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B2B CONTENT MARKETING BENCHMARKS, BUDGETS, AND TRENDS: OUTLOOK FOR 2024
[RESEARCH]

* by Stephanie Stahl
* | Published: October 18, 2023
* | Trends and Research

Creating standards, guidelines, processes, and workflows for content marketing
is not the sexiest job.

But setting standards is the only way to know if you can improve anything (with
AI or anything else).

Here’s the good news: All that non-sexy work frees time and resources (human and
tech) you can apply to bring your brand’s strategies and plans to life.

But in many organizations, content still isn’t treated as a coordinated business
function. That’s one of the big takeaways from our latest research, B2B Content
Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024, conducted with
MarketingProfs and sponsored by Brightspot.

A few symptoms of that reality showed up in the research:

* Marketers cite a lack of resources as a top situational challenge, the same
as they did the previous year.
* Nearly three-quarters (72%) say they use generative AI, but 61% say their
organization lacks guidelines for its use.
* The most frequently cited challenges include creating the right content,
creating content consistently, and differentiating content.

I’ll walk you through the findings and share some advice from CMI Chief Strategy
Advisor Robert Rose and other industry voices to shed light on what it all means
for B2B marketers. There’s a lot to work through, so feel free to use the table
of contents to navigate to the sections that most interest you.

Note: These numbers come from a July 2023 survey of marketers around the globe.
We received 1,080 responses. This article focuses on answers from the 894 B2B
respondents.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

* AI use
* Team structure
* Content marketing challenges
* Content types, distribution channels, and paid channels
* Social media
* Content management and operations
* Measurement and goals
* Overall success
* Budgets and spending
* Top content-related priorities for 2024
* Content marketing trends for 2024
* Action steps
* Methodology

AI: 3 OUT OF 4 B2B MARKETERS USE GENERATIVE TOOLS

Of course, we asked respondents how they use generative AI in content and
marketing. As it turns out, most experiment with it: 72% of respondents say they
use generative AI tools.

But a lack of standards can get in the way.

“Generative AI is the new, disruptive capability entering the realm of content
marketing in 2024,” Robert says. “It’s just another way to make our content
process more efficient and effective. But it can’t do either until you establish
a standard to define its value. Until then, it’s yet just another technology
that may or may not make you better at what you do.”

So, how do content marketers use the tools today? About half (51%) use
generative AI to brainstorm new topics. Many use the tools to research headlines
and keywords (45%) and write drafts (45%). Fewer say they use AI to outline
assignments (23%), proofread (20%), generate graphics (11%), and create audio
(5%) and video (5%).

Click the image to enlarge.

Some marketers say they use AI to do things like generate email headlines and
email copy, extract social media posts from long-form content, condense
long-form copy into short form, etc.

Only 28% say they don’t use generative AI tools.

MOST DON’T PAY FOR GENERATIVE AI TOOLS (YET)

Among those who use generative AI tools, 91% use free tools (e.g., ChatGPT).
Thirty-eight percent use tools embedded in their content creation/management
systems, and 27% pay for tools such as Writer and Jasper.

AI IN CONTENT REMAINS MOSTLY UNGOVERNED

Asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 31%
say yes, 61% say no, and 8% are unsure.

Click the image to enlarge.

We asked Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs, for her
perspective. “It feels crazy … 61% have no guidelines? But is it actually
shocking and crazy? No. It is not. Most of us are just getting going with
generative AI. That means there is a clear and rich opportunity to lead from
where you sit,” she says.

“Ignite the conversation internally. Press upon your colleagues and your
leadership that this isn’t a technology opportunity. It’s also a people and
operational challenge in need of thoughtful and intelligent response. You can be
the AI leader your organization needs,” Ann says.

WHY SOME MARKETERS DON’T USE GENERATIVE AI TOOLS

While a lack of guidelines may deter some B2B marketers from using generative AI
tools, other reasons include accuracy concerns (36%), lack of training (27%),
and lack of understanding (27%). Twenty-two percent cite copyright concerns, and
19% have corporate mandates not to use them.

Click the image to enlarge.

