marketing insights 2017 - · pdf fileb2b marketing insights | 2 ... live streaming by...

MARKETING INSIGHTS

B2B

2017

B2B MARKETING INSIGHTS | 2

to Spry’s latest B2B Marketing Insights. Based on new statistics, it’s evident that more B2B marketers are embracing content marketing and enjoy-

ing greater success using this tactic. Yet, there is still room for improvement: Although 63% of B2B marketers say their organization is extremely

or very committed to content marketing, only 43% are clear about what successful content marketing programs look like! We’d like to shed some

light on that subject by illustrating what makes content engaging, how often and where to publish, and which tactics are capturing audiences.

For additional tips to help you become even more effective, check out the tools at the end of the report.

Welcome

Here’s to your success!


BRANDINGCreating Personality Your brand identity in the B2B marketplace is dependent on the

compelling content and personality that you share with your customers. In fact, companies that

connect to their customers on an emotional level enjoy twice the impact as their competitors who

sell mostly on the basis of product value alone, and the most connected brands saw 31% growth.

86% of B2B buyers admit to seeing no real

difference between suppliers and their

messages on product features and functions.

60% of customers who felt a high brand

connection with a company were more likely

to buy their product or service, even if the price

was higher than the competitor’s.

86% 60%


CONTENT MARKETINGWinning Relationships Craft strong customer relationships through your current website and

social media. However, constantly striving to leave a lasting impression is important.

Testimonials Are Great Tools They provide an example of strong existing relationships in your

current business. Testimonials provide evidence from real customers who have experienced

your product or services firsthand.

Publish Content Regularly The more new content your team publishes, the more value you

add to your brand. B2B customers will look to your team as a reliable source of information and

will be more inclined to share your content with others.

Content Marketing Institute study “B2B Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America

89% of B2B marketers use content marketing...

... but only 41% are clear on what an effective content

marketing program looks like.

Still, 70% say they are creating more content

than they were last year,

and 39% plan to increase their content marketing

spend in 2017.

89% 41% 70% 39%


HOW B2B MARKETERS CHARACTERIZE THE SUCCESS OF THEIR OVERALL CONTENT MARKETING APPROACH

Adapted from 2017 B2B Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

3%

19%

53%

22%

3%

Extremely Successful

Very Successful

Moderately Successful

Minimally Successful

Not At All Successful

Of B2B marketers indicate they have a documented content strategy. Those who

document their strategy are more effective in nearly all areas of

content marketing.

37%

Good news!—62% are more or somewhat more successful

with content marketing than they were one year ago. 62%


SOCIAL MEDIAA Social Media “Evolution” Nine out of ten U.S. companies are now active on social networks.

Companies, even in B2B markets, cannot afford to be dormant or nonexistent on social media

platforms. The emergence of “social search,” people using social media as a search engine,

makes this even more necessary. Essentially, businesses’ social media pages must provide the

same information and messaging as the company’s website.

There are now more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide, and that number is increasing at a pace of 25% each year.


SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook Audience Expands Good news for many

B2B companies—Facebook is no longer just a plat-

form for young people. Facebook’s fastest growing

age demographic is people over the age of 55, with

80.4% growth in the last 3 years. This means that

directors, CEOs, and presidents of companies are

now likely to be on Facebook, making it an important

platform to B2B companies.

Smartphone Social In 2017, the number of smart-

phone users in the United States is predicted to reach

219.8 million, and 7 of the 15 most-used

mobile apps are social media (the others being

things such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google

Maps, etc.). So as the number of mobile users goes

up, so goes the number of social media users, creat-

ing more and more of an audience for you on Face-

book, Twitter, and other sites.

Source: Statista.com


SOCIAL MEDIAVideo Growth Facebook now sees 100 million

hours of daily video watch time, and that number is

growing. However, the new trend is Facebook “Live,”

which is changing the way we share our stories,

both business and private, live events, and educate.

It’s another way to engage with your audience.

LinkedIn With over 450 members, LinkedIn continues to grow. Did you know:

• 66% of B2B marketers report positive results using LinkedIn.

• 8 in 10 B2B marketers said it’s the right place to introduce new products.

• Half of all users are likely to buy from a company they engage with on the platform.

• 80% of LinkedIn members want to connect with companies to enhance their decision making.

• 45% of LinkedIn members are in upper management positions (decision makers).

