B2B companies are trying hard to understand what motivates their customers to buy online.

More than three-fourths of mid-market business-to-business companies say understanding how their customers gather information before making an online purchase will be key in developing their digital marketing strategy over the next three years, according to a new report conducted by Regalix, a digital marketing services firm. Many of them say they’ll use content marketing and marketing automation technology to better attract and engage customers.

The report, the “State of B2B Marketing 2016,” puts content marketing—distributing informative or entertaining information through blogs and other means to build a brand and generate customer leads without directly trying to sell a product—at the top of a list of strategies companies say will have the biggest impact on their business this year. Second on the list is marketing automation technology designed to attract customers and generate sales with the most pertinent marketing material at the right time and place. Respondents also anticipate mobile will have a great impact on their business this year “Mobile needs more evangelists,” the report reads. “Marketers felt mobile will have a greater impact on their business in 2016 than it did in 2015. This could well be the first signs of its emergence from the shadows of the Web, especially as the medium for fostering customer engagement.”

69% of respondents say their top priority for these marketing initiatives in 2016 is to increase annual revenue, while 61% say they’re focusing their marketing efforts on generating customer leads.

Regalix based the report, authored by Regalix senior vice president and principal analyst Nimish Vohra and senior analyst Arunh Krishnan, on a January 2016 survey of more than 700 senior marketing executives and business leaders from companies earning between $10 million and $1 billion in annual revenue. Companies were from several industries, including business software and Internet services, computers and electronics, telecommunications and general business services. 35% of the respondents were based in North America; the rest were from other regions throughout the world, a spokeswoman says.

The following percentages of respondents say they expect these marketing techniques will have the most impact on their business in 2016:

• Content marketing, 63%, up from 55% in 2015;
• Marketing automation, 50%, up from 41%;
• Video marketing, 38%, up from 14%;
• Big data, 24%, up from 10%;
• Mobile marketing, 25%, up from 8%;
• Social media marketing, 45%, up from 30%;
• SEO (organic search), 42%, up from 35%;
• Paid search, 30%, up from 27%;
• Community forums, 19%, up from 13%;
• Affiliate marketing, 15%, up from 10%;
• Wearables, 8%, up from 7%.

The following percentages of respondents ranked the following techniques as “very important/ somewhat important/not important” in influencing their digital marketing initiatives over the next three years:

• Understanding customer buying journey, 78%/ 15%/ 3%;
• Educating and influencing purchase by mapping the right content assets and distribution channels to key stages in the customer buying journey, 77%/ 17%/ 2%;
• Understanding the mobile user’s customer journey, 37%/ 31%/ 26%;
• Customers’ dependency on connected devices for making purchase decisions, 27%/ 37%/ 28%;
• Integrating offline and online data points to provide consistent and enhanced customer experience, 46%/ 39%/ 9%;
• Attributing and measuring performance of multiple channels used by customers in their buying journey, 53%/ 37%/ 3%;
• Social media’s contribution to the bottom line, 41%/ 43%/ 11%;
• Measuring effectiveness of digital versus offline marketing activities, 51%/ 31%/ 11%.

(Percentages don’t add up 100% because some respondents either didn’t know or didn’t answer.)

The following percentages of respondents say they plan to increase their spending on these digital distribution channels:

• Website, 80%;
• Social media, 66%;
• Email, 61%;
• Blogs, 55%;
• Online events like workshops and seminars, 55%;
• Organic search engine optimization, 54%;
• Paid search, 42%;
• Video advertising, 39%;
• Mobile website, 32%;
• Mobile app, 28%;
• Online display ads, 24%;
• Affiliate marketing, 18%;
• Mobile messaging, 9%.

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