Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Content Marketing Adoption on the Rise

CLEVELAND, Oct. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The second annual B2C Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends - North America report, produced by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs and sponsored by Imagination, shows patterns of growth in business-to-consumer (B2C) content marketing as compared with last year, and highlights differences between the most effective marketers and their less effective peers.

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The study reports that 90% of B2C marketers are now using content marketing. Sixty percent of B2C marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget over the next 12 months, compared with 55% last year. Seventy-two percent are creating more content than they did one year ago.

This year's study also asked respondents whether they have a documented content marketing strategy.

"Best-in-class B2C marketers are far more likely to have a documented content marketing strategy than their less effective B2C peers," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing. "They are also more likely to have someone in place who oversees content marketing strategy."

Compared with last year, B2C marketers are using more social media platforms, more frequently.

"Facebook continues to be the platform that B2C marketers use most often and rate highest in terms of effectiveness," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules. "However, LinkedIn had the biggest jump in B2C usage: from 51% last year to 71% this year."

B2C 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 Imagination. 307 B2C marketers in North America, representing diverse industries and a range of company sizes and job functions, 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, 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.

SOURCE Content Marketing Institute