The Content Marketing Institute has released its 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends research report. The highlight of the report is the revelation that social media marketing has now displaced articles on the company website as the most commonly used tactic by B2B marketers. 83% of all B2B marketers now use the social media to gather leads and engage with prospects.
The other popular tactics adopted by B2B marketers include enewsletters (adoption rate of 83%), blogs (adoption rate of 77%,), case studies (adoption rate of 71%), videos (adoption rate of 70%), articles on other websites (adoption rate of 70%), in-person events (adoption rate of 69%), whitepapers (adoption rate of 61%) and webinars or webcasts (adoption rate of 59%). The least popular tactic is games or gamification, adopted by just 11 percent of B2B marketers.
Within social media, LinkedIn, used by 82% of B2B marketers, is the most popular channel. Twitter and Facebook are tied at second place, with both channels adopted by 80% of B2B marketers. The next popular channel is YouTube, adopted by 61% of B2B marketers. All these channels saw an increase in adoption compared to previous year, but LinkedIn has the maximum growth, jumping from 71% to 83% and displacing Twitter as the most popular social media channel among B2B marketers. Twitter grew from 74% to 80% adoption, and Facebook from 70% adoption to 80%.
Overall, B2B marketers now use more marketing tactics than ever before, and all the popular tactics saw a rise in company adoption compared to the previous year. B2B marketers are also spending more on content marketing, with 33% of the overall marketing budget now allocated for this activity. 54% of the marketers plan to further increase spending on this head within the next 12 months.
The findings of these surveys vary somewhat from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which reported 93% of all B2B marketers using social media, and Facebook narrowly beating LinkedIn as the most dominant social media channel used by B2B marketers. However, the gist of all these surveys are the same: B2B marketers have embraced all the major social media channels in a big way and social media now ranks amongst the very top in the list of tactics adopted by the B2B marketer.
