Powerful Statistics on Content Marketing (2017)

Powerful Statistics on Content Marketing (2017)

Content marketing is a fantastic way to build your brand’s authority and exert dominance in your chosen field. In order to successfully content market your brand, educating your audience about your products and services automatically allows your brand to become front runners and enables you to establish a credible relation with your audience. Another reason why content marketing is a strategic move for your brand is that more and more customers use ad-blocking plugins and turning to sources they trust, including companies to find information about products and services.

As a marketer, it is important to always want your marketing tactics and plans to be supported by up-to-date data. With this article, you will get the concrete evidence you need to help you design the best content strategy possible.  The good news is there is a ton of data and content marketing statistics which help you build a solid content strategy. Here are the best statistics that Digital Squad’s team provide you.

This post will be updated regularly, so don’t hesitate to comment if you can provide more relevant research which you think should be added to this post.

1- PLAN

Which are the best tactics to develop your content program?

About the efficiency of content in your overall marketing strategy:

• 92% of marketers said their organization consider content as a business asset. (Content Marketing Institute)
• The second most important ambition is building out content marketing as an organizational ability, which ranks only behind measuring ROI. (IDC)
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing tactics and generates about 3 times as many leads. (Source: DemandMetric)

Most common objectives:

• Top three B2B goals for Marketers: Lead generation (85%); sales (84%); lead nurturing (78%). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)
• The top needs from a content marketing perspective: Audience identification and targeting (67%), analytics (67%), creation (60%), distribution (53%). curation and Aggregation (48%). (Altimeter)

• 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. (Source: Hubspot,2017)
• 83% of B2C companies say sales are the most important content marketing goal, while 85% of B2B companies say lead generation is a top priority in terms of goals. (Content Marketing Institute)

Create content with a purpose:

• The top three things that make content effective are audience relevance (58%); engaging and compelling storytelling (57%); triggers a response/action (54%). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders. (Demand Gen Report, 2016)

 Segmentation is key:

• The most common segmentations are: by product/service category (53%); Buyer persona (40%); Stage in buying cycle (32 %); pain point (28%). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• 52% of marketers support two to four roles and buyer personas with dedicated content. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• About 49% of marketers try to drive content to align with the buyer’s journey. (Source: LookBookHQ). And 48% of marketers support three to five buying stages with dedicated content. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• 67% of the typical B2B buyer’s journey is now done digitally with 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions. (Lenati)

2- CREATE

Which best practices to turn your messages into effective material?

The best formats according to customer’s insights:

• 47% percent of B2B buyers consume 3 to 5 pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson. (DemandGen Report – 2016 Content Preferences Survey)

• The most popular type of content among B2B buyers in 2017 is Prescriptive content that lays out a formula for success. (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• 68% of buyers report they frequently give credence to peer reviews and user-generated feedback. 60% give credence to content authored by a third-party publication or analyst. (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)

• Buyers are most willing to register for and share information about themselves in exchange for white papers (76%), eBooks (63%), webinars (79%), case studies (57%) and third-party/analyst reports (66%). They’re less willing to register for podcasts, video (19% for both), and infographics (24%). (DemandGen Report – 2017 Content Preferences Survey)
• Top five types of interactive content used by marketers: assessments, calculators, contests, quizzes, interactive infographics. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Currently, 53% of businesses have used some form of interactive content, and 45 percent claim it can be highly effective (Content Marketing Institute)
• By 2017, video content will represent 74% of all internet traffic. (com)
• 4X as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.   (com)
• 50% of search queries are four words or longer. (WordStream, 2016)
• 20% of search queries on Google’s mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches. (Search Engine Land, 2016)

 Manage your content creation:

• Target content mix: 65% created (created by dedicated, internal staff, crowd-sourced internally, or outsourced); 25% curated; and 10% syndicated. (Curata)

• On average, 18% of companies’ blog posts are 750 words or more. (Curata)

• Titles with 6-13 words attract more traffic. (HubSpot, 2016)

• Types of content used in social media marketing include visual assets (85%), up from 74% in 2016. In second place comes blogging (66%). Next comes Live video (such as Facebook Live and Periscope) which is used by 28% of marketers (up from 14% in 2016). Podcasting however is only used by 8% of marketers and represents an opportunity. (Social Media Examiner)

• Studies showed that Blogging is more important for B2B marketers (with 43% saying it is the chief tool) than B2C marketers with 26% of whom claim it’s most important. B2C marketers place more importance on visual content (45% say it’s the most essential) than B2B marketers (32%). (Social Media Examiner).
• B2B companies that blogged 11+ times per month had almost 3X more traffic than those blogging 0-1 times per month. (HubSpot, 2015).
• 1 in 10 blog posts is compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time. (Source: Hubspot,2016)

Include content curation:

• 82% of marketers curate content. (IMN Inc.)

