Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

The beginning of a new year is a great time for analyzing the past twelve months and managing expectations for what is come, a gathering of data that is especially important for B2B marketers. A recent report in KO Marketing gathered some recent research on the subject to identify the main areas of success and difficult in the industry.

The B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn (News - Alert) conducted its annual B2B Content Marketing Survey, sponsored in part by IDG Enterprise.

The survey found that by far the most important goal for content marketers is lead generation, followed by a tie between thought leadership and market education. Last year's number three goal -- customer acquisition -- was replaced by an emphasis on brand awareness. Meanwhile, the most often cited challenge to content marketing is finding adequate resources for content creation, followed by producing enough content and producing content that is engaging and true to the needs of marketing.

Companies with a focused content marketing strategy are generally more effective in that area, yet only 30 percent responded that they have a formally documented strategy. Furthermore, measuring the ROI of content marketing has proven quite difficult, with the minority of respondents reporting they are comfortable with their level of tracking ROI.

The 2015 Marketing Trends Survey, conducted by StrongView and sponsored by SENSORPRO, was conducted to gain insight into business leaders and their attitudes toward planned marketing budgets as well as major priorities and challenges for the upcoming year. It also serves as a decent reflection of B2B marketers' position in an industry-wide context.

According to the survey, marketing budgets will continue to grow as 54 percent of respondents plan on an increase and 40 percent will maintain current levels. Some 47 percent of those who expect an increase believe it will be between five and ten percent, while 34 percent expect one of ten percent or more.

The most important email marketing initiative in 2015 is cited as increasing subscriber engagement, followed by improving segmentation and targeting and improving data analysis for a better understanding of customer context. By far the most significant challenge for content marketers is accessing and leveraging customer data from the wide variety of channels and data sources. Other popular challenges reported in the survey are coordination across marketing channels, developing more relevant engagements and understanding the current context of each customer.

The B2B Content Marketing Survey and Marketing Trends Survey both offer valuable insight into the areas of growth and challenge for content marketing. Companies should absorb this information when making business decisions throughout the next year to ensure an effective marketing strategy and overall success in the industry.