Since October, we’ve been sharing the results of our annual content marketing research, and today we focus on B2B small-business marketers (10-99 employees) based in North America.
B2B Small Business Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America, sponsored by Rainmaker Platform by Copyblogger Media, shows how small-business marketers have changed their content marketing practices over the last year. It also contains new insights based on questions added to the survey this year.
Let’s look at some of the findings.
Many are focused on improving website conversions
Nine out of 10 B2B small-business marketers are focused on doing a better job of converting visitors to their websites. This is a higher percentage than we found with larger-sized companies (e.g., 84% of enterprise marketers say they will work on conversion over the next 12 months). This positive trend aligns with another finding: Small-business marketers are increasingly focused on lead generation. (Lead generation surpassed brand awareness this year as the most cited goal.)
The use of social media, blogs, and infographics is increasing
More B2B small-business marketers are using social media content other than blogs as a content marketing tactic. Even though social media was the tactic used most often last year, the percentage using it this year grew even more (88% last year vs. 93% this year). The other two areas where we saw the biggest usage increases are:
Blogs – 77% last year vs. 87% this year
Infographics – 48% last year vs. 60% this year
More than half of small-business marketers are increasing their spending
Fifty-five percent of B2B small-business marketers say they will spend more on their content marketing over the next 12 months, including 53% of that group who say they are least effective at content marketing.
B2B small-business marketers are feeling more challenged in ALL areas
While many marketers are feeling more challenged with certain aspects of content marketing this year, B2B small-business marketers are feeling more challenged in every single area. The challenge of finding trained content marketing professionals saw the largest percentage of growth (11% said it was a challenge last year vs. 31% this year). If you are facing difficulties in this area, read some suggestions from the CMI community.
Where should B2B small businesses go from here?
No one can do everything well at the same time. While this applies to any kind of business, it’s especially true for small businesses. Every business is different, but for many it’s key to focus on four initiatives:
Understand your audience.
Develop a documented content marketing strategy.
Create a subscription model.
Understand what is effective.
Read the entire report to learn the answers to these questions and more:
Which metrics do B2B small-business marketers use to measure content marketing success?
What are the most effective social media platforms they use?
How often do they publish new content?
What paid methods do they use to distribute content?
B2B Small Business Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America from Content Marketing Institute
What do you think of this year’s findings? Let us know in the comments. See all of our annual research published thus far and subscribe to our email to get notified of new research and understand the “whys” and the “what’s next” from the research.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/CMI
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