B2B Marketing in a
Marketing leaders share their challenges, fears, and overwhelming optimism about the future
Contents
Four core themes emerged
Marketers face tough challenges, from the economy to AI
Content marketing takes the lead in marketing spending
B2B marketers remain cautious in their AI exploration
Increasingly, the C-suite recognizes marketing’s value
Our marketing leaders share their plans…
And their wish lists...
B2B marketing leaders remain solidly optimistic
Final thoughts
Methodology
World
Executive summary
What do business-to-business (B2B) marketing leaders think about the current and future state of marketing—especially content marketing—amid powerful forces? Perhaps surprisingly, despite significant economic factors affecting their teams and the unknown impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on their profession, these leaders remain overwhelmingly optimistic. Content4Demand and its research partner, Centiment, surveyed 265 B2B content marketing leaders to take a snapshot of the B2B marketing environment. From middle market to enterprise businesses, in a wide range of industries, they shared their views on how their role has evolved, their plans for the next 12 months, and the challenges they still face. In this report, we break out some of the findings by company size and by three of the top industries surveyed: IT and telecommunications, business and professional services, and financial services and insurance. These breakdowns provided deeper insights and exposed the nuances among different size companies in different industries.
While the results were rich with insights, four themes bubbled up to the surface, helping us understand where B2B content marketing is and where it may be headed.
Technology-related industries are feeling the brunt of the tough economy and job market.
Not surprisingly, based on the economic news, IT and telecommunications marketers cited economic and talent issues among their biggest challenges, ahead of other industries. Yet other industries are also feeling the impact of the economic headwinds.
Nearly six in 10 (58%) of respondents in IT and telecommunications said they face tight or reduced budgets, and 56% said hiring freezes and/or layoffs were among their biggest challenges. As a whole, more than half (55%) of respondents cited tight/reduced budgets as a challenge, and 36% cited hiring freeze/layoffs.
Marketers see the value of content marketing, and nearly half plan to increase spending in the next 12 months.
In terms of where they intend to focus, marketers' responses were fairly evenly distributed across all formats. Half (50%) said they plan to create videos, with sales enablement (46%) and articles/blogs (44%) close behind. Perhaps more significantly, the two formats at the bottom of the list were checklists/Q&As at 29% and e-books/white papers at 27%.
Combining “significantly more” (9%) and “slightly more” (35%), 44% of marketers plan to spend more on content marketing. Only 29% said they plan to spend less.
Marketers are dipping their toes into the AI waters cautiously.
With all the hype around generative AI and other AI tools, B2B marketers appear to be moving ahead guardedly in their adoption of these solutions.
The most popular planned use of AI was search engine optimization (SEO), with 43% citing this use. Beyond SEO, anywhere from one quarter to one third responded that they plan to use AI tools for other marketing activities, from summarizing meetings/calls (24%) to topic brainstorming (32%) and ideation and content first-draft writing (31%). Only 12% responded they weren’t sure or don’t yet know how they plan to use AI.
marketing leaders are playing a bigger role in the overall success of the business.
With data-based tools available to help marketers demonstrate their contribution to the bottom line, it’s likely that the C-suite increasingly recognizes marketing’s value to the organization.
We’re seeing two trends that complement each other. Slightly more than half of marketers (51%) said data-driven tactics that can increase demand are playing a bigger role in their jobs.
At the same time, half of marketers (50%) also said they now have more influence on business strategy.
The economy—and the related job market—along with the advent of more sophisticated AI solutions are two major forces transforming B2B content marketing strategy. While some marketing leaders raised fears of layoffs and AI eliminating their jobs, the overall tone was much more positive. In their comments, many marketers cited being valued for their work and the potential of AI to help them work smarter as reasons for optimism and job satisfaction.
Persistent inflation and rising interest rates have led to business uncertainties. Consequently, many businesses are experiencing tight and reduced budgets as well as hiring freezes and layoffs. Technology-related businesses have taken a cautious stance. Further exacerbating the situation, many businesses anticipate AI replacing some workers in the coming months and years. Already, IBM won’t be back-filling up to 7,800 jobs it believes could be replaced by AI in the next five years.