HOW AI IS CHANGING SEO

We also wondered how AI’s integration in search engines shifts content
marketers’ SEO strategy. Here’s what we found:

* 31% are sharpening their focus on user intent/answering questions.
* 27% are creating more thought leadership content.
* 22% are creating more conversational content.

Over one-fourth (28%) say they’re not doing any of those things, while 26% say
they’re unsure.

AI may heighten the need to rethink your SEO strategy. But it’s not the only
reason to do so, as Orbit Media Studios co-founder and chief marketing officer
Andy Crestodina points out: “Featured snippets and people-also-ask boxes have
chipped away at click-through rates for years,” he says. “AI will make that even
worse … but only for information intent queries. Searchers who want quick
answers really don’t want to visit websites.

“Focus your SEO efforts on those big questions with big answers – and on the
commercial intent queries,” Andy continues. “Those phrases still have ‘visit
website intent’ … and will for years to come.”

WILL THE AI OBSESSION EVER END?

Many B2B marketers surveyed predict AI will dominate the discussions of content
marketing trends in 2024. As one respondent says: “AI will continue to be the
shiny thing through 2024 until marketers realize the dedication required to
develop prompts, go through the iterative process, and fact-check output. AI can
help you sharpen your skills, but it isn’t a replacement solution for B2B
marketing.”

Back to table of contents

TEAM STRUCTURE: HOW DOES THE WORK GET DONE?

Generative AI isn’t the only issue affecting content marketing these days. We
also asked marketers about how they organize their teams.

Among larger companies (100-plus employees), half say content requests go
through a centralized content team. Others say each department/brand produces
its own content (23%), and the departments/brand/products share responsibility
(21%).

Click the image to enlarge.

CONTENT STRATEGIES INTEGRATE WITH MARKETING, COMMS, AND SALES

Seventy percent say their organizations integrate content strategy into the
overall marketing sales/communication/strategy, and 2% say it’s integrated into
another strategy. Eleven percent say content is a stand-alone strategy for
content used for marketing, and 6% say it’s a stand-alone strategy for all
content produced by the company. Only 9% say they don’t have a content strategy.
The remaining 2% say other or are unsure.

EMPLOYEE CHURN MEANS NEW TEAMMATES; CONTENT TEAMS EXPERIENCE ENLIGHTENED
LEADERSHIP

Twenty-eight percent of B2B marketers say team members resigned in the last
year, 20% say team members were laid off, and about half (49%) say they had new
team members acclimating to their ways of working.

While team members come and go, the understanding of content doesn’t. Over half
(54%) strongly agree, and 30% somewhat agree the leader to whom their content
team reports understands the work they do. Only 11% disagree. The remaining 5%
neither agree nor disagree.

And remote work seems well-tolerated: Only 20% say collaboration was challenging
due to remote or hybrid work.

Back to table of contents

CONTENT MARKETING CHALLENGES: FOCUS SHIFTS TO CREATING THE RIGHT CONTENT

We asked B2B marketers about both content creation and non-creation challenges.

CONTENT CREATION

Most marketers (57%) cite creating the right content for their audience as a
challenge. This is a change from many years when “creating enough content” was
the most frequently cited challenge.

One respondent points out why understanding what audiences want is more
important than ever: “As the internet gets noisier and AI makes it incredibly
easy to create listicles and content that copy each other, there will be a need
for companies to stand out. At the same time, as … millennials and Gen Z [grow
in the workforce], we’ll begin to see B2B become more entertaining and less
boring. We were never only competing with other B2B content. We’ve always been
competing for attention.”

Other content creation challenges include creating it consistently (54%) and
differentiating it (54%). Close to half (45%) cite optimizing for search and
creating quality content (44%). About a third (34%) cite creating enough content
to keep up with internal demand, 30% say creating enough content to keep up with
external demand, and 30% say creating content that requires technical skills.

Click the image to enlarge.

