29 Insightful (and Tweetable) B2B Content Marketing Statistics

A full-fledged content marketing effort is no small undertaking.  Between planning, implementation, and ongoing management, there’s no shortage of to-dos.  Paired with the often-required investments – content, distribution, staff, etc. – content marketing starts to look like a hard sell to your CEO.

While content marketing certainly isn’t a short-term solution for many organizational needs, when done correctly, it is incredibly impactful in the long-term.  If nothing else, the sheer growth and prevalence of content marketing serves as a testament to its potential value.

Reputation notwithstanding, it would be foolish to make strategic decisions on potential alone.  Since any convincing proposal has its fair share of facts and figures, we’ve compiled this list of statistics to help illuminate various facets of content marketing.  This list covers content marketing usage, effectiveness, goals, challenges, and outlook, among other things.

Without further ado, here is our list of twenty-nine insightful and tweetable B2B content marketing statistics.

Utilization

1. 86% of B2B respondents claim to be using content marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
2. 79% of marketing organizations are shifting focus to branded content. (Source: Forrester)
3. 70% of B2B Marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
4. 42% of companies publish new content daily or multiple times per week. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
5. 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each week. (Source: eMarketer)

Content Strategy

6. 35% of B2B marketers reported to have a documented content marketing strategy, while an additional 48% reported to have an undocumented strategy. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
7. 70% of marketers say they lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. (Source: Altimeter Group)

Goals

8. 84% of respondents identified brand awareness as the top goal for B2B content marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
9. 63% of marketers report using website traffic as an indicator of content marketing success. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Effectiveness

10. 93% of companies using inbound marketing increase their lead generation and 56% increase lead generation by more than 50%. (Source: HubSpot)
11. 42% of companies using inbound marketing increased their lead-to-sales conversion rate. (Source: HubSpot)
12. Customers who receive email newsletters are 82% more likely to buy from the related company. (Source: iContact)
13. 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for inbound marketing. (Source: HubSpot)
14. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive inbound ROI. (Source: HubSpot)
15. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t. (Source: Social Media B2B)

Challenges

16. Only 38% of B2B Marketers rated their content marketing as “Effective” or “Very Effective”. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
17. “Creating More Engaging/Higher-Quality Content” was ranked as the greatest content marketing challenge. 69% said this was a current priority of their efforts. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
18. Only 27% of B2B marketers say that are effectively tracking content utilization metrics. (Source: Aberdeen)
19. Only 21% of B2B Marketers say they are successful in tracking the ROI of their content marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Formats

20. Infographics were the content type that enjoyed the greatest increase in usage, growing from 51% to 62% among those surveyed. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
21. While a majority of B2B marketers believe in-person events were the most effective content marketing tactic, the most effective B2B content marketers believe blogs are the most powerful tactic. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
22. Marketers said they used an average of 13 different content marketing tactics. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Distribution

23. LinkedIn was the most-used platform for B2B content marketing. 94% of B2B marketers used LinkedIn to distribute content. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
24. Companies use an average of 4 paid methods to promote and distribute content. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Spending

25. An average of 28% of marketing budgets was spent on content marketing. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
26. Content creation accounts for 32% of content marketing spending, while distribution accounts for 18%. (Source: Custom Content Council)
27. 52% of content marketing dollars are spent on people. (Source: Custom Content Council)

Outlook

28. 55% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
29. 78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing. (Source: DemandMetric)

 
Let us know what you think:

• Which statistic(s) did you find most interesting?
• Which statistics(s) were most surprising?
• Do you have any statistics to add to the list?