B2B Marketers Leverage Content Initiatives to Meet Critical Business Objectives

According to “The 2015 Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation” from Starfleet Media, a majority of B2B marketers are using content marketing to generate more/better leads, raise brand visibility, and demonstrate thought leadership in their industry.

The biggest reason (at 92 percent) for developing content was to generate more leads, with raising brand visibility the second most popular at 90 percent. Additionally, 84 percent of those surveyed were concerned with thought leadership as part of a content marketing strategy. Other reasons included showcasing client successes, reducing other marketing costs (such as replacing TV commercials with content marketing), increasing website traffic, and improving SEO.

Starfleet Media’s report also detailed the types of content that B2B marketers were focusing on:

Case studies were the most popular, with white papers and webinars following closely behind. This matches up well with the fact that 78 percent of those surveyed wanted to utilize content marketing strategies in order to showcase client successes; case studies and white papers are often created for that purpose.

B2B Content Marketing Success

No matter the reason why a B2B marketer is looking to develop and increase their content marketing efforts, success is still a hard-fought battle for many. Only 18 percent said that their content marketing efforts have been “very successful.” Almost double (32 percent) said they have been successful and 27 percent said they haven’t been successful.

While it’s promising that about a third have listed themselves as at least “successful,” B2B content marketing still has a way to go before a majority would categorize themselves as successful or above.

Screenshots taken of report June 9, 2015.