OTHER HURDLES

The most frequently cited non-creation challenge, by far, is a lack of resources
(58%), followed by aligning content with the buyer’s journey (48%) and aligning
content efforts across sales and marketing (45%). Forty-one percent say they
have issues with workflow/content approval, and 39% say they have difficulty
accessing subject matter experts. Thirty-four percent say it is difficult to
keep up with new technologies/tools (e.g., AI). Only 25% cite a lack of strategy
as a challenge, 19% say keeping up with privacy rules, and 15% point to tech
integration issues.

Click the image to enlarge.

Back to table of contents

CONTENT TYPES, DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS, AND PAID CHANNELS

We asked content marketers about the types of content they produce, their
distribution channels, and paid content promotion. We also asked which formats
and channels produce the best results.

POPULAR PAID CONTENT CHANNELS

When marketers pay to promote content, which channels do they invest in?
Eighty-six percent use paid content distribution channels.

Of those, 78% use social media advertising/promoted posts, 65% use sponsorships,
64% use search engine marketing (SEM)/pay-per-click, and 59% use digital display
advertising. Far fewer invest in native advertising (35%), partner emails (29%),
and print display ads (21%).

EFFECTIVE PAID CONTENT CHANNELS

SEM/pay-per-click produces good results, according to 62% of those surveyed.
Half of those who use paid channels say social media advertising/promoted posts
produce good results, followed by sponsorships (49%), partner emails (36%), and
digital display advertising (34%).

Click the image to enlarge.

Back to table of contents

SOCIAL MEDIA USE: ONE PLATFORM RISES WAY ABOVE

When asked which organic social media platforms deliver the best value for their
organization, B2B marketers picked LinkedIn by far (84%). Only 29% cite Facebook
as a top performer, 22% say YouTube, and 21% say Instagram. Twitter and TikTok
see 8% and 3%, respectively.

Click the image to enlarge.

So it makes sense that 72% say they increased their use of LinkedIn over the
last 12 months, while only 32% boosted their YouTube presence, 31% increased
Instagram use, 22% grew their Facebook presence, and 10% increased X and TikTok
use.

Which platforms are marketers giving up? Did you guess X? You’re right – 32% of
marketers say they decreased their X use last year. Twenty percent decreased
their use of Facebook, with 10% decreasing on Instagram, 9% pulling back on
YouTube, and only 2% decreasing their use of LinkedIn.

Click the image to enlarge.

Interestingly, we saw a significant rise in B2B marketers who use TikTok: 19%
say they use the platform – more than double from last year.

Back to table of contents

CONTENT MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS

To explore how teams manage content, we asked marketers about their technology
use and investments and the challenges they face when scaling their content.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

When asked which technologies they use to manage content, marketers point to:

* Analytics tools (81%)
* Social media publishing/analytics (72%)
* Email marketing software (69%)
* Content creation/calendaring/collaboration/workflow (64%)
* Content management system (50%)
* Customer relationship management system (48%)

But having technology doesn’t mean it’s the right technology (or that its
capabilities are used). So, we asked if they felt their organization had the
right technology to manage content across the organization.

Only 31% say yes. Thirty percent say they have the technology but aren’t using
its potential, and 29% say they haven’t acquired the right technology. Ten
percent are unsure.

Click the image to enlarge.

CONTENT TECH SPENDING WILL LIKELY RISE

Even so, investment in content management technology seems likely in 2024: 45%
say their organization is likely to invest in new technology, whereas 32% say
their organization is unlikely to do so. Twenty-three percent say their
organization is neither likely nor unlikely to invest.

Click the image to enlarge.

SCALING CONTENT PRODUCTION

We introduced a new question this year to understand what challenges B2B
marketers face while scaling content production.

Almost half (48%) say it’s “not enough content repurposing.” Lack of
communication across organizational silos is a problem for 40%. Thirty-one
percent say they have no structured content production process, and 29% say they
lack an editorial calendar with clear deadlines. Ten percent say scaling is not
a current focus.

Among the other hurdles – difficulty locating digital content assets (16%),
technology issues (15%), translation/localization issues (12%), and no style
guide (11%).

Click the image to enlarge.

For those struggling with content repurposing, content standardization is
critical. “Content reuse is the only way to deliver content at scale. There’s
just no other way,” says Regina Lynn Preciado, senior director of content
strategy solutions at Content Rules Inc.

