Although 90% of organizations use content marketing, B2B marketers still have questions about content—including how to implement it, track it and judge its success. Here are answers to 53 common questions that will help clarify your content marketing efforts.

1. B2B Content
Marketing Stats
You Should
Know in 2015

2. How prevalent is
content marketing?
90% of organizations now market with
content, according to Demand Metric.
What percentage of B2B
marketers use content
marketing?
86%, according to CMI’s 2015 B2B Content
Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.
B2B Content Marketing Trends

3. How much do organizations budget for
content marketing on average?
They set aside $379,600, according to Marketo: $1,057,300 for
organizations with over 1,000 employees and $335,200 for those
with fewer than 1,000 employees.
How expensive is content marketing?
Content marketing is 62% less expensive than traditional
marketing, according to Demand Metric.
What percentage of their budgets
do B2B marketers spend on content
marketing?
Twenty-eight percent, according to CMI’s 2015 B2B Content
Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.

4. Are B2B marketers increasing
their content marketing budgets?
According to Forrester Research, 45% say they will
prioritize content marketing in their 2015 budgets,
according to Forrester Research.
How many companies outsource their
content marketing?
62%, according to Demand Metric.
How many distinct audiences should
you target with content marketing?
The average is four, according to CMI’s 2015 B2B Content
Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.

5. How much content is enough?
The amount of content produced by brands increased by 78% in 2014,
but engagement with each piece decreased by 60%, according to Track
Maven.
What is the ideal length of content
marketing posts?
Long-form content (over 1,500 words) is shared more often,
according to BuzzSumo.

6. B2B Content
Marketing
Strategy

7. What is the number one goal of
marketers who use content marketing?
Brand awareness is the goal of 84% of B2B marketers, according to
CMI’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.
How important is a content marketing
strategy?
Marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy and
follow it very closely are 35% more likely to succeed, according to
CMI’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.
Is an ad hoc strategy sufficient?
48/% percent of B2B content marketers have an undocumented
strategy, but they are much less likely to be successful, according to
CMI’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.

8. B2B Social
Media Use

9. Do B2B clients use Twitter?
Industry-specific forums are five times more popular than Twitter
with B2B audiences, according to Baseone.
What is the No. 1 challenge B2B
marketers face with social media?
50% say tracking ROI, according to B2B Marketing.
What is the most popular social media
platform among B2B marketers?
LinkedIn, used by 94%, according to CMI’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing
Benchmarks and Trends.

10. User Attitudes Towards B2B Content
Do users trust branded content?
Yes, particularly if it is shared. 69% of people trust an
organization’s educational content if it is discovered via a
friend, according to Kentico.
Do customers have a better
opinion of brands that use
content marketing?
60% of customers say they feel more
positive about a brand after reading custom
content on its site, according to Content +.

11. Should B2B content marketing target
the C-suite or procurement?
CEOs are involved in 38% of business-critical purchasing decisions;
procurement in only 6%, according to Baseone.
What is the most influential content in
B2B purchasing decisions?
Content from independent analysts rather than internal sources—
although it is the least frequently used, according to Baseone.
How important are user reviews in B2B decisions?
Only 15% of B2B purchasers find them useful, according to
Baseone.

12. B2B Multimedia Content
What are the three most
successful media types
for B2B?
Video, written copy and images, in that
order, according to B2B Marketing.
Do images generate
more blog views?
Having at least one image in your blog post
results in 64.9% more Facebook shares and
20.36% more Twitter shares, according to
Hubspot.

13. How engaging is video?
65% of viewers watch 3/4ths of a video,
according to Invodo.
How is video use growing
compared to other mediums?
74% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2017, according to
Invodo.
Which generates more sales:
text or video?
Videos increase purchase likelihood by 64%, according to
HubSpot.

14. What is the fastest growing
content marketing tactic?
Infographics, up from 51% to 62%, according to CMI’s 2015
B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.
Do infographics work?
Infographics are liked and shared three times more
than other content and users are 30 times more likely
to read them than text, according to Hubspot.

15. B2B Email Marketing
How many organizations
use e-newsletters as
part of their content
marketing efforts?
61%, according to Marketo.
Is email marketing
effective?
Exact Target reports 95% of those who opt
into email from a brand say yes, and 8 of 10
recipients buy something.

16. Do B2B audiences like
email marketing?
Yes; 40% of successful B2B suppliers use
email more often than those who are
unsuccessful, according to Baseone.
Do B2B audiences trust
email marketing messages?
Yes. Email ranks third in most influential
information sources, behind colleague
recommendations and industry-specific
intermediaries, according to Baseone.

17. B2B Lead Generation
How many leads do B2B
companies generate with
content marketing?
Content marketing generates three times
more leads than traditional
marketing per dollar spent, according
to Demand Metric.
Which converts users to
qualified leads better: text
or video?
70% of marketing professionals say that video converts
more effectively, according to Vidyard.

18. How effective are webinars?
Webinars are second only to in-person events in B2B marketing tactics,
according to CMI’s 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.
Do blogs work?
Blogs generate 97% more inbound leads than sites without them,
according to Content+.
Does Twitter work?
67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from a brand they follow,
according to Content+.
How many customers gather sales
information from online content?
Kapost reports 70% of customers have gathered all pertinent
information before contacting sales.

19. Mobile Content
Consumption

20. How much content is consumed via
mobile devices?
Mobile surpassed desktop usage in 2014, according
to Digital Relevance.
How much time do people spend on their
mobile devices?
Exact Target reports they're used 3.3 hours each day.
Which is the most popular social platform
on mobile devices?
Over 80% of Twitter users access it via a mobile device.

21. Organic Search
What channel drives the
most traffic online?
Organic search generates two-thirds of all
web traffic, according to DigitalRelevance.
Do customers stick to
common search terms?
No. Sixteen percent of searches have
never been seen before, according to
DigitalRelevance.

22. Is online content more effective
than digital ads?
Conductor research says 84% of people leave websites with
intrusive ads.
Which drives higher search traffic:
great content or proof of social
engagement?
Neither can do it alone, but in combination they boost SEO results,
according to DigitalRelevance.
Does “unpaid” media work better than
paid (pay per click and paid advertising?
Earned media drives 94% of traffic in all industries, according to
Conductor.

23. How important is content once a customer
has made a purchase decision?
80% of customers say that ongoing content is very important after a
purchase, according to MarketingProfs.
Do different types of content work better
at different points in the sales cycle?
Short text content works best at the beginning of the cycle; longer forms
and multimedia work best just before the purchase decision is made,
according to Eccolo Media.
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