Marketing Report

2013 survey results

Sponsored by
Group Partner

Technology
Marketing
| Yesler | Software Shortlist | Maximizer CRM | Hanley Wood |
 Sponsors We would like to thank our sponsors for supporting the
2013 B2B Content Marketing Trends Report

Spiceworks | www.spiceworks.com
Called “the future of media” by Forbes, Spiceworks connects over 2.5 million IT professionals with 1,800 technology
brands. An IT application, community and content all rolled into one, Spiceworks helps technology vendors reach IT
pros as they’re managing their networks, collaborating with each other, and researching the products and services
they’ll spend more than $450 billion on each year.

Yesler | www.yesler.com
Yesler is a B2B marketing agency that applies an integrated, end-to-end framework to the marketing challenges of
technology companies so they can deliver predictable revenues, sustainable growth, and measurable results. We
provide expertise in research and strategy, content marketing, marketing automation, sales enablement, customer
engagement, and marketing analytics to make your marketing relevant and accountable - to your buyers, to your sales
team, and to the bottom line.

Software Shortlist | www.softwareshortlist.com

Software Shortlist is a trusted independent third party that provides free information and services to software buyers to
help them find relevant vendors. We believe innovative growing businesses are the heart & soul of economic progress,
and good software helps businesses improve their performance. We don’t sell software. We don’t develop it. We don’t
implement it. We focus solely on software selection. We provide a free shortlisting service for businesses, matching
requirements with relevant vendors from an extensive & growing network. If you’re thinking about how software could
improve your business, or you work with a software vendor, let’s talk.

Maximizer Software | www.maximizer.com

Maximizer Software delivers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to meet the needs, budgets and access
requirements of entrepreneurs, medium and small businesses and divisions of large enterprises. Easily configurable for
organizations in any industry, Maximizer CRM optimizes sales processes, enhances marketing initiatives, and, improves
customer service to ultimately boost productivity and revenue.

Hanley Wood | www.hanleywoodmarketing.com

Today, more than ever, what enriches and sustains your audience connections and relationships is content. Value-
adding information, interactions and experiences. Communications that inform, educate, even entertain. Hanley Wood
Marketing (HWM) has nearly 30 years of experience supporting corporate marketers and communicators with content
programs and services to reach and engage key audiences and accomplish big, measurable brand and business
objectives. Attract customers and prospects into community and conversations. Keep sales funnels flowing. Empower
sales reps and channel partners to be more efficient and effective. It’s all about strategic content. And we’re strategic
content marketers at our core.

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 2

 Introduction

B2B buyer behavior has Content marketing is going mainstream in 2013. B2B
been changing dramatically marketers are increasingly using content marketing tactics
over the last few years to engage B2B buyers with compelling content to educate,
as buyers become more inform, entertain and guide them along their buying journey.
sophisticated, find new
ways to gather information But what’s behind the buzz and growing popularity of content
online and via social media. marketing? We conducted a survey with the 50,000+ member
90% of business buyers say B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to get
when they’re ready to buy, answers to key questions like:
they’ll find you.
*DemandGen Reports • What’s working and what’s not?
• Who is creating content and what are they creating?
• How do you measure content marketing results?

We received 815 responses and are excited to share the

results with you.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey!

Holger Schulze
Group Owner, B2B Technology Marketing Community
hhschulze@gmail.com | +1 302-383-5817

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 3

 SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS

Top-5 Trends in Content Marketing

Content marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to
1 help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.

The popularity of white papers as a content marketing format is declining relative

2 to interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.

More than 82 percent of B2B marketers are increasing their content production
3 over the next 12 months.

YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage

4 B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.

Marketing automation is on the rise. 61 percent of marketers use marketing

5 automation platforms, up from 43 percent last year.

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 4

Q1 WHAT ARE THE GOALS
of Content Marketing?

