Continuing to grow each year, content marketing is here to stay. Content marketing is defined as:

“A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”Have you been thinking about incorporating content marketing into your current strategy, or increasing your budget to allow for more efforts focused on this? These stats will surely convince you!

Here are some awesome stats on content marketing, let’s go…  

1. Only 30% of B2B marketers said their content marketing efforts were effective, versus 38% last year. (Source: CMI)

To be an effective content marketer you need to consistently create and distribute quality content that your targeted influencers and audience will find helpful.

With content creation and management claiming the second-largest share of digital marketing budgets, you need to make it your top priority in 2016 and hire a content marketing team.

TIP: In order to maximize the effectiveness, develop a documented content marketing strategy.

FACT:

• • • • 53% of the most effective marketers have a documented content marketing strategy
      • 40% of the least effective marketers have no strategy at all.

2. 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing (86% in 2015) (Source: CMI)

FACT:

• • • • 8% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as sophisticated
      • 24% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as mature
      • 29% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as adolescent
      • 27% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as young
      • 11% of of B2B marketers rate their content marketing maturity as first steps

3. 38% of B2C marketers said their content marketing efforts were effective, versus 37% last year. (Source: CMI)

TIP: Increase your content effectiveness and meet with your team weekly to execute a well-documented content strategy.

FACT: 48% of B2C marketers meet with their teams either daily or weekly to discuss their content marketing program.

4. 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing. (Source: CMI)

5. On average there are 13 tactics used in B2B content marketing tactics (Source: CMI)

FACT: The most effective B2B content marketing tactics include:

• • • • 75% In-Person Events
      • 66% Webinars / Webcasts
      • 65% Case Studies
      • 63% White Papers
      • 62% Videos
      • 61% Research Reports
      • 60% eNewsletters
      • 59% Blogs
      • 58% Infographics
      • 58% Online Presentations

6. 77% of marketers are confident in their data-driven approach (Source: MediaMath)

7. According to AOL and Nielsen, 27 million pieces of content are shared daily. Some of it is great, some not so great. (Source: AOL and Nielsen)

8. More than 2.73 blog posts are written and published on a daily basis (Source: Relevance)

9. 347 WordPress blog posts are published, 48 hours of YouTube Videos are uploaded and 571 Websites are launched every minute of every day (Source: Mashable)

10. Content marketing in 2015 generated 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. (Source: HubSpot)

11. 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI from their inbound marketing. (Source: HubSpot)

12. 58% of marketers said “original written content” is the most important type of content, outdoing visuals and videos. (Source: Social Media Examiner)

FACT: The average user typically reads 28% of the content before they devote their time on the rest. Jakob Nielson  found that we spend only 4.4 seconds for every 100 words of content on the web.

TIP: Break up content – it must be scannable. Grab the skimmers attention!

• • • • Take advantage of sub headlines
      • Sub-headlines (H2s and H3s) stand out by default. They stand alone on a line and are usually bolder and bigger than the surrounding text
      • Use bullet points to explain benefi­ts or points worth noting
      • Colored backgrounds
      • Bold keywords a few times (don’t overdo this)
      • Should be media rich
      • Should contain offers and CTA’s
      • Include tables, quotes and graphs

13. 72% of B2B marketers continue to be heavily focused on creating engaging content, citing it as the top priority for their internal content creators over the next year. (Source: CMI)

TIP: Work with your content team to write comprehensive, in-depth and resourceful content.

FACT: Long-form content ranks higher in Google’s search results than short-form content. The average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words. (Source: Backlinko)

14. Lead generation (85%) and sales (84%) will be the most important goals for B2B content marketers over the next 12 months. (Source: CMI)

15. 73% of content creators plan to prioritize creating more engaging content in 2016, and 55% plan to prioritize creating visual content (Source: CMI)

TIP: Your next infographic can be based off of your top performing blog post, gather compelling data and repurpose it into a visual design.

FACT: The demand for infographics has increased 800% in the past year. Source: Unbounce

16. Visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Source: Buffer)

17. 46% of marketers say photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies. (Source: CMO Council)

18. Content placed above the fold gets 80% of our attention (Source: Peep Laja)

TIP: Find a balance with image headers. Try testing smaller images that assists the content, and not letting the images take over.

19. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.(Source: Kissmetrics)

20. Only 26% marketers are investing in content distribution, even though more than half believe they need to. (Source: Forbes)

After hours of research and writing, you need to spend even more time promoting. The whole idea ‘create it and they will come’ doesn’t exist. If you have a goal of driving traffic and leads, you’ll need to dedicate a large percentage of your marketing budget towards content promotion.

21. 66% of B2C marketers are getting better results with Facebook, which is the social media platform they use most often (vs. 58% last year). (Source: CMI)

There’s been a shift in the paid methods that B2C marketers use to promote/distribute content. Over the last year, the use of promoted posts, social ads, and search engine marketing (SEM) overtook print/other offline promotion as the paid method that B2C marketers use most frequently to distribute content. (Source: CMI)

TIP: Promote content via owned, earned and paid media channels.

FACT: Influencers sharing your content can lead to a 3 to 10 times increase in conversion rates.

20% of women will consider purchasing products supported by influencers.

Influencers can also turn into brand evangelists: 77% consumers are more likely to buy from their endorsers. (Source: SEM Rush)

As stated in Forbes, 92% consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source.

Develop an outreach plan for influencers to help promote your content. This will help you reach more people, and establish yourself as an authority in the space.

22. 91% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. (Source: TopRankBlog)

Fact: LinkedIn accounts for 21% of shares of high-engagement publications in the business vertical. (Source: Buffer)

23. 73% of B2B marketers use YouTube to distribute content. (Source: TopRankBlog)

24. The 5 most important marketing tactics for B2B businesses are (in order): (Source: CMI)
    

• • • In-person events
    • Webinars/webcasts
    • Case studies
    • White papers
    • Videos

25. 51% of business owners report that content management is “very important” or “absolutely critical” to creating a cohesive customer journey. (Source: Salesforce)

26. 29% of leading marketers systematically reuse and repurpose content. (Source: Curata)

Content repurposing should be executed for each blog post – it’s vital to your success. It’s a quick and easy way to expand your content assets. You can do podcasts, videos, infographics, and eBooks – the opportunities are endless.

85% of marketers reuse content in some capacity  – see below:

27. 28% of marketers want to learn more about the art of podcasting. (Source: Social Media Examiner)

28. 57% of organizations now have two or more people dedicated to content marketing (Source: Contently)

29. B2B marketers cite web traffic (63%) and sales lead quality (54%) as their top metrics (Source: Hubspot)

30. Content production is the biggest challenge for 44% of marketers. (Source: LookBookHQ, now PathFactory)
31. 71% of companies planned to increase their digital marketing budgets this year (Source: Webbiquity)

32. 73% of B2B marketers use video as a content marketing tactic, and 7% of marketers plan on increasing their YouTube marketing.

33. 51% of B2B marketers will increase content marketing spending in 2016 (Source: CMI)

Chart below on the difference between B2C and B2B marketers:

Conclusion

I hope these stats give you better insight where content marketing stands today. If you’re not convinced, here is a brief summary why you need content marketing:

• • Improve brand awareness & engagement
  • Increase traffic
  • Increase sales/leads
  • Establish a community
  • Present your company as a thought leader

Don’t be left behind by your competition! Take these tips and brainstorm with your team on how you can generate more traffic and sales.