That’s where content marketing statistics come in. They don’t need to be boring stats – instead, these trends can help you figure out how best to market your content in the future. Pulled together from a wide range of expert sources, we examine some of the content marketing statistics you need to be aware of.
What is the value of content marketing?
There are various stats around this topic, but two of the most interesting come from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI):
- Content marketing gets 3+ times as many leads as outbound marketing. It also costs less – around 62%, to be precise.
- Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads per dollar spent on paid search campaigns.
If those two statistics aren’t enough to convince you that content marketing is worth investing in, we don’t know what is. Oh, perhaps this:
According to DemandMetric, 78% of CMOs surveyed see content marketing as the future of marketing.
They can’t all be wrong, can they?
What types of content marketing are there?
There are about as many as we have content marketing statistics for you (possibly more, in fact), but here are a couple of trends to focus on.
- According to ImpactPlus, 77% of internet users read blogs. And the CMI follows that up by saying small businesses with blogs generate 126% more lead growth than those who don’t blog.
- SEMRush also found that most of their survey respondents produced blog posts (92%), with the next most popular content types being email (66%), case studies (47%), infographics (45%), and ebooks or white papers (37%).
- Although visual content like infographics is important, and we all know everyone loves a video, Social Media Examiner found that 58% of marketers find “original written content” to be the most important part of their strategy.
- And in case you’re wondering where that written content comes from, 70% of businesses do NOT outsource their content creation (according to SEMRush). However, among the ones that do, 81% of that outsourced work is writing.
What about B2B content marketing statistics?
No, we hadn’t forgotten. Trends are important for B2B marketers to keep on top of, so here are a couple just for you.
- 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing, according to the CMI.
- And in fact, TopRankBlog says that the most successful of these B2B marketers are spending roughly 39% of their marketing budget on content marketing.
- The same website says that B2B marketers use around 13 different content marketing tactics.
- And though not wholly based on B2B respondents, SEMRush rates the most important content marketing tactics as:
- SEO
- Updating/repurposing existing content
- Educational content/how-to guides
- Optimizing customer journeys
- Creating more visual content
Recommended: B2B SEO Services
Visuals are perfect for social media. This leads us to our final statistic:
According to SEMRush, both Facebook and LinkedIn are the most effective social media platforms for content distribution. With a rating of 36% each, they’re way ahead of Instagram (9%), Twitter (8%), and YouTube (5%), according to the content marketers interviewed.
So, before you rework that content marketing strategy, take the time to digest these content marketing statistics. It’s an ever-changing world out there, but keeping up with the latest trends can only help you to stay ahead.
* According to a SEMRush survey of over 1,500 participants.
