Research Shows B2B Marketers Increase Spending, Activity in Content Marketing

CLEVELAND, October 24, 2012 -- A new study from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, and sponsored by Brightcove (NASDAQ: BCOV), shows that content marketing is becoming a core part of the B2B marketing process. Nine out of 10 organizations now market with content – regardless of company size or industry.

Most content tactics are being used more frequently, with B2B organizations using an average of 12 tactics. The most popular tactics are social media (excluding blogs) (87%), articles on a company’s website (83%), eNewsletters (78%) and blogs (77%). This is the first year where social media is used more frequently than articles.

“It’s amazing how much more content marketing B2B marketers are producing this year compared to last year,” says Joe Pulizzi, Executive Director of the Content Marketing Institute and co-author of Managing Content Marketing. “You can see marketer’s commitment by the increase in budget they are spending. On average, B2B marketers are spending 33% of the marketing budgets on content marketing, which is up from 26% last year. And, 54% plan on increasing content marketing spending next year.”

Social media usage is growing as well, with 87% of B2B marketers using social media to distribute content, up from 74% last year. On average, B2B marketers are using 5 channels to distribute content, with the most popular channels being LinkedIn (83%), Twitter (80%) and Facebook (80%).

“The results show that content marketing is now mainstream,” says Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules. “But even though more B2B marketers are leveraging content marketing, the majority are still struggling with measuring the effectiveness of their content marketing programs.”

“As the lines between traditional paid, earned and owned media continue to blur, more marketers are moving to visual storytelling formats like online events, video and infographics,” said Steve Rotter, Vice President of digital marketing solutions at Brightcove. “Of note, B2B marketers are investing more in online video, which rose 35% from last year. Now a full 7 in 10 B2B marketers create and distribute original videos online.”

B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends is the third annual survey from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs about content marketing in the business-to-business (B2B) space to date. The research was sponsored by Brightcove. Over 1,400 B2B marketers in North America from diverse industries and a wide range of company sizes were surveyed in August 2012. The full report can be found here.

About the Content Marketing Institute
Content Marketing Institute is the leading global content marketing education and training organization. CMI teaches enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multi-channel storytelling. CMI's Content Marketing World event is the largest content marketing-focused event. CMI also produces the quarterly magazine Chief Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and content marketing research for some of the best-known brands in the world. Get more content marketing resources at http://www.ContentMarketingInstitute.com. CMI is a division of Z Squared Media, a 2012 Inc. 500 company.

About MarketingProfs
MarketingProfs is a professional development resource that offers actionable know-how designed to make you a smarter marketer. More than 423,000 MarketingProfs subscribers rely on it to stay up-to-date on the most important trends in marketing—from social media and content marketing to lead generation, email marketing, and more. MarketingProfs delivers enhanced professional development training via online seminars and short webcasts, in-depth how-to reports, research, interactive planning tools, online courses, and the premiere in-person event for B2B marketers, the B2B Forum. Subscribe to our actionable daily newsletter at Marketingprofs.com.

About Brightcove
Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOV), a leading global provider of cloud content services, offers a family of products used to publish and distribute the world’s professional digital media. The company’s products include Video Cloud, the market-leading online video platform, App Cloud, a pioneering content app platform, and Zencoder, a leading cloud-based media processing service and HTML5 video player technology provider. Brightcove has more than 4,650 customers in over 50 countries that rely on Brightcove cloud content services to build and operate media experiences across PCs, smartphones, tablets and connected TVs. For more information, visit http://www.brightcove.com.

Contact:
Cathy McPhillips
Content Marketing Institute
216-941-5842
cathy@contentinstitute.com

Ann Handley
MarketingProfs
ann@marketingprofs.com

Erika Shaffer
SutherlandGold Group for Brightcove
206-972-5514
erika@sutherlandgold.com

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