93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing, but only 42% of B2B marketers consider themselves effective at it.
On the surface, that's not so good, but if you consider that this statistic is up 36% from last year, I'd say that shows a lot of B2B marketers are getting the hang of it. According to new report, B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends-North America, published by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute, 73% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did last year and 58% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next year.
Where is that content going? Well, social media is still the number-one place for B2B marketers to push content, with 87% of all respondents. This is no surprise and is pretty much in line with the results from the year before. Of the social media sites that content marketers are using, LinkedIn came in at number one (91%), followed by Twitter (85%), and Facebook (81%). So it should also be no surprise that LinkedIn Marketing Solutions has featured this report by putting some of its topline metrics in an infographic.
My first question when B2B marketers come to us wanting to measure and engage using social media is always the same: What are your goals? According to the study, "sales" came in ninth, which I can only assume is the result of marketers finding it hard to tie the non-financial metrics of social media into financial ROI metrics.
Top 5 goals of B2B marketers:
1. Brand awareness
2. Lead generation
3. Customer acquisition
4. Thought leadership
5. Engagement
How does the information in this infographic compare to your goals and challenges as a B2B marketer? How are you finding success with social media in your content marketing?