Custom-Content Spend a Good Chunk of Marketing Budgets

Business marketers on average spend 29.42 percent of their current marketing budget on the creation and execution of custom content, according to a Junta42 survey of 150 marketing decision makers who subscribe to BtoB magazine, MarketingCharts writes (via MediaPost).

That finding is in line with 2007 Custom Publishing Council and Publications Management research that found custom accounted for some 27 percent of B2B and B2C marketers’ budgets.

Among the key findings of the study:

• The custom-content product that marketers by far prefer are email newsletters - cited by nearly 69 percent of respondents (view chart). Whitepapers and case studies round out the top 3, cited by 50 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
• Some 42 percent of marketers said they have increased their spending on customized content marketing in 2008; 46 percent said that spend remained unchanged; and just 12 percent said they decreased their content marketing spending.
• B2B marketers tend to be unaware of custom publishing educational resources - for example, less than 2 percent said they were “very aware” of the Custom Publishing Council, Content Marketing Today and Junta42 (a search community site focused on content marketing and custom publishing solutions).
• On the other hand, marketers said they were very aware of Marketing Sherpa (42.7 percent) and Marketing Profs (32 percent).
• A plurality of B2B marketers use search engines and colleagues/friends as major sources for finding qualified content providers or custom publishers to produce their content-based projects:
  • Search engines - 30 percent
  • Ask colleagues/friends - 28 percent
  • Use internal resources to produce the project - 15.3 percent
  • Industry magazine/website - 12.7 percent
  • Go to my agency - 10.7 percent
  • Hire a consultant - 3.3 percent