Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketers' Confidence in Content Marketing Continues to Grow, Usage Rates Up

CLEVELAND, Oct. 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study, B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, has been published by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. This report, sponsored by Brightcove, shows that 93% of B2B marketers in North America are using content marketing. Of those, 42% consider themselves effective at content marketing, up from 36% last year. 

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Not only are marketers feeling more confident, but they are continuing to invest in content marketing in terms of budget and time. On average, B2B marketers allocate 30% of their budgets to content marketing. Fifty-eight percent of marketers plan to increase content market spend over the next 12 months. Seventy-three percent of respondents are producing more content than they were a year ago.

"One likely reason that some marketers are feeling more confident is because they have a documented content strategy," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing.  "While only 44% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy, those who do rate themselves as more effective in all areas of content marketing."

Compared with last year, marketers are using more content tactics (13 compared to 12) and more social media platforms to distribute content (6 compared to 5).   

"B2B marketers are continuing to experiment with how to best distribute content, as demonstrated by the growth in their use of social media platforms," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "The most popular social media platform for B2B marketers continues to be LinkedIn, which is also the platform they consider to be most effective."

B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America reports on the findings gathered from the fourth annual Content Marketing Survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. The research was sponsored by Brightcove. More than 1,200 B2B marketers in North America from diverse industries and a wide range of company sizes responded to the survey in July and August 2013. The full report can be downloaded here.

About Content Marketing Institute:

Content Marketing Institute is the leading global content marketing education and training organization. CMI teaches enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multi-channel storytelling. CMI's Content Marketing World event, the largest content marketing-focused event, is held every September, and Content Marketing World Sydney, every March. CMI also produces the quarterly magazine Chief Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and content marketing research for some of the best-known brands in the world. CMI is a 2012 and 2013 Inc. 500 company.

About MarketingProfs:

MarketingProfs (www.marketingprofs.com) is a marketing education and training company that offers actionable know-how designed to make you a smarter marketer. More than 600,000 MarketingProfs members rely on our free daily publications, virtual conferences, and more to stay up-to-date on the most important trends in marketing—and how to apply them to their businesses.

Press contact: 

Cathy McPhillips
Content Marketing Institute
[email protected]
216-941-5842

SOURCE Content Marketing Institute