Results depend highly on the amount of money invested when it comes to marketing campaigns. You cannot get the results of a USD 100,000 campaign with an USD 100 investment. Creativity plays an important role, but it is not everything and money is necessary. In fact, B2B marketers say that budget is their number one challenge, as a study by Demandbase and Ziff Davis shows.
Search engine optimization/organic search is the primary online marketing tactic used by B2B marketers from the US with 63% of the mentions, followed by social media marketing (60%), inbound marketing/content creation/blogs (53%), search engine marketing/pay-per-click (41%), display and banner advertising (34%), content syndication (16%), and other methods (22%). The report revealed as well that targeting based on vertical industry was the main approach used to reach prospects and that case studies and demonstrations of results are in fact some of the most effective means of drawing in clients.
When asked about factors considered by their company when creating new content, the US B2B marketers said they decide what content to create based on specific business needs and solutions (74%). 64% of the marketers queried said they created content based on the industries or company types they are targeting, 48% mentioned that they created product-base descriptive content, brochures or product guides, 47% mentioned “thought leadership” content based on broad industry awareness, 36% created content focused on individual user profiles or buyer personas, 31% created sales-driven content, “sales enablement” pieces like ROI calculations or vendor comparisons, while 7% had other factors influencing their content creation.
The long-term goals of B2B marketers reflect the preoccupation with content creation, with 29% of the marketers saying that they will have an increased focus on individual prospect types/buying personas, and 25% mentioning their increased focus on industries or vertical markets. 19% said they would focus on named account lists/target lists, 9% would focus on the industry segment, 8% would focus on geographies and 5% would focus more on the SMB segment.