This graph shows the use of content marketing among B2B marketers in North America from 2012 to 2017. In 2017, 91 percent of the respondents said that they used content marketing, whereas nine percent stated they did not.
B2B content marketing – additional information
While most B2B spending power is focused on the face-to-face interaction with customers through trade shows and conferences, digital and content marketing follow closely, with marketers planning to devote ten and nine percent of their B2B marketing budgets to those channels respectively. However, studies among industry professionals show, that 60 percent of respondents admit that producing engaging content is one of the largest content marketing challenges to overcome. Also, more than half of marketers surveyed, believe that consistency in content production and measuring its effectiveness are equally difficult.
In that respect, audience relevance was considered as a leading attribute of content marketing effectiveness by 90 percent of senior B2B marketing leaders who also thought engaging and compelling storytelling is the key to content marketing success. With this in mind, marketers choose to share the meaningful content with potential and existing customers through a number of platforms, though most of them are digital. The majority of industry professionals claim to use websites (95 percent) and social media (92 percent) as leading content distribution channels.
Within social media marketing, B2B specialists are widely committed to LinkedIn. The latest figures confirm that social media usage by B2B marketers in North America has been increasing since 2011. While 84 percent reported they used Facebook in 2015, and 87 said the same about Twitter, it was LinkedIn that was pointed out as the most important platform for their business by 94 percent of industry professionals.
