“Communication that Makes an Impact”: duomedia’s Communication Survey

Header Picture Source: Pickwriters

The Belgian agency duomedia conducted an international communication survey to examine the communication behaviour of B2B professionals. With recent concerns like ‘fake news’, ‘fake followers’, GDPR and other privacy issues, a lot has happened and the communication sector has been on the move over the last few years. Drupa – as the leading trade fair for printing technologies – also participated in the study. And here are some results!

About duomedia

The international B2B communication agency duomedia is based in Brussels, Belgium. The services they offer to their clients start with inbound services, such as content marketing, and end with outbound marketing, such as classical communication and public relations, which includes copywriting, graphic design, translation and social media services as well. As they are an international agency, they have consultants not only in Belgium but in Germany, Italy, UK, US, Sweden and Spain as well.

The first communication survey by duomedia was conducted four years ago and focussed on print professionals. A lot has happened since then, so we are excited to present the latest survey.

Performance and Particpants

As part of the research duomedia asked 200 B2B professionals about their opinion on inbound marketing and communication. The research is quite international, as professionals from over 25 nations participated, 94% of them being European. As the study focussed on inbound marketing it’s no surprise that the most represented job functions amongst the participants were in management, marketing, and sales. The sectors the professionals come from are quite interesting as well: The top 5 sectors represented in their research are ‘advertising and marketing’, ‘graphic arts’, ‘packaging’, ‘manufacturing’ and ‘tech, internet and electronics’ – this also resembles the agency’s expertise. The study is divided into two parts: the first one’s about use and satisfaction of inbound marketing, the second one refers to communication in general, such as the use of social media.

Research Part I: Inbound Marketing Systems Satisfy

The duomedia communication research shows that roughly 1/3 of the B2B professionals are currently working with an inbound marketing system, 33% in the strict sense. Furthermore, only 25% said that it could be interesting, while 42% think inbound marketing is not relevant to them. In the second step of the research, duomedia aimed to measure to which degree the professionals are satisfied with the inbound marketing systems they’re using. The results are quite positive: A majority of about 80% claims to be either satisfied or very satisfied with their business’ inbound marketing. At this point it’s remarkable that none of the respondents stated they were ‘very unsatisfied’ with their business using inbound marketing. To specify the participant’s satisfaction, duomedia asked them to rate how satisfied they are with the quality of the content, the quality of the leads, the number of leads, what sales does with the leads, the value for money and the analytics.

Research Part II: Everything’s Digital

The second part of the research was about communication, such as the use of social media channels. With 95% of B2B professionals claiming to use social media, it’s a powerful medium. 81% of professionals indicate that they are active on social media professionally. Additionally, 71% of the professionals regard social media as a relevant source of information. LinkedIn, with 84% of active professional users, is the most active professional social media channel, followed by WhatsApp (54%). Facebook (48%), Twitter (44%) and YouTube (40%) complete the top 5. Instagram’s rather low score might come as a surprise with only 23% of professional use. Furthermore, it’s no surprise that digital communication as a format clearly is the winner with 64% of votes.

Coming to a conclusion, the communication research by duomedia shows that most professionals working with an inbound marketing platform are satisfied with its implementation and that the active professional community on social media is continuing to grow. If you want to see more of the research and the results, take a look at duomedia’s newspaper: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4949377/Newspaper2019_final_pages_lr.pdf

What about you? Do you work in a business that is using inbound marketing systems and social media channels? Tell us about your experiences in the comment section below.