What are the biggest challenges you face as a marketer right now?
Tight/reduced budgets Hiring freezes/layoffs Lack of needed skills Inability to scale Exploring AI All of the above Other
In terms of company size, the bigger the organization, the more they are feeling the economic pinch. Almost two-thirds (64%) of companies with $10 billion plus in revenue cited budget factors as a major challenge. This compares to only 46% of marketers in companies with $10 to $49 million in revenues citing tight/reduced budgets and 27% citing hiring freezes and layoffs.
By company size
These difficult economic times have hit IT and telecommunications particularly hard. Marketers cited economic and talent issues among their biggest challenges. Overall, nearly six in 10 (58%) respondents said they face tight or reduced budgets, and 56% said hiring freezes and/or layoffs were among their biggest challenges. Yet other industries are also feeling the impact of the economic headwinds. More than half (55%) cited tight or reduced budgets as a challenge.
By industry
One survey respondent had this to say
“My biggest concern or fear about my job is that AI will put me and my entire department out of work eventually. Right now, the technology we have sampled is not there yet and does not have the creativity of human designers and copywriters.”
make your content and budget go further
One of the best ways to get the most out of tight budgets is to audit your current content and find gems that still have great value but need a little refreshing. You can also look at assets that perform well and re-version them for different personas or industries. Updating an existing article or blog can actually boost your search rankings. Another route is to take your long-form content and pull out high-value information to create short-form content like tip sheets, infographics, Q&As, or checklists. Or go the other way, and put together multiple short-form assets into one big piece. For example, combine three case studies into a case study portfolio.
Make your content and budget go further
Stretch budgets by looking at refreshing and re-versioning existing content.
With tight budgets and hiring freezes, working with a partner can make sense. If you already work with agencies, you know that one agency can’t do everything excellently. Find agencies that focus on the types of services you need, whether that’s SEO, content strategy and creation, or advertising. And be sure to look for agencies with in-depth experience with your business and your industry. By working with an agency, you can get a lot of bang for the buck with less money than the cost of a full-time employee with benefits.
Fill in the gaps with outside partners.
Despite the economic considerations, among our B2B marketing leaders, 35% noted they plan to increase spending slightly on content marketing over the next year. Another 9% said they will spend significantly more, and 27% said there would be no change. This indicates confidence in content marketing’s fundamental role in the overall marketing strategy. When asked where they plan to focus their marketing efforts in the next 12 months, a majority (59%) answered content marketing. A distant second was data-driven initiatives at 48%.
In the next 12 months, how will your spending on content marketing change?
In the next 12 months, what kind of content do you plan to create?
Video
Sales enablement
Research reports
Articles/blogs
Case studies
Influencer assets
Infographics
Podcasts/webinars
Interactive assets
Checklists/Q&As/listicles
E-books/white papers
All of the above
Select your top answer to see how other marketers responded.
Where do marketers plan to put their content marketing dollars? The answers varied depending on company size and industry. Overall, marketers cited video (50%), sales enablement content (46%), and articles and blog posts (44%) as the top three categories.
The Demand Gen Report 2023 B2B Buyers Content Preferences Survey provides an in-depth look at what kinds of content B2B buyers want, how they use it, and what they don’t like. Overall, buyers want tailored, easy-to-consume, quick-to-share content. The message is clear: “Curb the sales pitch.”
When broken down by company size, smaller SMBs ($10 to $49 million in revenue) overwhelmingly cited videos (69%).
Some other interesting findings include companies in the $1 to $9 billion range saying they plan to spend on sales enablement tools (59%), influencer assets of any format (53%), and research reports (51%).
The largest organizations, $10 billion plus in revenue, plan to spend on articles/blogs and video (55%) and e-books/white papers (50%).
IT and telecommunications plan to focus spending on videos (67%), case studies (61%), e-books/white papers (58%), and sales enablement (58%).
Among financial services and insurance companies, the top preferred content types included podcasts and webinars (57%), videos (49%), and article/blogs and sales enablement content tying at 46%.
Business and professional services organizations cited their top format preferences as research reports (56%), infographics (54%), and articles/blogs (49%).
B2B marketers seem to be wisely focusing on creating content based on their differing solutions and audience content format preferences.