Source: 10 LinkedIn Stats Every B2B Executive Needs to Know, B2B News, 2016

Looking ahead: Expenditures for B2B digital advertising are expected to double by 2018 (McKinsey Quarterly)


CONTENT CREATION & DISTRIBUTIONChannels B2B Marketers

Use to Distribute Content

Note: Fewer than 30% of manufacturing marketers said they use the following social media platforms: Instagram (25%), Pinterest (17%), SlideShare (16%), Vimeo (14%), iTunes (10%), Tumblr (4%), Vine (3%), Periscope (3%), Medium (2%), and Snapchat (2%).

2017 B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs

YouTubeB2B marketers said they used an average of six distribution chan-

nels. Email is the channel they use the most (93%), followed

by Linkedin (89%).

Which channels does your organization use to distribute content?

93%USE Email

AverageNumber Used

6

LinkedIn FacebookTwitter Google+

93%89%

77% 76%

59%

35%

Print

30% 26%

Email Instagram SlideShare

26%


What Factors Contributed to B2B Marketers’ Increased Success Over Last Year?

CONTENT CREATION & DISTRIBUTION

Source: 2017 B2B Content Marketing Trends—North America: Content Marketing Institute

85% Content creation (higher quality, more efficient)

72% Strategy (development or adjustment)

53% Content has become a greater priority

53% Spending more time on content marketing

50% Content distribution (better targeting, identifying what works)

43% Management/HR (organizational changes, staffing, new roles)

42% Content measurement


MARKETING AUTOMATIONPersonalized Email Let’s face it, no one likes to receive email that seems impersonal or

irrelevant to their needs. Using Marketing Automation expands the ability to know more

about a person and really cater to their needs as a new prospective client. Data drive

future marketing action and the result is a more personalized approach.

144

Reporting Is Key to ROI Every company wants to make a return on their investment.

Well, have no fear, because reporting is virtually unlimited utilizing Marketing Automation,

creating a realistic pipeline for your company. The Marketing Automation software

reporting allows you to obsess over statistics such as top pages, keywords, and the

duration of a visit to your website.

Productivity Keeps You on Track A great function of Marketing Automation

is the ability to simplify marketing tasks. Many platforms eliminate the

repetitive day-to-day processes by substituting automated solutions.

This, in turn, increases productivity within the company and puts an

increased focus on less-repetitive tasks.

Get a Competitive Edge Marketing Automation software platforms are

now essential tools for B2B marketers. Studies show that 25% of

marketers who adopt marketing automation boost revenue be-

tween 30 and 49%, while another 20% of companies see an

increase of between 15 and 29% (RazorSocial). If you’re

not using it, you may find your competition

giving you a wakeup call!

Google now processes over 40,000

search queries every second on aver-

age, which translates to over 3.5 billion

searches per day.

In addition to the standard ways to improve your website’s SEO, such as regular content, keywords, outbound links,

etc., here are the hottest new trends to keep your site on page one of searches.

Local Search

With more and more companies rushing to compete in SEO

with their competitors and driving Adword bid prices up, local search will

gain in importance for companies with smaller SEO budgets.

• 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in the hope of finding local

results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. (Business2community.com)

• Local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within

a day. (Searchengineland.com)

• More than 60% of consumers have used local

information in ads. (Business2community.com)


WEBSITE & SEO


WEBSITE & SEOLong-Tail Searches

The Google SEO algorithm now focuses less on singular keywords and more on

the best answer for long-tail searches, which now contribute to 70% of search

traffic. Figure out which of these long-tail relevant keyword searches best fits

your site and put money behind them in Adwords. Example: Instead of “laptop,”

now “Where can I buy a laptop?”

To rank higher organically in long-tail search terms, develop and post quality

content to improve your ranking. The more relevant content you produce and

distribute, the more you will build your brand visibility and reach potential

customers you weren’t targeting directly before.

Video

A recent report found that videos now make up 62% of all Google searches

(marketingland.com). Because of this, Google has started giving attention to

blended results/searches, and videos now get 50 times better organic page

ranks in Google than text results (Forrester.com Nate Elliot). Video searches also

garner 41% higher click-through rates (realseo.com).


WEBSITE & SEOMobile Friendly

This year, with more people searching on mobile devices, Google’s algorithm update is

prioritizing mobile-friendly websites on searches.

• 70% of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour. (Socialmediatoday.com)

• The total number of searches on mobile devices has increased by 43% year-over-year.