• Over 50% of marketers say it has increased their brand visibility, their brand’s leadership, SEO, web traffic and buyer engagement. (Curata)

• 41% of marketers that curate content indicate it has increased the number and/or quality of their sales-ready leads. (Curata)

• 29% of companies reuse and repurpose content. (Curata)

• 48% of companies are not curating content.(Curata)

3- PUBLISH

Choosing the right place at the right time

Current frequency of content publishing:

• 38% of marketers publish content weekly or more often. (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)

• 91% of the best business bloggers publish weekly or more often. Only 70% of all other bloggers post at this frequency. (Curata)
• 69% of companies use an editorial calendar for content marketing. (Curata)
• Companies that blog have 434 percent more indexed pages than those that do not. (Search Engine Journal )
• 55% of marketers have a blog optimized for mobile in 2016, compared to 50% in 2015 and 43% in 2014. (Social Media Examiner)

• Some 15% of internet users read or comment on discussion forums such as Reddit, Digg, or Slashdot, whilst 10% use the blogging website Tumblr. (Pew Research Center, 2015)
• The time people spend watching YouTube on their TV has more than doubled year after year. (Google, 2016)

Repurpose content:

• Almost 60% of marketers reuse content two to five times. They generate “snackable” content based on assets. (Source: LookBookHQ)
• The most common content marketing delivery mechanism is social media, used by 87% of marketers. (Source: CMI)

4 – PROMOTE

The best ways to distribute your content and boost your traffic

Leading sites to promote your type of content:

• The top five most effective social media platforms to deliver content and engage audiences are LinkedIn (82%); Twitter (66%); YouTube (64%); Facebook (41% effective); SlideShare (38% effective). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• For every 100,000 followers on Facebook, only 130 people will click on an organic post.(com)
• 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine. (Smart Insights, 2016)
• Top three paid advertising methods used by B2B marketers to promote/distribute content are Search Engine Marketing (66%); print or other offline promotion (57%); traditional online banner ads (55%). (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• Over 81% of marketers found that increased traffic occurred in as little as six hours per week which was invested in social media marketing. (Social Media Examiner)

• More than half of publishers’ 300 most-shared Page posts were Facebook videos.(com)
• Globally, “making people laugh” was identified as the top personal motivator for sharing content. (Adobe)

• 86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly. In addition 15% would like to get them daily. 64% of people prefer rich text emails. (Hubspot, 2016)

 5- MEASURE

How analyzing and learning from your content strategy

The most popular content marketing metrics:

• The top five content marketing metrics are: web traffic/visits (63%); views/downloads (59%); lead quantity (42%); lead quality (39%); social media sharing (36%). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• Content marketing metrics routinely tracked by organizations: Views (55 %); leads (48%); likes, +1’s, tweets, shares (45%); downloads (41%); conversion rate (40%). (MarketingSherpa)
• 55% of business bloggers are getting 5% or more of their corporate web site’s traffic from their blog. (Curata)
• The average reader only spends 37 seconds reading an article or blog post. –NewsCred Insights
• Over 81% of marketers found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing.  (Social Media Examiner)

• The average ROI on CRO tools is 223%. (Venture Beat)
• 8% is the average conversion rate for websites using video, compared to 2.9% for those who don’t. (Adélie Studios)
• 59% of marketers rely on total lead volume as a top metric. (BrightTALK, 2015)
• 41% of organizations with content marketing programs say they see an increase in brand awareness.(com)
• Marketers who check their metrics 3X+ times a week are over 20% more likely to achieve a positive ROI.(State of Inbound 2017)
• 50% of B2C content marketers and 57% of B2B content marketers find measuring content effectiveness a major challenge.(Content Marketing Institute)

6- ORGANIZE

Optimizing your content marketing structure and your efforts

What budget allocate to content marketing:

• 82% B2B marketers of Australian marketers use content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• 51% of B2B marketers indicate they will increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months. (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs)

• 80% of companies allocate 10% of their budget (excluding headcount) to content marketing (a majority of responses from 0 to 30%). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• 53% of marketers allocate between 1 and 30 percent of marketing budget to marketing technology (25 percent allocate between 1 and 10 percent). (LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community)
• 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budget to fund more digital marketing. (Gartner)

• 4% of marketers have two to four employees dedicated to content marketing.(contently.com)

Specific content marketing programs:

• 70% of content marketing leaders are increasing investment in marketing technology. (Curata)

• Marketing technology represents 33% of the average marketing budget. (Gartner, 2016)
• 51% of marketers and executives surveyed say they will have a content marketing leader by 2017. (Marketing profs)

• 46% of auto marketers have a formal content marketing program in place, compared to 33% of overall respondents. (IMN Inc.)
• 46% of marketers said their organization has a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset; 44% said they don’t, and ten percent weren’t sure. (Content Marketing Institute/Intelligent Content Conference)

THE TAKEAWAY

There are many different forms of building a content marketing strategy depending on how customers receive and consume content. It is important to keep that in mind and know the last insights to stay on top of trends if you want to be top dog.

Unsurprisingly, your real issue should be to create the right content that will inspire your customers to click on your website, visit it and subscribe to get news from you. Take advantage of these statistics to drive your content marketing strategy.

Digital Squad strives to guide you so that you can generate more traffic and sales using content. If you want more information on the services we can provide with content marketing, then get in touch with us either online or over the phone on 0434188870 today. We are a b2b marketing agency with expertise in SEO services, Facebook marketing Auckland, LinkedIn marketing, AdWords management agency Auckland and more. 

Which of these marketing statistics would you want to see developed in a future blogpost? Also, which content tactic would you like more details of? Let us know in the comments below.

Need more topics to get started with your content marketing strategy? Check out our guidelines: Overview of Inbound Marketing, Why Content Marketing is Essential for your Brand.