B2B content marketing has proven time and again to be an effective strategy for businesses that want to move the needle and generate more leads. With the ability to create highly targeted content for your target audience, while driving brand awareness and boosting sales, it’s no wonder businesses spanning vast industries are looking to expand their B2B content marketing strategies in 2024.
Maybe you’ve heard about B2B content marketing, but you aren’t convinced it’s the right direction for your organization, or perhaps you are looking to understand how to create an effective strategy. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the most telling statistics about content marketing across the B2B space so that you can begin making data-driven decisions that drive results.
Let’s dive in.
The Popularity of B2B Content Marketing
B2B content marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy for reaching customers and providing them with relevant information based on their interests and buying habits. For many organizations, it’s already a large part of their marketing strategy, and for others, they’re eager to get it started.
1. 71% of B2B marketers have said that content marketing has become more important to their organization in the last year.
2. While only 40% of content marketers have a documented content strategy, 33% of content marketers have a strategy that is undocumented, and 20% plan to develop a strategy within the next 12 months.
3. 85% of marketers report that content marketing provides a rewarding and purposeful career path.
What Customers Want from B2B Content
Receiving information about a company or learning something from B2B blog content, opinion articles, whitepapers, or social media has become the preferred form of content over traditional advertisements where the clear intent is to sell them something. Of course, the content needs to be credible, authentic and trustworthy too.
4. 70% of people would prefer to receive information about a company or learn something from a blog post rather than from a traditional advertisement.
5. Blog posts rank as the most popular form of content at 65%, with webinars following at 52% and whitepapers and ebooks shortly behind at 50%.
6. According to a study by Edelman and LinkedIn, 55% of decision-makers use thought leadership to find organizations they may hire, and 61% are willing to pay a premium for a company that delivers thought leadership.
The Costs of B2B Content Marketing
If you haven’t implemented a strong content strategy yet, you may be concerned about the costs. The good news is that B2B content marketing is less expensive than other means of marketing like paid advertisements, virtual events, and inbound marketing.
7. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and leads to about three times as many leads.
8. The content marketing industry is estimated to be worth $600 billion in 2024.
9. 80% of very successful content marketers spend more than 10% of their total marketing budgets on content. Just 52% of those who are unsuccessful spend more than 10%.
Generating Leads for Your Organization
Content marketing can be an effective way to engage with your audience and bring in new leads. However, a strategy needs to be in place, so your audience can stay engaged and continue moving down the sales funnel.
10. 71% of B2B marketers said they downloaded and consumed multiple assets to help with the decision-making process and an equal number said they shared such content with their team members.
11. The top factors that lead to content success are:
1) researching audiences (47%)
2) publishing more content and increasing posting frequency (45%)
3) improving the value and quality of content (44%)
The B2B Content Marketing Process
Developing content can be time-consuming, and if you don’t have the right team or resources in place it can be hard to keep up. In order to keep up with competitors and have an effective strategy, you’ll need to allocate time accordingly.
12. The average blog post takes writers 3 hours and 51 minutes to write.
13. 53% of marketers are focused on repurposing content this year as a smart resource allocation strategy.
The Challenges of B2B Content Marketing
Like all marketing and business strategies, there are going to be challenges associated with content marketing. One that businesses bring up time and again as a hurdle is lack of time and having a small team.
14. Economic instability remains a concern for marketers. If a recession were to occur this year, 24% of marketers expect to have to reduce their overall marketing budget, 20% expect to have to reframe their marketing goals, 20% believe they would have to reduce their scope of work, and 19% report they’d have to pivot their marketing strategy entirely.
15. Lack of budget is the biggest hurdle for CMOs in creating compelling content.
16. 73% of major organizations hire a third party to manage their content marketing strategy.
17. The top 4 challenges marketers have reported are:
1) Attracting quality leads (45%)
2) Finding the resources to create content faster (38%)
3) Generating enough traffic with content (35%)
4) Generating ROI and sales through content (34%)
18. 46% of marketers reported that one person (or group) in their organization is responsible for all types of content produced.
Outsourcing and Repurposing Content
Repurposing content using licensed content and outsourcing content are great ways to get around content marketing challenges. If you have too small of a team or not enough time in the day, licensing provides the ability to leverage credible sources and provide rich content for your audience.
19. 48% of companies will outsource their content marketing.
20. Organizations say finding talent with subject matter expertise is their biggest challenge in outsourcing content. In an interview that CMI conducted, one respondent reported, “Accessibility to subject matter experts is extremely important. Since most of these are internal contacts that are busy with their own work, it can be a long process to get enough from them to write content, even if the value is proven.”
21. Almost 90% of marketers believe repurposing their content is greater use of their time than creating content from scratch.
Final Thoughts
B2B content marketing isn’t going away anytime soon and that’s because it’s proven time and again to be effective in reaching new audiences, building credible branded content, developing a brand voice and boosting sales. Content marketing statistics show that if companies aren’t doing B2B content marketing (and most are), then they plan to in the future.
The biggest hurdles facing companies that don’t have an established B2B content marketing strategy are lack of time and having a small team. At NYTLicensing, we understand this hurdle which is why we’ve partnered with some of the biggest names in the industry like The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scholastic to provide high-quality licensed content for our customers. Take advantage of subject matter experts and thought leaders in the industry to bring in more robust content and expand your brand.