“Even if you’re not trying to provide the most personalized experience ever or
dominate the metaverse with your omnichannel presence, you absolutely must reuse
content if you are going to deliver content effectively,” she says.

“How to achieve content reuse? You’ve probably heard that you need to move to
modular, structured content. However, just chunking your content into smaller
components doesn’t go far enough. For content to flow together seamlessly
wherever you reuse it, you’ve got to standardize your content. That’s the
personalization paradox right there. To personalize, you must standardize.

“Once you have your content standards in place and everyone is creating content
in alignment with those standards, there is no limit to what you can do with the
content,” Regina explains.

Why do content marketers – who are skilled communicators – struggle with
cross-silo communication? Standards and alignment come into play.

“I think in the rush to all the things, we run out of time to address scalable
processes that will fix those painful silos, including taking time to align on
goals, roles and responsibilities, workflows, and measurement,” says Ali Orlando
Wert, senior director of content strategy at Appfire. “It takes time, but the
payoffs are worth it. You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk – and
walk before you can run.”

Back to table of contents

MEASUREMENT AND GOALS: GENERATING SALES AND REVENUE RISES

Almost half (46%) of B2B marketers agree their organization measures content
performance effectively. Thirty-six percent disagree, and 15% neither agree nor
disagree. Only 3% say they don’t measure content performance.

The five most frequently used metrics to assess content performance are
conversions (73%), email engagement (71%), website traffic (71%), website
engagement (69%), and social media analytics (65%).

About half (52%) mention the quality of leads, 45% say they rely on search
rankings, 41% use quantity of leads, 32% track email subscribers, and 29% track
the cost to acquire a lead, subscriber, or customer.

Click the image to enlarge.

The most common challenge B2B marketers have while measuring content performance
is integrating/correlating data across multiple platforms (84%), followed by
extracting insights from data (77%), tying performance data to goals (76%),
organizational goal setting (70%), and lack of training (66%).

Click the image to enlarge.

Regarding goals, 84% of B2B marketers say content marketing helped create brand
awareness in the last 12 months. Seventy-six percent say it helped generate
demand/leads; 63% say it helped nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, and 58% say
it helped generate sales/revenue (up from 42% the previous year).

Click the image to enlarge.

Back to table of contents

SUCCESS FACTORS: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

To separate top performers from the pack, we asked the B2B marketers to assess
the success of their content marketing approach.

Twenty-eight percent rate the success of their organization’s content marketing
approach as extremely or very successful. Another 57% report moderate success
and 15% feel minimally or not at all successful.

The most popular factor for successful marketers is knowing their audience
(79%).

This makes sense, considering that “creating the right content for our audience”
is the top challenge. The logic? Top-performing content marketers prioritize
knowing their audiences to create the right content for those audiences.

Top performers also set goals that align with their organization’s objectives
(68%), effectively measure and demonstrate content performance (61%), and show
thought leadership (60%). Collaboration with other teams (55%) and a documented
strategy (53%) also help top performers reach high levels of content marketing
success.

Click the image to enlarge.

We looked at several other dimensions to identify how top performers differ from
their peers. Of note, top performers:

* Are backed by leaders who understand the work they do.
* Are more likely to have the right content management technologies.
* Have better communication across organizational silos.
* Do a better job of measuring content effectiveness.
* Are more likely to use content marketing successfully to generate
demand/leads, nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, generate sales/revenue,
and grow a subscribed audience.

Little difference exists between top performers and their less successful peers
when it comes to the adoption of generative AI tools and related guidelines. It
will be interesting to see if and how that changes next year.

Click the image to enlarge.

Back to table of contents

BUDGETS AND SPENDING: HOLDING STEADY

To explore budget plans for 2024, we asked respondents if they have knowledge of
their organization’s budget/budgeting process for content marketing. Then, we
asked follow-up questions to the 55% who say they do have budget knowledge.

CONTENT MARKETING AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL MARKETING SPEND

Here’s what they say about the total marketing budget (excluding salaries):

* About a quarter (24%) say content marketing takes up one-fourth or more of
the total marketing budget.
* Nearly one in three (29%) indicate that 10% to 24% of the marketing budget
goes to content marketing.
* Just under half (48%) say less than 10% of the marketing budget goes to
content marketing.

