From content marketing to paid advertising to strategy and planning, these must-know stats will help you understand the critical trends influencing B2B marketing decisions in 2018. We gathered these stats from high-quality sources throughout the internet. Now for the good stuff!
B2B Content Marketing Statistics
Whether you have a meticulously documented content marketing strategy or you’re just winging it, content plays a vital role in everything you do to promote your business. These statistics can help you understand what other marketers are doing and what customers respond to the most.
The top three most effective distribution methods that B2B marketers use for disseminating content are email, blogs, and social media platforms.
Source: PointVisible
Everybody’s doing it. 91% of respondents to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 B2B marketing survey indicated they use content marketing.
More than half (56%) of businesses outsource at least one of the following content marketing activities: creation, promotion/distribution, measurement, and marketing strategy.
94% of businesses use social media posts for content marketing purposes with case studies and videos coming in the second and third positions at 73% and 72% respectively. Here’s a breakdown of the top content types that businesses use (percentages are based on percent of respondents).
Other types of content used:
- Research reports (37%)
- Interactive tools such as quizzes and calculators (33%)
- Podcasts (17%)
- Mobile Apps (11%)
- Film/TV (4%)
- Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Experiences (4%)
B2B Social Media Marketing Statistics
Social media is an important channel that all businesses should include in their marketing strategy. Small Business Trends reported that nearly 60% of online adults used more than one of the top five social media platforms from March to April 2016 and nearly 100% of online adults aged 16 to 64 claimed they visited or used a social network in that month. So, who are the top five?
A word about LinkedIn
B2B marketers take note, LinkedIn (founded in 2002) is the social media network to add to your radar if you want to reach senior-level decision makers. LinkedIn reportedly exceeded 500 million members (as of 2017) and their goal is to grow their user base to over 3 billion worldwide.
Over sixty million of LinkedIn’s active daily users are senior level influencers and forty million are in decision-making roles. LinkedIn reports the following.
A MarketingSherpa survey found that 54% of millennials and 46% of generation X’ers say they trust social media ads when making a purchasing decision. Social media ads tied with sponsored posts as one of the most trusted channels of digital marketing. The least trusted channels were: banner ads, mobile phone ads, ads in podcasts and online pop-ups.
On the flip side, the Silent Generation (people aged 73 to 93) and Baby Boomers are much less likely to trust ads on social media with only 4% of respondents in the Silent Generation saying they trust social media ads.
Other interesting social media statistics:
Social media = better service
Nearly 60% of Americans with social media accounts indicate that social media makes it easier to get questions answered and issues resolved.
Everyone’s doing this too
Almost 90% of companies with 100 or more employees use social media in their marketing strategies.
Social media marketing spending is increasing
Spending on social media marketing has increased by over 200% in the past seven years to comprise nearly 12% of marketing budgets as of 2016.
Additonal B2B Marketing Statistics That Will Thrill and Fascinate
While content and social media marketing are the standout B2B marketing trends for 2018 and will continue to be important in 2019, there are lots of other interesting statistics that can help you decide where businesses should spend their time and money online. Hubspot collected a comprehensive list of statistics. Here are a few of our favorites from this list:
90% of people using search engines aren’t decided on a brand before starting their search.
Over 80% of people won’t make a purchase on an unsecured website.
B2B eCommerce sales are expected to outpace B2C sales by 2020.
Google drives over 90% of mobile search traffic.
What you can do with this information
We cherry-picked what we feel are some of the most important statistics for B2B marketers to know. These statistics are tied to the key trends that you should be watching and leveraging. The goal here is not just to make sure you get a jump on your competitors, but also to be aware of where the B2B consumer is going online, how they’re getting there and what they respond to in terms of both paid and organic content.
Based on the stats we’ve gathered, here are some things to consider when planning your B2B strategy.
- Email is the driving force for the majority of B2B marketers. It’s a consistent way to get people into your sales pipeline and a low-cost way to reach prospects directly (as opposed to a renting third-party list or advertising on a newsletter.) To this end, make sure your paid media strategy includes building your internal email list and that you’re creating valuable, unique content to push to your email subscribers on a regular basis.
- Social media dominates all facets of internet life. Your buyers are spending time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and then migrating over to Google (or conducting voice searches) for your products and services. Make sure your social marketing strategy considers how social platforms influence B2B buyers even when they’re not actively shopping for what you’re selling.
- Most businesses are already incorporating some type of content marketing into their overall marketing strategy. If you’re not expending a lot of time or attention on this (including writing down an actual strategy) then you should be. It’s even more important now that major online players like Google, Amazon, and Facebook are trying to keep visitors from leaving rather than sending them to your website. The best way to make sure people find you is to spread your content far and wide.
- And speaking of content marketing, make sure you understand the type of content business buyers want. Don’t limit yourself to just blog posts and whitepapers – mix it up a little by including videos, case studies, infographics, research reports and even mobile apps (if applicable). There’s a platform out there for nearly every kind of content type and you can be sure that customers are visiting all of them – so go make a gorgeous infographic and post it to LinkedIn, make an explainer video and post it to YouTube and Facebook. You get the picture – the sky’s the limit.
Perhaps the best advice we can give is to keep reading statistics so you understand what people respond to as well as what your competitors are doing to successfully engage with their customers. Knowing that nearly 70% of businesses use landing pages to generate leads and combining that with the knowledge that 80% of people won’t make a purchase on an unsecured website should motivate you to make sure your website is secure. This is an example of one simple step you can take to improve your conversion rate.