The top-3 goals of content marketing:

1. Lead generation (71 percent)
2. Thought leadership & market education (50 percent)
3. Customer acquisition (45 percent)

Lead generation
61% 71.3%
Thought leadership / market education 49.9%
Customer acquisition 45.0%
Brand awareness 41.0%
Lead nurturing 35.4%
Website traffic 27.8%
Customers loyalty / retention 24.8%
Social media engagement 13.1%
Channel enablement 6.4%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 5

Q2 HOW EFFECTIVE ARE CONTENT
Marketing Tactics & Formats?

Customer testimonials Customer testimonials

Case studies
In-person events (89 percent) and case
Online articles
studies (88 percent) are
Videos
White papers the most effective
Product demos
Webinars / webcasts
content marketing tactics.
Social media
Research reports
White papers on the other hand
eNewsletters
Blogging experienced the biggest drop in
Slideware / presentations
relative popularity - moving from
Analyst reports
Press releases the number 2 spot in last year’s
Infographics survey down to number 6 today.
Polling / research
Virtual / online events The three least popular content
Microsites formats are online games, printed
eBooks
Mobile content
books and podcasts.
Community management / threading
Visual content (cartoons, memes)
Print magazines
Licensed / syndicated content
Advertorials
Effective
Branded apps
Podcasts Ineffective
Printed books
I don’t use it
Games
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 6

Q3 WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT
elements of effective content?

So what are the ingredients of successful content?

Content success starts with audience relevance (71 percent), followed by engaging and compelling
storytelling (56 percent) that triggers a specific response (56 percent).

Audience relevance
71%
Engaging and compelling storytelling 56.0%
Triggers a response / action 55.7%
Effectively delivers message 40.0%
Originality 24.0%
Re-usability 17.6%
Well-edited copy 15.7%
Custom content 15.3%
Written for SEO 15.1%
Easy to produce 8.2%
Low cost 6.3%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 7

Q4 HOW EFFECTIVE IS SOCIAL
media in delivering content?
LinkedIn tops the list of the most
LinkedIn
effective social media platforms
YouTube
again with 85 percent (although
Twitter this number is likely skewed considering
SlideShare the majority of survey respondents came
from the B2B Technology Marketing
Facebook
Community on LinkedIn). The runner ups
Custom developed
communities are YouTube (impressive 73 percent, up
Google + from 53 percent last year) and Twitter (65
Vimeo
percent, down from 70 percent last year).
Facebook on the other hand is quickly
Pinterest
losing popularity with B2B marketers
Flickr as a social media platform to reach and
Tumblr engage B2B audiences (down to 39
Spiceworks
percent from 54 percent last year).

Instagram

Quora
Effective
Foursquare Ineffective

StumbleUpon I don’t use it

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 8

Q5 HOW DO YOU
generate content?

The vast majority of B2B marketers create content from scratch (93 percent).

Create content from scratch 93%

Curate or syndicate third party content 34.4%

Encourage user generated content 30.0%

License / re-use existing content 27.5%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 9

Q6 WHAT METRICS DO YOU USE TO
measure the success of your content?

Web traffic is tied with views & downloads (both 63 percent) as the top metrics
used by B2B marketers to measure the success of content marketing.
The next most popular metric is sales opportunities (51 percent).

63%
Web traffic / visits

Views / downloads

Sales opportunities 51.2%

Sales lead quality 50.6%
Sales lead quantity 46.1%
Sales / revenue 37.1%
Social media sharing 33.0%
Customer feedback 32.8%
Search engine rankings 28.6%
Search rankings 21.6%
Inbound links 20.5%
Share of conversation 16.0%
Don’t measure 4.5%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 10

Q7 WHO DETERMINES CONTENT
marketing strategy?

In most companies, Corporate marketing sets content strategy (58 percent), followed by Product
marketing (38 percent), and the CEO / President / Owner (34 percent) in smaller companies that often don’t
have a dedicated marketing department.

Corporate marketing
58%
Product marketing 38.1%
CEO / president / owner 33.5%
PR / communications 24.7%
Sales 21.2%
Demand generation 17.2%
Field marketing 16.5%
Product management 15.4%
External agency / consultant 10.6%
0% 20% 40% 60%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 11

Q8 WHO CREATES CONTENT?

Corporate marketing is also the number one creator of content (56 percent),
followed by product marketing (47 percent) and subject matter experts (43 percent).