(Yahoo! Hong Kong)

• Over 1.2 billion people access the web from their mobile devices. (Mobify.com)

• Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15% of all Internet traffic. (Newtarget.com)

• 95% of smartphone users have searched for local info. (Adwords.blogspot.com)

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2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

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Desktop Mobile

U.S. Local Search Market: Mobile vs. DesktopMobile local search volume now surpasses desktop local search for the first time.

In 2016, mobile exceeded desktop by 27.8 billion queries. (BIA/Kelsey)


Branded Video Content Traffic is starting to shift from traditional blog posts to dedicated

video blogs or YouTube channels. This form of content is nothing more than videos published

under a brand’s name for the sole purpose of engaging users. Good news—many brands will

be able to repurpose their existing content by converting it to video.

Email Marketing In 2016, marketers relied less on heavy text content and more

on videos that encourage prospects to interact with their brands. The key to

using video content in your email messaging is to have high-quality video

with a length of no more than 3 minutes.

Live Streaming By capturing and sharing casual video or storytelling,

companies are allowing users to live-stream video clips to their

followers through social media. Periscope, an entirely new social

media platform, is expected to explode this year. It offers both

social media and video and may well hit a sweet spot for digital

marketers.

VIDEO MARKETING

Mobile video budgets have increased by 20% since 2015, indicating higher engagement & more direct interaction.


Time Is an Issue—Still Agencies can generally execute marketing activities quicker and

with greater efficiency than businesses can complete them in-house. The reason is simple:

these tasks are at the core of what agencies do all day, every day, while they tend to be at

the peripheral of focus for most businesses.

Hire a Team of Experts The expertise offered by a team of marketing professionals at an

agency can be exponentially greater than that of a small in-house marketing staff.

Agencies provide cross-functional marketing skills and industry-leading creative and

strategic perspectives—something most in-house marketing teams cannot deliver,

especially true for small- to mid-size departments. You get more specialists for less cost!

New Year, New Perspective The phrase “you can’t see the forest for the trees” is really

true when it comes to marketing. Your emotional connection to your company and your

brand can distort the lens through which you see your marketing efforts. Bringing in a

third-party opinion—one that is also invested in helping you succeed—can help shine a

light on issues and uncover opportunities for improvement.

Strategy, Strategy, Strategy Of course, if you don’t already have a strategy in place, hiring

an agency is a perfect way to start putting one in place!

MARKETING AGENCIES


Resurgence of Email

• More email is read on mobile devices than on a

desktop. Statistics show that 55% of email is now

opened on a mobile device. (Litmus “Email Analytics”

2016)

Content

• Content marketing budgets are projected to

grow 59% (Pulsepoint & Digiday) by 2017, far outpac-

ing search and social budgets. Search algorithms

are rewarding websites that produce high-quality

and relevant content over companies who purely

employ technical SEO.

• Episodic content is also particularly important. A

study discovered the average page views of arti-

cles in a series was 124.3% (Skyword Content Marketing

Agency) higher than those not included in a series.

BONUS B2B MARKETING TRENDS


ADVOCACY MARKETING

According to a customer advocacy report, word-of-mouth is the primary influence on purchasing decisions for

84% of B2B buyers.

Referring customers seldom

do it just once.On average they refer

3.5 LEADSEACH


ABOUT SPRY IDEASAt Spry Ideas, we love helping people impact their customers with content.

We’ve been told we’re not an “average agency,” and we tend to wear that like a badge of honor.

We work hard to nurture what makes us different and to develop those differences into

meaningful value for our clients.

As our business has evolved over the years, from our earliest roots in printing and publishing

into today’s marketing services agency, one common thread has been woven throughout

virtually everything we do …

We create and deliver valuable content that educates, influences, and improves lives.

Our manufacturing clients utilize a wide range of content solutions to inform their audiences

about highly complex products and processes. Through marketing automation, we help

businesses build and execute campaigns that influence their customers’ buying journeys.

Our ongoing partnerships with top healthcare organizations have served to improve outcomes

for millions of patients worldwide. And in all of those arenas, we utilize award-winning content

with cutting-edge delivery vehicles to help our clients build profitable

relationships with their customers.

We hope to have the opportunity to hear what makes your business unique, to explore

ideas with you, and to become pivotal to your greater success.

Be sure to check out the Resources section on our website for other downloadable B2B

marketing tools.

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