The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs today launched the 2013 edition of their B2B marketing benchmarks and trends report.
Based on a survey of over 1400 marketers in North America, the report reveals the trends impacting corporate marketers across the full spectrum of business size:
- Content marketing remains a priority: With 90% of marketers using content marketing in some form, using up to 12 tactics to deliver on their programs
- Social media leads the way for content marketing: With an 87% adoption rate, social media has become the #1 tactic for content marketers
- Budgets will grow in 2013: Content marketing accounts for 33% of marketing budgets, and more than half of those surveyed indicate that budgets will increase in 2013.
While the trends are good news for content marketers, there are TWO revealing insights based on this report:
- Marketers will demand content performance analytics. While content marketing has the CONFIDENCE of marketers, there seems to be a gap between that confidence and hard figures around effectiveness. As budgets increase, so too will accountability. Marketers will demand performance-oriented analytics to justify budgets, prove channel and content effectiveness and optimize campaign performance
- Brands will turn to agile content producers. The survey indicates that the #1 challenge is producing ENOUGH content. While there has been a trend towards in-sourcing content (56%), we are also seeing the rise of agile content production agencies and sole traders (which is part of the Constellation Research business theme the Future of Work). Faced with increasing demand for content and supported by content performance analytics, content marketers will turn to agile content producers to fill the gap in their content marketing schedules