Content marketing for B2B business

In a September 2015 study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, 76% of B2B marketers in North America said they expect to create more content in 2016 than they did in 2015. Allocated budgets will follow suit; more than half of B2B marketers planned to spend more on content marketing over the next 12 months.

And as explored in a new eMarketer report, “B2B Content Marketing in the US: Maximizing ROI and Cost-Effectiveness over Time,” even as more money is flowing to content marketing, B2B marketing budgets remain very lightly invested in it. A January 2015 Regalix survey of B2B marketing executives worldwide found that only 6% of respondents allocated more than half of their company’s marketing budget to content marketing. The majority (72%) allocated one-quarter or less.

No matter the reason, content marketing delivers results, especially when it comes to the more traditional end goal: generating leads to feed the sales funnel. In a July 2015 Ascend2 study of B2B marketing professionals, 43% of respondents asserted that content marketing was one of the most effective tactics for lead generation.

Of course, getting a large number of leads is only the beginning, especially as B2B marketers consider how content marketing can pay off over time. A May 2015 Starfleet Media study found that 80% of B2B marketing professionals worldwide used the number of leads as a content performance metric last year. That percentage was down slightly from 2014, when it was 84%.

Over the same period, other performance metrics gained ground, including sales conversions (from 78% in 2014 to 86% in 2015) and quality of leads (66% to 72%). Also interesting was the share of B2B marketers who considered cost savings and marketing ROI as a performance metric: In both 2014 and 2015, roughly 45% used savings as a way to measure the success of content marketing.