CONTENT MARKETING BUDGET OUTLOOK FOR 2024

Next, we asked about their 2024 content marketing budget. Forty-five percent
think their content marketing budget will increase compared with 2023, whereas
42% think it will stay the same. Only 6% think it will decrease.

Click the image to enlarge.

WHERE WILL THE BUDGET GO?

We also asked where respondents plan to increase their spending.

Sixty-nine percent of B2B marketers say they would increase their investment in
video, followed by thought leadership content (53%), in-person events (47%),
paid advertising (43%), online community building (33%), webinars (33%), audio
content (25%), digital events (21%), and hybrid events (11%).

Click the image to enlarge.

The increased investment in video isn’t surprising. The focus on thought
leadership content might surprise, but it shouldn’t, says Stephanie Losee,
director of executive and ABM content at Autodesk.

“As measurement becomes more sophisticated, companies are finding they’re better
able to quantify the return from upper-funnel activities like thought leadership
content,” she says. “At the same time, companies recognize the impact of
shifting their status from vendor to true partner with their customers’
businesses.

“Autodesk recently launched its first global, longitudinal State of Design &
Make report (registration required), and we’re finding that its insights are of
such value to our customers that it’s enabling conversations we’ve never been
able to have before. These conversations are worth gold to both sides, and I
would imagine other B2B companies are finding the same thing,” Stephanie says.

Back to table of contents

TOP CONTENT-RELATED PRIORITIES FOR 2024: LEADING WITH THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

We asked an open-ended question about marketers’ top three content-related
priorities for 2024. The responses indicate marketers place an emphasis on
thought leadership and becoming a trusted resource.

Other frequently mentioned priorities include:

* Better understanding of the audience
* SEO
* Discovering the best ways to use AI
* Increasing brand awareness
* Lead generation
* Using more video
* Better use of analytics
* Conversions
* Repurposing existing content

Back to table of contents

CONTENT MARKETING PREDICTIONS FOR 2024: AI IS TOP OF MIND

In another open-ended question, we asked B2B marketers, “What content marketing
trends do you predict for 2024?” You probably guessed the most popular trend:
AI.

Here are some of the marketers’ comments about how AI will affect content
marketing next year:

* “We’ll see generative AI everywhere, all the time.”
* “There will be struggles to determine the best use of generative AI in
content marketing.”
* “AI will likely result in a flood of poor-quality, machine-written content.
Winners will use AI for automating the processes that support content
creation while continuing to create high-quality human-generated content.”
* “AI has made creating content so easy that there are and will be too many
long articles on similar subjects; most will never be read or viewed. A sea
of too many words. I predict short-form content will have to be the driver
for eyeballs.”

Other trends include:

* Greater demand for high-quality content as consumers grow weary of
AI-generated content
* Importance of video content
* Increasing use of short video and audio content
* Impact of AI on SEO

Among the related comments:

* “Event marketing (webinars and video thought leadership) will become more
necessary as teams rely on AI-generated written content.”
* “AI will be an industry sea change and strongly impact the meaning of SEO.
Marketers need to be ready to ride the wave or get left behind.”
* “Excitement around AI-generated content will rise before flattening out when
people realize it’s hard to differentiate, validate, verify, attribute, and
authenticate. New tools, processes, and roles will emerge to tackle this
challenge.”
* “Long-form reports could start to see a decline. If that is the case, we will
need a replacement. Logically, that could be a webinar or video series that
digs deeper into the takeaways.”

Back to table of contents

ACTION STEPS

What does this year’s research suggest B2B content marketers do to move forward?

I asked CMI’s Robert Rose for some insights. He says the steps are clear:
Develop standards, guidelines, and playbooks for how to operate – just like
every other function in business does.

