By understanding content marketing statistics and trends for 2013, marketers can better evaluate how their organization’s marketing efforts stack up against other companies worldwide. Content marketing is the process of sharing valuable information with customers and potential customers with the intent of building loyalty and rapport without owtwardly focusing on sales. Content marketing has become one of the most popular forms of marketing on the web. In this article we’ll take a look at some of the latest (as of mid-2013) data from the realm of B2B content marketing.
Surprising Content Marketing Statistics
According to a study conducted as part of the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks Report (3rd annual report) and the 2013 Content Marketing in Australia: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report, 91% of North American B2B marketers surveyed use content marketing as part of their overall strategy and 96% use it in Australia.
“40% of [B2B] companies are outsourcing their content creation”
Just because content marketing is being incorporated everywhere, doesn’t mean it is taking priority over other forms of marketing – yet. Only 18% of marketers surveyed in HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing hold “quality content” as a top priority. Other top priorities were:
- Reaching the right audience (23%)
- Converting leads to customers (23%)
- Increasing total lead volume (20%)
Deciding who should be in charge of producing the content to be used in content marketing is not always an easy decision. According to the HubSpot survey, only 10% of companies surveyed employ a full time content marketer.
Conversely, the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report found that an unexpectedly high 44% of companies are outsourcing their content creation. This leaves about 46% of content creation for members of the organization that are also fulfilling other roles within the company.
Also read: Content Marketing Goes Mainstream
Based on the fact that the biggest challenge faced by B2B content marketers surveyed in the 2013 B2B Report is creating enough content, it is expected that the percentage of companies employing a full time content marketer will rise significantly in 2013 and into 2014.
This projected increase in full time content marketers is also supported by the fact that B2B marketers surveyed are currently spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing and 54% plan on increasing their content marketing budget next year!
Despite the fact that content marketing is considered a “customer focused” strategy, only 50% of companies surveyed by HubSpot consider their company to be “customer focused”. This information supports the idea that some organizations may have to rework their overall marketing strategy in order to be successful with content marketing. Other primary focuses were:
- 15% were product focused
- 14% were marketing focused
- 13% were sales focused
Of the B2B marketers surveyed in the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report, social media is now considered the most popular B2B content marketing tactic>.
At the same time, research reports, videos and mobile content are now the fastest growing B2B content marketing tactics. This supports the idea that engaging video content and content accessible from mobile devices will continue to become vital forms of content marketing in years to come.
