Marketing has always been different between Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business companies (B2B).  This is especially the case with social media, and online content. What’s interesting to see is the different directions and goals each of these industries have for their marketing efforts in 2011. Focus acquired a lot of interesting statistics through their digital marketing content survey conducted from  April 27-Mar 3, 2011 of 172 marketers representing various company sizes and industries.

Strategic Priorities

• The highest strategic priorities for B2B Companies are to acquire leads, followed by brand building, and lead conversion.
• The priorities for B2C companies are focused on building brand and better understand customers. These were closely followed by customer retention goals.

These priorities give us an indication of the rising importance of social media in the marketing mix, and this is reflected in the investment in social media in both B2B and B2C companies.

Performance and Investment of Online Marketing Channels

Here are the findings relating to the performance of online marketing channels and the 2011 investment in these channels:

• B2B companies invested most heavily in social media in 2011, followed by online content
• The top performing investment of last year was e-mail followed by online content then social media.
• B2C companies invested most heavily in social media this year followed by online content and e-mail
• The most successful channel for B2C last year was e-mail followed by online content then social media

In terms of spend on budget and performance on investments, both B2B and B2C companies found similar results and shared similar spends. What’s important to note as well is that the investment in content is very closely linked with social media investment, as the easiest way to share online content is via social media. What is really interesting however is not only are the buckets of spend between the two company types are similar, the content types that are top performing are fairly consistent between the two industries as well.

The top performing content types

The top performing content types for both industries were:

• Blog posts, webinars and virtual events for both B2c and B2B
• Industry white papers are 3rd highest performing for B2B but the 3rd lowest for B2C (and rightfully so)
• The 3rd highest performing content type for B2C is data-driven research reports.
• Podcasts remain the lowest performing content type for both B2B and B2C

It’s good to see that marketers throughout all business types are increasing their budgets for marketing (50%) with only 16% decreasing their budgets, however the increased pressure to maximise the return on investment and results of marketing efforts are ever present, and proper planning and data analysis will be more important than ever. What are you investment plans for online marketing this year? Is this survey an accurate reflection?