Create campaigns around big rock pieces
Our top three industries varied among preferred content types.
Conduct your own survey or put together an influencer e-book, and then build your campaign around these meaty pieces. Done right, you can create a campaign to take you through a quarter, six months, or even an entire year.
Create campaigns around big-rock pieces
Here are some ideas:
Write blog posts to drive people to your high-value, gated assets.
Pull statistics out of your research report to create an infographic.
Take the most compelling quotations from your influencer e-book to create a key-takeaways listicle.
Build a webinar around your big-rock piece to share findings in an interactive experience.
Create animated GIFs to promote your content on social platforms.
SEO
Blog writing
Topic brainstorming
Email writing
Ideation
First drafts/copywriting
Next, we’ll look at the topic that seems to be everywhere in the news. There’s no question that when generative AI tool ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in November 2022, it ushered in a new era in artificial intelligence. Our survey respondents know that AI will affect their jobs, yet there was no overwhelming area where they are planning to adopt AI-powered tools. Almost all areas of AI’s potential uses had response rates within a five percent range from 27% to 32%. These included image generation, asset outlining, research, email copywriting, blog writing, copywriting, ideation, and brainstorming. The only outlier was SEO where 43% indicated they plan to apply AI tools. In their comments, several respondents admitted fears of AI eliminating their jobs. However, some also welcomed the new tools that enable new ways of creating content and performing marketing activities.
For which of the following do you plan to use AI-powered tools?
Not sure/don't know
Asset outlines
Research
Summarizing meetings
Image generation
Get comfortable with generative ai
Keep in mind that AI doesn’t have the creative, intuitive talents of humans. Statistics could be out of date. Bias may have crept into the results you get. And never share proprietary or sensitive corporate information with ChatGPT and other AI tools. Use it to spark new ideas and do some preliminary writing for you. You’ll still need to make the final content into your own—to make it better and more authentic.
Beware of the risks
The AI boat has already sailed. If you haven’t started exploring AI tools yet, especially generative AI, don’t wait any longer. Sign up for ChatGPT, and try it for brainstorming topics for blog posts, writing an outline for an e-book, or anything else you need help to work faster and smarter. Then have your team evaluate tools for areas where you need the most help. Test your options. With so many new tools popping up almost daily, don’t feel locked into one solution.
Get comfortable with generative AI
Start exploring
Smarter tools, including those powered by AI, are helping B2B marketers take a broader role in the business. Several factors play a role in marketing’s increasing influence on overall business strategy:
How has your role as a marketing leader changed in the past 2-3 years?
The adoption of tools that enable marketing to monitor and evaluate the performance of their marketing efforts Better integration between sales and marketing systems that further enables marketing's ability to demonstrate contribution to sales pipeline and revenue The ability to identify quality leads farther down the funnel, aided by intent data Account-based marketing (ABM) initiatives that focus on sales enablement to win deals
When asked about how their role as a marketing leader had changed in the past two to three years, 51% said there was greater focus on data-driven tactics and use of intent data. Half (50%) said they had experienced the increased influence of marketing on overall business strategy. Other changes included pressure to deliver more down-funnel quality leads (43%) and to demonstrate contribution to pipeline (38%). Two closely related changes were better integration with sales (38%) and more AMB initiatives (32%).
Get even more help from experts
If you already use outside sources for some of your marketing functions, look for additional opportunities. Outside perspective and deep expertise can help you improve your content, make it more valuable for your audience, and drive more demand. These are some of the most common areas where marketing teams often lack in-house resources and skills:
Do you need help with survey development? Analyzing results? Creating a report? Finding respondents and putting your survey in the field? These research projects require a lot of work. Partnering with outside sources can fill your gaps.
Influencer programs
An outside agency can help you find influencers if you don’t have them lined up. It can also create interview questions, conduct influencer interviews, and write and design the final asset.
Content syndication
When you need to get your content out to a wider audience, need leads faster, or want to deliver more qualified leads to your sales team, a content syndication firm can help. Today’s AI-powered content syndication solutions use intent data to help you find more targeted, more qualified leads.
