Remarkable Outcomes in Dutch B2B Marketing Study

Research agency TNS NIPO (part of TNS which merged with Research International in 2009) has done a study early 2011 with 270 B2B marketing professionals in the Netherlands.  In includes some remarkable outcomes:

Marketing Budgets

2010 has seen a slight increase in the B2B marketing budgets: 26% of respondents indicated an increase. Typically the expenditure on websites, e-mail marketing, social media and CRM has grown, to the detriment of print advertising and DM as well as events.

Measuring Effectiveness

Remarkably only 1 out of 4 B2B professionals (typically those of larger organizations) indicated to actively measure the return on their marketing investments.

Social Media

12% of the interviewed organizations use a well-planned social media approach. 28% started experimenting in this area social media; most often used in a ‘non-interactive manner’ i.e. listening or experimenting with the various social media platforms.

Content Marketing

Nearly one out of 3 B2B companies has explicitly added content marketing in the marketing mix. They offer target audiences relevant information through whitepapers, newsletters, webinars or blogs. Also in this area the Dutch market lags behind the US where according to a study of Junta42 and MarketingProfs 9 in 10 companies have a content marketing strategy in place.

When going through the results of this report I was stunned by the low number of marketers actively measuring the effectiveness of their marketing actions. This is not only key to simply do a good -or increasingly better- job, but also to make future progress in the budget area. Wonder how this stacks up with alike studies in other countries though. Do you have any data from recent studies in your country? I’d be interested to compare some results on this challenging but essential item.

For Dutch readers a copy of the TNS report can be downloaded via this link.