Corporate marketing
56%
Product marketing 46.9%
Subject matter experts 42.9%
PR / communications 38.7%
External agency / consultant 29.4%
Product management 24.0%
CEO / president / owner 22.8%
Field marketing 18.6%
Sales 13.9%
Demand generation 13.3%
Nobody 0.2%
0% 20% 40% 60%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 12

Q9 WHAT PERCENTAGE OF CONTENT
creation do you outsource?

Content marketing is mostly done in-house.

Responses
25%
24.5%

20% 18.8%

15%
12.6%

10% 8.8%
9.0%
8.1%

5% 4.5% 4.3%
3.6%
3.0%
1.7%
1.3%
0%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Don’t know

Percentage of content that is outsourced

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 13

Q10 What content do
marketers outsource?
The most outsourced form
Videos 31%
White papers 29.3% of content are videos
Research reports 27.0%
(31 percent) followed
Infographics 26.7%
Analyst reports 26.3% by white papers (30 percent)
Case studies 22.5%
and research reports (27 percent).
Press releases 20.8%
Online articles 20.0%
Blogging 19.6%
Social media 17.5%
Webinars / webcasts 17.3%
Polling / research 15.2%
eBooks 14.7%
Microsites 14.1%
Customer testimonials 12.0%
Visual content (cartoons, memes) 11.8%
eNewsletters 11.6%
Licensed / syndicated content 10.7%
Mobile content 9.9%
Advertorials 9.5%
Virtual / online events 9.1%
Print magazines 9.1%
In-person events 8.6%
Slideware / presentations 8.4%
Branded apps 8.0%
Community management / threading 7.4%
Podcasts 5.9%
Product demos 5.7%
Games 4.8%
Printed books 4.6%
We don’t outsource any 13.7%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 14

Q11 WHO OWNS THE CONTENT
marketing budget?

For 56 percent of companies, corporate marketing owns content marketing funds, followed by
the CEO / President / Owner (35 percent) in smaller companies. Product marketing owns the content marketing
budget in 24 percent of companies.

Corporate marketing
56%
CEO / president / owner 34.5%
Product marketing 23.9%
PR / communications 15.3%
Field marketing 10.4%
Demand generation 8.2%
Product management 7.4%
Sales 3.8%
External agency / consultant 1.4%
0% 20% 40% 60%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 15

Q12 WHAT PERCENTAGE OF MARKETING
budget is allocated to content marketing?

A plurality of companies allocates about 20 percent of marketing budget to content marketing.

Responses
25%

20.0%
20% 19.7%

15.2%
15% 13.3%

10% 8.7%

6.4%

5% 3.9% 4.0% 3.7%

2.9%
1.5%
0.6%
0%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Don’t know

Percentage of budget allocated to content

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 16

Q13 HOW IS CONTENT PRODUCTION
activity changing?

More than 82 percent of marketers are increasing content production over the next 12
months, 32 percent of them significantly so. 17 percent of marketers expect volume to stay flat. Virtually no
marketers expect content production to decline.

82 %
49.8% | Increases
32.0% | Increases significally

16.8% | Stays flat

1.4% | Decreases

0% | Decreases significally

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 17

Q14 WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST
content marketing challenges?

Time / bandwidth to create content

55% The number one content
Producing truly engaging content 49.2% marketing challenge is
Producing enough content variety 39.0% having enough time
Talent to produce content 35.3% and bandwidth to
Getting content delivered to the right audiences 31.4% create content
Measuring results 27.6% (55 percent), same as last
Lack of budget to produce content 26.5% year. The next biggest
Creating segment-specific content 26.5% content marketing challenge
No consistent content strategy 25.7% is producing truly engaging
Inability to measure content effectiveness 25.5% content (49 percent) followed
by producing enough content
Understanding buyer personas and decision stages 23.7%
variety to serve the needs of
Buyers don’t want to register to consume content 17.8%
marketing programs
Finding enough targeted contacts to offer the content to 17.3%
(39 percent).
Lack of process and integration across marketing 14.7%
Poor content quality 14.5%
Finding domain experts 14.3%
Getting executive buy-in 13.5%
Buyers’ attention span too short 12.9%
Localizing content for international markets 12.4%
0% 20% 40% 60%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 18

Q15 How do you
segment content?

