30 Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know via @sejournal, @JRiddall

Content continues to rule most marketing strategies, and there is evidence to support my assertion.

Simply put, content marketing is a crucial aspect of any digital marketing strategy, whether you’re running a small local business or a large multinational corporation.

After all, content is indisputably the very lifeblood upon which the web and social media are based.

Modern SEO, for all intents and purposes, has effectively become optimized content marketing as Google demands and rewards businesses that create content demonstrating Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness to the benefit of their customers.

Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, entertaining, and consistent content in various text-based, video, and audio formats.

The primary focus should be on attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action.

But with so much content being produced and shared every day, it’s important to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices in content marketing to keep pace.

To help you do just that, here are 25 content marketing statistics I think you should know:

Content Marketing Usage

How many businesses are leveraging content marketing, and how are they planning to find success?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. 91% of marketing pros surveyed by Semrush achieved success with their content marketing in 2021. A B2B Content Marketing Study conducted by CMI found 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy; 33% have a strategy, but it’s not documented, and 27% have no strategy whatsoever. Half of all marketers say they outsource some content marketing. The pandemic increased content usage by 207%.

Content Marketing Strategy

What strategies are content marketers using or finding to be most effective?

83% of marketers believe it’s more effective to create higher quality content less often. In a 2022 Statista Research Study of marketers worldwide, 62% of respondents said they believed it was important to be “always on” for their customers, whereas 23% thought content-led communications were most effective for personalized targeting purposes.

Types Of Content

Content marketing was synonymous with posting blogs, but the web and content have evolved into audio, video, interactive, and meta formats.

Here are a few stats on how the various types of content are trending and performing.

The top three types of content being created by marketing teams in 2022 included videos, blogs, and images. Short articles/posts (83%) and videos (61%) are the top two content types that B2C marketers used in the last 12 months. Their use of long-form articles increased to 42% from 22% last year. Short-form video content like TikToks and Instagram Reels is the most effective type of social media content. 40.8% of marketers said original graphics (infographics, illustrations) helped them reach their marketing goals in 2020 (Source: Venngage) 72% of B2C marketers expected their organization to invest in video marketing in 2022. (Source: CMI) Short content (300-900 words) attracts 21% less traffic and 75% fewer backlinks than articles of average length (900–1200 words.) (Source: Semrush State of Content Marketing 2022) Interactive content sees 52.6% more engagement than static content, with buyers spending an average of 8.5 minutes viewing static content items and 13 minutes on interactive content items. (Source: Mediafly)

Content Distribution

It is not simply enough to create and publish content.

For a content strategy to be successful, it must include distributing content via the channels frequented by a business’s target audience.

Facebook was the top distribution channel for B2C marketers in the past 12 months and the channel that drove the best results. (Source: CMI) B2B marketers reported to CMI that LinkedIn was the most common and top-performing organic social media distribution channel. 80% of B2B marketers who use paid distribution use paid social media advertising (Source: CMI)

Content Consumption

Once content reaches an audience, it’s important to understand how an audience consumes the content or takes action as a result.

A 2021 DemandGen study revealed 62% of those making B2B purchase decisions said they relied more on practical content like case studies and visual content, such as webinars, to guide their buying decisions and citing a higher emphasis on the trustworthiness of the source. Buyers are willing to spend no more than 5 minutes reviewing most content formats. (Source: DemandGen Content Preferences Survey) In a recent post, blogger Ryan Robinson reports the average reader spends 37 seconds reading a blog. 65% of respondents to DemandGen’s survey said they give more credence to peer reviews, user-generated content, and third-party publications/analysts vs. company-generated content.

Content Marketing Performance

One of the primary reasons content marketing has taken off is its ability to be measured, optimized, and tied to a return on investment.

B2C marketers reported to CMI the top three goals content marketing helps them to achieve are creating brand awareness, building trust, and educating their target audience. Content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62% less (Source: CMI). 56% of marketers who leverage blogging say it’s an effective tactic, and 10% say it generates the greatest ROI (return on investment). (Source: Hubspot blog research) Over 60% of marketers measure the success of their content marketing strategy through sales. (Source: Hubspot State of Marketing Report, 2021)

Content Marketing Budgets

Budget changes and the willingness to invest in specific marketing strategies are good indicators of how popular and effective these strategies are at a macro level.

The following stats certainly seem to indicate marketers have bought into the value of content.

61% of B2C marketers in CMI’s 2021 study said their 2022 content marketing budget would exceed their 2021 budget. 22% of B2B marketers said they spent 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing. Furthermore, 43% saw their content marketing budgets grow from 2020 to 2021, and 66% expected them to grow again in 2022. (Source: CMI)

Challenges

All forms of marketing come with challenges related to time, resources, expertise, and competition. Recognizing and addressing these challenges head-on with well-thought-out strategies is the best way to overcome them and realize success.

Top challenges included “attracting quality leads with our content” (41%), “generating enough traffic and promoting our content” (39%), “creating content that resonates with our audience” (31%), and “proving the ROI of our content” (30%). (Source: Semrush’s State of Content Marketing 2022) Changes to SEO/search algorithms (64%), changes to social media algorithms (53%), and data management/analytics (48%) are among the top concerns for B2C marketers. (Source: CMI) 47% of people are seeking downtime from internet-enabled devices due to digital fatigue (Source: EY Survey)

Time To Get Started

As you can clearly see and perhaps have already realized, content marketing can be a highly effective and cost-efficient way to generate leads, build brand awareness and drive sales.

Those willing to put in the work of building a documented content strategy and executing it by producing, distributing, and optimizing high-value, relevant customer-centric content can reap significant business rewards.

More resources:

Use These 3 SEO Metrics To Measure Your Content Marketing ROI Does Content Marketing’s Love For AI Make Writers Obsolete?  Content Marketing KPIs: Your Guide to Picking the Right KPIs for Content

---

Featured Image: Deemak Daksina/Shutterstock

VIP CONTRIBUTOR

Jeff Riddall

Senior Product Manager at OneLocal

Jeff has been helping organizations manage, measure, and optimize their Web presences for over 20 years. As Senior Product Manager ...