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2010 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends

Editor’s note: We’ve updated our annual B2B research study for 2023.

Have you ever wondered:

  • How many tactics B2B marketers use in their content marketing efforts?
  • Which tactics are most popular?
  • What percentage of the marketing budget do marketers spend on content marketing?
  • Which industry has the highest level of content marketing adoption?
  • What are effective content marketers doing that less effective marketers are not?

If so, download this free report now or view the Zmags digital version from Junta42 and MarketingProfs to get answers to these questions and many more.

With help from American Business Media and the Business Marketing Association, Junta42 and MarketingProfs surveyed over 1,100 North American B2B marketers from diverse industries and a wide range of company sizes. B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends represents the largest, most comprehensive survey about content marketing in the business-to-business (B2B) space to date.

A few of the key findings:

The use of content marketing is widespread

Nine in 10 organizations market with content, with marketers using eight content tactics on average. The most popular tactics are social media (excluding blogs) (79%), articles (78%), in-person events (62%) and eNewsletters (61%).

Marketers are committing budget to content marketing

B2B marketers allocate approximately 26% of their total marketing budgets to content marketing initiatives. 51% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend in content marketing over the next 12 months.

Much education is needed in the area of content marketing

While content marketing is mainstream, marketers are unsure of how effective various tactics are. For many tactics, there is a large “confidence gap” in which marketers use tactics but are unsure of how effective they are. For instance, of the 79% of B2B marketers who use social media, only 31% of users think they use this tactic effectively.

Marketers need additional help with content marketing

While marketers certainly need education around content marketing, this isn’t the only thing needed for content marketing success.  As shown in the chart below, the biggest challenges for marketers are producing engaging content (36%), producing enough content (21%) and finding budget to produce content (20%).  (This isn’t only something that this research confirms – we hear this from the marketers we talk to every day. Stay tuned Friday when we’ll talk more about how the Content Marketing Institute is changing to help marketers with these challenges.)

If you are in B2B marketing, there are many other things you will find out by downloading this report, such as how content marketers measure success, what distinguishes self-described best-in-class marketers and much more. Want to learn more?

We’d love to know your thoughts about this study. What surprises you? What questions do you have? Let us know in the comments below.

Joe Pulizzi

Joe Pulizzi

Joe Pulizzi is the bestselling author of seven content marketing books including his latest, Content Inc. He has founded four companies, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), and his newest venture, The Tilt. His podcast series, This Old Marketing with Robert Rose, has generated millions of downloads from over 150 countries. He is also the author of The Random Newsletter, delivered to thousands every two weeks. His Foundation, The Orange Effect, delivers speech therapy and technology services to children in 35 states. Follow him on Twitter @JoePulizzi.