Top B2B marketing stats from 2011

This year, thanks to our Benchmarking Reports, we’ve provided you with lots of interesting and exclusive insights on the B2B market. It’s worth noting that the detailed statistical breakdowns of specific channels or issues that you can find in the Benchmarking Reports can’t be found anywhere else. Here’s an overview of the best stats that this year’s reports have unveiled… 

Marcomms agencies

• B2B marketing agencies reported an average annual gross income figure of 18% – a massive 15% increase from last year.
• 55% of agencies described the state of the market as either ‘good’ or ‘strong’.
• The largest group of respondents (45%) reported that ‘pressure on client’s budgets’ was the number one concern, which was virtually unchanged from 2010.
• The fastest growing UK B2B marcomms agency in the last 12 months was Earnest.
• By 2010, three quarters of agencies were offering social media, and by 2011 only one in 10 agencies were not providing these services. 

Social media

• 78% of responding B2B organisations are already conducting social media activity.
• 6% of respondents have one social media marketing manager in their organisation; 40% allocate social media marketing to one individual as part of their role and another 40% assigning it to a team of people.
• 22% of respondents currently assign a portion of their budget to social media. Three out of four B2B companies spend less than 10 per cent of their overall marketing budget on this channel.
• 85% of B2B brands have a corporate presence on Twitter, 77% have a LinkedIn page, 67% have brand pages on Facebook and 66% are on YouTube. 

Technology marketing

• 48% per cent of marketing decision-makers in technology companies expect their marketing budgets to increase in the next 12 months.
• Email and ‘third-party events’ remain the most popular marketing tools (used by 90 and 76% of respondents respectively).
• The most common primary marketing objectives are ‘create leads for sales conversion’ (42%), ‘drive direct sales’ (19%) and ‘build brand’ (16%).
• The most popular metrics are website visits (91%), new leads generated (85%) and email bounce rates (82%). The most popular KPIs include new leads generated (64%), leads converted (51%) and website visits (52%).

Lead generation & nuturing

• Only 42% spend more than a quarter of their budget on lead-orientated activity.
• Email marketing delivers the highest quantity of leads, while telemarketing delivers the highest quality.
• 55% of respondents regard telemarketing as a ‘very effective’ tool for follow-up activity for lead nurturing, compared with only 12% for email.
• ‘Quality of inhouse marketing data’ was regarded as the number one challenge for effective lead generation and nurturing looking ahead.
• Email marketing is set to benefit most from an increase in investment for lead-orientated activity, with 55% of marketers saying they will spend more on this channel.

SEO

• 67% of respondents have invested in search marketing over the last 12 months but just half of respondents spend less than 10% of their budget on search.
• Almost half of respondents review their keywords at least once a month. 60% of companies have increased the number of keywords they are targeting in the last 12 months.
• PPC accounts for a larger share of budget than SEO in B2B companies – the ratio is approximately 60:40.
• The biggest challenge for effective search marketing is link building, with video optimisation seen as the least significant.
• Content optimisation is used by three-quarters of respondents, as well as being the most effective.