If recent trends are any indication of what the future holds for B2B sales, content marketing is going to be a larger part of the overall strategy for the foreseeable future. Still, they aren’t convinced that they will be able to make it work. Here are the biggest concerns of B2B management and ways that these concerns can be eliminated.

Is Content Marketing Effective?


When you ask B2B marketers if their content methods are effective, 81% say that they are at least average in effectiveness, but only 36% put their efforts at above-average effectiveness. Why is this? Some of it may have to do with ineffective metrics for measurement while others are likely due to unrealistic, inflated expectations.

Is marketing content effective – yes. Do companies think they have used it to its potential – no. This is where the disconnect is most evident. Companies think they can do more with this new methodology, so budgets are going to start expanding.

How Much Budget Is Too Much for Content Marketing?

The question of how much of the budget to dedicate to content marketing really depends upon the size of the entire budget of a company. Smaller companies, simply by having smaller budgets, must allocate a larger portion to content marketing to be competitive in their industry. Extremely small micro companies could spend up to half of their budgets on content marketing to get their name out in front of customers. For larger companies, with larger budgets, the cost-effective  nature of content marketing means that they can get more bang for the buck. Money that used to be funnelled into traditional advertising can be refocused on company growth instead. The truth is, there is no set threshold for how much is too much, and it is all dependent on what your company goals are.

What Social Sites Are Being Used?

While content marketing has been adopted by a majority of B2B companies, the use of social sites to spread this content is still in its infancy. In fact, most B2B marketers only use the top 5 social-networking sites for distribution. 87% are using Facebook and 74% are using Twitter, but they are failing to leverage other trendy sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. These visually stunning sites are the territory where B2B marketing could transcend the traditional copy based sales pitches and create something unique and tangible for prospects to interact with.

Meeting the Challenges

The biggest reason that companies cite for not doing more in the field of content marketing is that they simply can’t create enough engaging content for their brand. The top three challenges that companies listed are creating enough content, creating engaging content and creating a variety of content. This could be easily remedied by outsourcing content creation to professional creators. Another major concern, which is being remedied, is a lack of budget. Past that, companies feel they have a lack of knowledge and a lack of integration between departments when it comes to marketing content. All of these problems can be taken care of with specialised outsourcing from bringing in trainers to teach employees about content marketing and by outsourcing content creation to those who do it best.