent cadence of creation/distribution”
• “Having the discipline and being able to assign sufficient resources to create and manage the right content for the target audience, in a sustainable manner.”

For more information, please visit Marketing Profs here to download the PDF report, B2B Content Marketing.