“Imagine if everyone in your organization had a different idea of how to define
‘revenue’ or ‘profit margin,’” Robert says. “Imagine if each salesperson had
their own version of your company’s customer agreements and tried to figure out
how to write them for every new deal. The legal team would be apoplectic. You’d
start to hear from sales how they were frustrated that they couldn’t figure out
how to make the ‘right agreement,’ or how to create agreements ‘consistently,’
or that there was a complete ‘lack of resources’ for creating agreements.”

Just remember: Standards can change along with your team, audiences, and
business priorities. “Setting standards doesn’t mean casting policies and
templates in stone,” Robert says. “Standards only exist so that we can always
question the standard and make sure that there’s improvement available to use in
setting new standards.”

He offers these five steps to take to solidify your content marketing strategy
and execution:

1. Direct. Create an initiative that will define the scope of the most
important standards for your content marketing. Prioritize the areas that
hurt the most. Work with leadership to decide where to start. Maybe it’s
persona development. Maybe you need a new standardized content process.
Maybe you need a solid taxonomy. Build the list and make it a real
initiative.

2. Define. Create a common understanding of all the things associated with the
standards. Don’t assume that everybody knows. They don’t. What is a white
paper? What is an e-book? What is a campaign vs. an initiative? What is a
blog post vs. an article? Getting to a common language is one of the most
powerful things you can do to coordinate better.

3. Develop. You need both policies and playbooks. Policies are the formal
documentation of your definitions and standards. Playbooks are how you
communicate combinations of policies so that different people can not just
understand them but are ready, willing, and able to follow them.

4. Distribute. If no one follows the standards, they’re not standards. So, you
need to develop a plan for how your new playbooks fit into the larger,
cross-functional approach to the content strategy. You need to deepen the
integration into each department – even if that is just four other people in
your company.

5. Distill. Evolve your standards. Make them living documents. Deploy
technology to enforce and scale the standards. Test. If a standard isn’t
working, change it. Sometimes, more organic processes are OK. Sometimes,
it’s OK to acknowledge two definitions for something. The key is
acknowledging a change to an existing standard so you know whether it
improves things.

Back to table of contents

METHODOLOGY

For their 14th annual content marketing survey, CMI and MarketingProfs surveyed
1,080 recipients around the globe – representing a range of industries,
functional areas, and company sizes — in July 2023. The online survey was
emailed to a sample of marketers using lists from CMI and MarketingProfs.

This article presents the findings from the 894 respondents, mostly from North
America, who indicated their organization is primarily B2B and that they are
either content marketers or work in marketing, communications, or other roles
involving content.

Click the image to enlarge.

Thanks to the survey participants, who made this research possible, and to
everyone who helps disseminate these findings throughout the content marketing
industry.

Get the latest Content Marketing Institute research reports while they're hot –
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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ABOUT MARKETINGPROFS

MARKETINGPROFS IS YOUR QUICKEST PATH TO B2B MARKETING MASTERY

More than 600,000 marketing professionals worldwide rely on MarketingProfs for
B2B Marketing training and education backed by data science, psychology, and
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MarketingProfs B2B Forum–the flagship in-person event for B2B Marketing training
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ABOUT BRIGHTSPOT

BRIGHTSPOT, THE CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM TO BOOST YOUR BUSINESS

Why Brightspot? Align your technology approach and content strategy with
Brightspot, the leading Content Management System for delivering exceptional
digital experiences. Brightspot helps global organizations meet the business
needs of today and scale to capitalize on the opportunities of tomorrow. Our
Enterprise CMS and world-class team solves your unique business challenges at
scale. Fast, flexible, and fully customizable, Brightspot perfectly harmonizes
your technology approach with your content strategy and grows with you as your
business evolves. Our customer-obsessed teams walk with you every step of the
way with an unwavering commitment to your long-term success. To learn more,
visit www.brightspot.com.

STEPHANIE STAHL

As General Manager of CMI, Stephanie leads the brand’s event, digital, print,
and e-learning operations. Previously, Stephanie served as VP of Content
Marketing for UBM’s Technology portfolio, providing strategic guidance on
content development, content optimization, audience engagement, and go-to-market
platforms for technology clients. Stephanie also spent many years as Editor in
Chief of InformationWeek. Find Stephanie on Twitter @editorstahl and LinkedIn.

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