The most popular dimension for segmenting content is product category

(46 percent), followed by vertical (41 percent) and buyer persona (41 percent).

The least popular segmentation dimension is company size with 15 percent. And 16 percent of marketers don’t
systematically segment content at all (compared to 20 percent last year).

By product / service category 46%

By vertical 41.4%
By buyer persona 41.2%
By pain point 34.8%
By stage in buying cycle 28.9%
By company size 14.8%
We do not systematically segment content 16.2%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 19

Q16 MANAGING THE COMPLEXITY
of B2B content marketing

What is a manageable number of unique segments, personas, and stages to

produce marketing content for?

We asked our B2B marketing

community, and the magic number is …

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 20

Q17 WHAT BUYING STAGES DO
you use to categorize content?

The most popular buying stages defined by B2B marketers are problem awareness (42 percent),
need recognition (35 percent) and purchase decision (29 percent). A whopping 30 percent of
marketers don’t categorize content by buying stage.

Problem awareness 42%

Need recognition 34.8%
Purchase decision 28.9%
Vendor consideration 27.6%
Vendor evaluation / validation (demo/eval) 26.6%
Vendor and solution discovery 26.2%
Vendor selection 23.0%
Requirement definition 21.1%
Advocacy / loyalty 16.2%
Performance evaluation (post purchase) 13.1%
Procurement 10.1%
Priority shift 5.3%
We don’t categorize content
by buying stage 29.7%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 21

Q18 INTEGRATION WITH
marketing automation

Adoption of marketing automation is on the rise as automation platforms mature.

37 percent of marketers use marketing automation to generate leads, 36 percent use it for lead
nurturing.

Only 39 percent of B2B marketers don’t use marketing automation at all – significantly down from 57
percent last year.

We use marketing automation

to generate leads 36.7%
We use mareting automation
to nurture leads 36.1%
We actively create content to feed
automated campaigns 28.2%
We use marketing automation to
26.0%
engage with customers
37%
We sporadically use content for
marketing automation campaigns 15.1%
We don’t use marketing automation 39.0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 22

 SURVEY METHODOLOGY The survey was completed by 815 marketers in June
of 2013. Here is a detailed breakdown of the survey
participant demographics.

What industry is your company in? What is your functional role in your company?
Advertising / marketing
Marketing / advertising
Software communications / PR
High tech
CEO / president / owner
Consulting
Professional services Sales

Manufacturing
Consultant
Business services (Other)
Internet / online services Product management
Telecommunication
Operations
Publishing / media
Financial services
Engineering
Healthcare / medical / pharma
Government 0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

What is your job title? How many employees work at your company worldwide?

Manager

Director
30.9% | Fewer than 10
Owner / CEO / president
20.4% | 10-99
VP
18.3% | 100-999
Specialist
11.9% | 1,000-10,000
Analyst 10.4% | 10,000+

Intern

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 23

 THANK YOU Contact the Author

Many thanks to everybody who participated in this survey.

If you are interested in co-sponsoring upcoming surveys, or creating your
own survey report based on the wisdom of the 50,000 member B2B
marketing crowd in our B2B Technology Marketing Community, please
contact Holger Schulze at hhschulze@gmail.com or +1 302-383-5817. Holger Schulze
Group Owner, B2B Technology
Marketing Community (LinkedIn)
About the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn
Email: hhschulze@gmail.com
With over 50,000 members, the B2B Technology Marketing
Phone: +1 302-383-5817
Community is the single largest LinkedIn group exclusively focused
on B2B technology marketing topics. This group is ideal for marketing
professionals in B2B high-tech industries to enable networking, sharing
of ideas, best practices and opportunities

Click to join the

B2B Technology Group Partner
Marketing Community
Technology
on LinkedIn
Marketing

B2B CONTENT MARKETING TRENDS | Read the 2013 survey results 24