B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity

The B2B Marketing Blog

How to Leverage Usage Intelligence Data for an Effective Content Strategy

by

Guest post by Keith Fenech.

Top-performing B2B content marketers put the information needs of their audiences ahead of the company’s sales and promotional message. That’s one of the key findings from the ninth annual report from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs: B2B Content Marketing 2019: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report.

Where B2B marketers will spend more in 2019 and can benefit from usage intelligence

Click to enlarge

Drilling further into the report, it’s interesting to note how marketers are researching their audiences, and the key gaps within that process. Nearly 75 percent of those surveyed named sales team feedback and website analytics as their top content planning and research tools, with less than half saying they talked to their customers.

Within that gap lies an opportunity to have a different kind of customer conversation, one that is driven by data. Software usage intelligence can be used to richly inform three areas of content strategy that will be absolutely vital for content marketing teams who want to put their audiences first in 2019.
[Read more…]

19 Noteworthy Stats About Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter Marketing

by

Social media marketing is sometimes viewed as Facebook—and then there’s the other guys.

But like detectives Gamble and Hoitz, the “other guys” of social networks may be more effective even if less flashy. (The analogy is not to suggest any of those networks approach Will Ferrell levels of awkwardness.)

stats about Instagram Twitter LinkedIn the other guys of social media

Image credit: The Oracle of Film

As noted in a previous post here on social networking statistics, Instagram is now the third-largest social network (with 800 million users), behind only Facebook and YouTube. And the image-focused social network has done a better job than even Facebook of continuing to attract millennial and Gen Z users.

LinkedIn now boasts 500 million users, with half active daily. It’s the best site for reaching professionals: 44% of users earn more than $75,000 per year. Though only about 13% of millennials are members currently, that figure is growing as more enter the post-college workforce and advance in their careers.

[Read more…]

16 Enigmatic Business Blogging and Other Marketing Stats

by

As winter comes to an end, so too does the Winter Wonderland of Marketing Stats series that’s been running here over the past few months. This final installment covers some fascinating though sometimes contradictory and confusing stats about business blogging and the value of marketing.

For example, what percentage of businesses maintain company blogs? It seems to depend who you ask: one source below says 62%, another says 80%, and still another, 86%.  First, all of these numbers seem a tad high; other (fairly) recent research has reported that 55% of small businesses have blogs but just 31% of Fortune 500 enterprises do.

Second, such findings can be significantly impacted by factors like sample set (Is it large enough to be representative? Is it truly random?); the survey methodology (a phone or email survey, for example, is likely to find much different results than one done on Twitter or LinkedIn); and how the questions are asked (a company can “include blogging as part of content marketing strategy” through influencer outreach, LinkedIn Pulse, guest blogging, or other tactics—without actually maintaining its own corporate blog).

The importance of brand purpose in marketing

Image credit: Association of National Advertisers

Another apparent contradiction is much more fundamental: does marketing have value? One may have thought this question was answered years ago by Milan Kundera who famously said, “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.”

But apparently not. As noted below, just 29% of CMOs say they can quantitatively prove the long-term impact of marketing on the business. 23% say they can’t prove any impact at all. But, seemingly in support of Kundera’s quote above, Forrester Research says marketers are the ““sole source of sustainable competitive advantage.”

[Read more…]

22 Tantalizing Content Marketing Stats and Facts

by

With the near-universal embrace of content marketing—93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing, and B2C marketers are close behind—the amount of brand content being produced has exploded.

But the capacity of buyers to consume content hasn’t changed, making content quality (as noted by several contributors to the 2016 B2B Marketing Trends report) the focus of differentiation moving forward. The top challenge for content marketers will no longer be producing more content, but rather creating relevant content, in the right mix of formats, that connects with buyers on an emotional level.

Growth in video web traffic for content marketing

Image credit: MarketingProfs

Already widespread, content marketing will continue to grow. Because content marketing is increasingly essential (buyers now complete two-thirds of their purchase journey online before ever contacting a vendor) and popular (90% of B2B buyers say online content has a “moderate to major effect” on their selection process), spending on content marketing is expected to nearly double by 2019.

Here are three more key takeaways from the 22 content marketing stats and facts below:

Words today, pictures tomorrow. In B2B purchase decision making, text still rules (for now): 80% of business decision makers say they prefer to get vendor information in a series of articles, and 85% prefer text over video. But that won’t last. [Read more…]

14 Fortuitous SEO and SEM Stats and Facts

by

Search remains the cornerstone of digital and content marketing efforts. The average B2B website gets 40% or more of all visits from organic search, and 81% of B2B purchase cycles start with a web search. On the paid side, more than one million businesses use Google AdWords, and Google’s content network reaches 80% of all U.S. Internet users.

SEO and search engine marketing stats 2016

Image credit: MarketingProfs

Of course, search, like all other digital marketing tactics, continues to evolve. Blogging has gone from eccentric to essential. Mobile has increased dramatically in importance. Though many small businesses remain skeptical of AdWords, SEM still accounts for the largest share of online advertising budgets. Speed thrills.

Check out the facts and stats below for more revealing insights from recent research on search engine optimization and marketing.

1. Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links than companies that do not, and inbound links are (of course) critical to SEO success. (Stratabeat)

[Read more…]

Recent Posts

Categories