Content strategy
Sometimes you just don’t have enough team members to do it all yourself. A content marketing partner can help you with campaign messaging, content ideation, nurture campaign strategy, content audits, and creation of content after you’ve completed your strategic planning.
It gets even more interesting looking at our top industries. A dominant 72% of B2B marketing leaders at business and professional services companies plan to focus on content marketing in the next 12 months, followed by data-driven initiatives at 65%. For financial services and insurance marketers, the top picks were content marketing (57%) and data-driven initiatives (54%). That leaves IT and telecommunications. The responses here were more evenly split with thought leadership coming out ahead at 53% and then ABM initiatives at 42%.
When breaking the numbers down by company size, things look different. Nearly seven in 10 (69%) marketers at the smallest organizations ($10 to $49 million) plan to focus on content marketing, far ahead of other initiatives. Next were companies with revenues of $50 million up to $1 billion, where 63% look to content marketing to drive success in the coming year. Conversely, 59% of marketers at the largest firms ($10 billion plus) answered that thought leadership would be their number-one area of focus. For those companies in the $1 billion to $9 billion range, the marketing focus skews towards data-driven initiatives (54%) and influencer marketing (51%).
Where do you plan to focus your marketing efforts in the next 12 months?
The survey revealed a great deal about what B2B marketers face today and how their roles have changed. Now, let’s look at what they see lying ahead and what they would do if the sky were the limit. With the current economic climate, where do B2B marketing leaders plan to focus their marketing efforts in the next 12 months? While these marketers cited more demand generation efforts (middle- and bottom-funnel leads) and ABM initiatives, both ranked lower on their focus for the next year. Instead, nearly two thirds (59%) plan to focus on content marketing, followed by data-driven initiatives such as investment in intent data tools (48%).
72% of B2B marketers at business and professional services companies plan to focus on content marketing in the next 12 months.
Our marketing leaders share their plans
Targeted campaigns
Marketing research
Additional content
Strategic planning
Live events
Website redesign
Content audits
Thought leadership/influencer
...and their wish lists
If someone said, “Money is no object” and you had all the skills you needed available, what would you do? Half our respondents overall said they would do more targeted marketing campaigns. Another 45% said they would conduct marketing research. And 41% would do more strategic planning.
What projects would you tackle if you had unlimited resources?
Looking at the results by industry, IT and telecommunications stood out with 58% choosing targeted campaigns and 53% citing thought leadership and influencer content as projects they would tackle with unlimited resources.
For financial services and insurance, targeted campaigns came out on top at 51% followed closely by marketing research at 49%.
For business and professional services, 51% said website redesign.
Their responses were relatively uniform across all company sizes. One exception was marketers at the largest organizations.
They tracked closely on targeted campaigns (55%) but came in lower on everything else except for “All of the above” (14%).
Finally, we gave respondents a chance to tell us how optimistic they were about their jobs and why. An astounding 87% rated their optimism six or higher on a scale of one to 10. Nearly two thirds (63%) rated their outlook at eight or higher. When asked to share what made them so optimistic, some of the most common responses included feeling valued, working with coworkers, and opportunities to learn and grow.
On a 1-10 scale (1 = concerned, 10 = optimistic), how would you rate your current perspective on your job?
what makes b2b marketing leaders so optimistic?
"I am in a role where we are leading how new technology will be used to better enable marketing."
"[I] feel like I bring value to the team."
"I feel like I learn new things every day, and there are new work opportunities and obstacles we face every day, which makes working there interesting."
"The company is open to trying new things and accepts that mistakes are part of the learning process."
What makes B2B marketing leaders so optimistic?
Every time has its challenges—its highs and its lows. Perhaps it’s the challenge of succeeding in the face of the obstacles that makes a job rewarding. While the challenges can’t be downplayed, B2B marketers overall are looking ahead and looking forward to trying new things, playing a bigger role, and bringing value to their businesses. When their efforts are rewarded and opportunities abound, these leaders are ready to face the future, whatever lies ahead.
We discuss the results of this survey and its implications for B2B content marketers in our webinar.
company annual revenue
Top industries
By the numbers...
Respondents' authority level
Total respondents: 265
TOP INDUSTRIES
respondents' authority level
