A recent content marketing study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that B2B marketers are uncertain about whether they are effectively using content marketing tactics.
A surprisingly low 6% considered the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts very effective, rating their efforts 5 out of 5 (5=very effective). Most businesses (45%) rated theirs as a 3 out of 5, and 30% of businesses gave themselves a 4 for their content marketing effectiveness.
Why do relatively few companies give their content marketing effectiveness top grades? Perhaps the reason has something to do with the challenges of B2B content marketing. The three biggest challenges that companies cite are...
- Producing enough content (cited by 64% of marketers)
- Producing engaging content (52%)
- Producing a variety of content (45%)
After producing the content, however, more companies in 2012 are using social sites to distribute their content: 87% do so in contrast to 2011's 74%.
That said, B2B marketers prefer just five social sites: Google+, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
The following infographic below, created by Marketo, features highlights from the study, "B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends–North America."