B2B Marketers to Triple Content Marketing Spend in the Coming Years

As B2B marketers continue to strive to engage their target audience, new data indicates that companies across the globe will spend $100 billion on content marketing and thought leadership by the end of the year.

Furthermore, this number could soon triple as about 80 percent of B2B marketers said that they intend to significantly increase their spending on content marketing and thought leadership within the next three years.

“As more organizations adopt a thought leadership approach, it is going to be increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd,” said Guy Dunn, CEO of Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership. “Marketers will need more compelling content, greater access to high-level audiences and more innovative means of delivery to achieve success.”

However, data indicates that about one-quarter of B2B marketers are unsure of whether their existing content marketing strategy has met their expectations. Resonating with the right audience, poor visibility on the distribution of content, and unengaging content are the top challenges being faced by B2B marketers.

Measuring Content Marketing Effectiveness

This is not the first report to exhibit marketers’ struggle to show ROI from their content marketing efforts. The “Marketing Budgets 2015 Report” from Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud found that just 41 percent of marketers say they are “okay” at measuring the ROI of content marketing.

Nearly 40 percent said the same about social media, while 39 percent stated a similar response in regard to email marketing.

In terms of efficiency, the majority (52 percent) claimed that they are “good” at measuring ROI from paid search efforts.