Sydney, NSW, Australia, August 02, 2013 -- B2B content marketing has become an essential part of the marketing toolkit in recent years because of how it impacts the sales process. High quality content allows companies to build relationships, trust, and authority before a prospect ever speaks to a firm representative a recent report sponsored by Maximizer CRM has found.

The B2B content marketing report prepared by Holger Schulze surveyed 815 people and found the various insights into content marketing. This includes that customer testimonials and case studies are key, not all content is used equally; the least effective strategies are social media, press releases, print magazine and advertorials.

Almost 90% of B2B marketers use testimonials and case studies as part of their content marketing strategy. This aligns with marketing best practices as these strategies build trust. Studies have found that buyers frequently respond to testimonials so it comes as no surprise that they’re used so frequently.

While testimonials and case studies are extremely popular, in person events, articles, and videos are hardly used. Online games, branded apps, podcasts, and printed books remain relatively unused, perhaps because they’re not viewed as being particularly effective in comparison to other strategies. The least effective strategies were found to be social media, press releases, print magazines and advertorials. These marketing techniques are not heralded as being particularly effective, although this depends on what industry you’re in and the positioning of your company. LinkedIn is seen as being quite effective; as is YouTube. Facebook is by far the least effective, followed by Google+.

Content is not being outsourced all that much as the vast majority of companies are creating content from scratch and they’re doing so in house. Noting this, content like videos, white papers, research reports, and info graphics are outsourced approximately 30% of the time. Surprisingly 22.5% of case studies are outsourced. Only 3.8% of companies surveyed have a sales team that’s responsible for the content marketing budget; most companies assign this task to the corporate marketing team. Content marketing is a sizable part of the budget with the average company allocating between 10 to and 30% of their marketing budget to content marketing. Interestingly many companies are now hiring journalists to write their content which may be driving prices up.
Download the FREE B2B Marketing and Sales Content Report

Contact:
Melanie Lawlor
Maximizer CRM
Level 10, 815 Pacific Highway
Chatswood NSW 2067
02 9957 2011
[email protected]
http://www.maximizer.com.au/