Almost nine out of ten business-to-consumer (B2C) organisations are using content marketing, a new study shows.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report, 86% of companies are investing in content, regardless of size or industry.
The data comes from B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, which is the first annual survey from the CMI about content marketing in the B2C space.
B2C organizations use an average of 12 tactics, the study shows. Most popular among these are social media excluding blogs (84%), articles on a company's website (84%), eNewsletters (78%), and blogs (77%).
The results are not too dissimilar to those of B2B marketers. In a previous report from the CMI, 87% of B2B marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74% that was reported last year.
However, in the B2C sphere, marketers are using mobile content, mobile apps, print magazines, and print newsletters a lot more.
"It's exciting to be able to benchmark B2C and B2B content marketing efforts and quantify differences by marketing type," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI.
"One interesting difference is how each group uses social media. For B2C marketers, Facebook is the most popular platform by far, with 90% of respondents indicating they use this for content distribution. This differs from B2B, in which LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 83% of respondents using this (compared to 51% of B2C marketers)."
B2B marketers are spending a third of their marketing budgets on content marketing, up from a quarter in 2011. Similarly, B2C marketers are investing heavily in content marketing this year, allocating 28% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Additionally, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.
"Another similarity between B2C and B2C marketers is that both groups lack confidence that they are executing content marketing effectively," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "But B2C marketers cite lack of budget as their biggest challenge (23%), whereas B2B marketers are most challenged with producing enough content (29%)."
The data comes from B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America, which is the first annual survey from the CMI about content marketing in the B2C space.
B2C organizations use an average of 12 tactics, the study shows. Most popular among these are social media excluding blogs (84%), articles on a company's website (84%), eNewsletters (78%), and blogs (77%).
The results are not too dissimilar to those of B2B marketers. In a previous report from the CMI, 87% of B2B marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74% that was reported last year.
However, in the B2C sphere, marketers are using mobile content, mobile apps, print magazines, and print newsletters a lot more.
"It's exciting to be able to benchmark B2C and B2B content marketing efforts and quantify differences by marketing type," says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI.
"One interesting difference is how each group uses social media. For B2C marketers, Facebook is the most popular platform by far, with 90% of respondents indicating they use this for content distribution. This differs from B2B, in which LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 83% of respondents using this (compared to 51% of B2C marketers)."
B2B marketers are spending a third of their marketing budgets on content marketing, up from a quarter in 2011. Similarly, B2C marketers are investing heavily in content marketing this year, allocating 28% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Additionally, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.
"Another similarity between B2C and B2C marketers is that both groups lack confidence that they are executing content marketing effectively," says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. "But B2C marketers cite lack of budget as their biggest challenge (23%), whereas B2B marketers are most challenged with producing enough content (29%)."
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