We surveyed 1,500 marketers and pulled together the most impactful content marketing facts and statistics for this year. For example: 72% of surveyed companies plan to increase their content marketing budgets. (Should your business do the same?)
This article also shares:
- The #1 content type that’s working best for businesses right now
- The best-performing content distribution channels
- The top three content marketing tactics companies succeed with
- And much more.
All to help you plan and execute an effective content marketing strategy. Check out our full list of content marketing facts and stats.
We surveyed 1,500 marketers to uncover what role content marketing plays in their day-to-day ops. We looked at more than 20 industries and collected data from 40+ countries to summarize the landscape of content marketing.
Content Marketing Success Factors
- 78% of brands that were successful with content in 2021 have a documented content marketing strategy.
- 73% of them spent 10% to 70% of their total marketing budget on content marketing.
- 46% of them increased their paid content promotional budget in 2021.
Content Marketing Budgets
- 72% of companies plan to increase their content marketing budget in 2022
- 53% of companies that spent less than 55 of their marketing budget on content didn’t succeed with content marketing.
The Importance of Content Audits
- 65% of successful brans run content audits more than twice a year.
- 46% of companies who never run content audits failed.
Successful Tactics
- 55% Focused on improving content quality
- 46% Made SEO a priority
- 41% created more video and visual content
Which Tactics helped you the most to make your Content Strategy Successful? Other tactics that companies successfully implemented:
- Improving the quality of our content: 55%
- Search engine optimization: 46%
- Creating more video and visual content: 41%
- Updating and repurposing existing content: 38%
- Website optimization: 35%
- Analyzing competitors’ content: 28%
- Researching our audience / optimizing the customer journey: 26%
- Publishing more “How to” and educational content: 25%
- Adapting to COVID-related changes (e.g., agility): 24%
- Diversification / publishing new content types: 24%
- Collaborating with other teams (e.g., sales): 22%
- Optimizing content for mobile: 21%
- Trying new distribution channels: 20%
- Collaborating more with industry influencers: 14%
Top Content Marketing Challenges
- 41% Have difficulty attracting quality leads with content
- 39% Cannot generate enough traffic with content
- 31% Struggle to create content that resonates with their audience
High Performers: Content Types
- Video: 37%
- Blog posts: 36%
- Success stories: 22%
- Case studies: 16%
Top Channels for Content Distribution and Promotion
- Social media (organic): 69%
- Email marketing: 48%
- Social media (paid): 48%
- Organic search: 44%
Use of Content Marketing
Is content marketing part of your marketing strategy?
- Yes: 97%
- No: 3%
Do you Have a Documented Content Marketing Strategy?
- Yes: 57%
- No: 40%
- Not sure: 3%
How would you rate your content marketing strategy’s maturity and complexity?
- First steps: 42%
- Fairly developed: 36%
- Advanced: 19%
- Not sure: 3%
What are your Top Content Marketing Challenges?
- Attracting quality leads with content: 41%
- Generating enough traffic and promoting content: 39%
- Creating content that resonates with our audience: 31%
- Providing the ROI of content: 30%
- Improving the SEO performance of content: 29%
- Producing authentic and high-quality content: 28%
- Generating content ideas: 25%
- Optimizing content marketing workflow and operations: 21%
- Finding enough resources to produce content: 20%
- Publishing content at scale: 19%
- Finding the right content marketing technologies: 19%
- Maintaining a consistent tone of voice across all channels: 16%
- Hiring highly qualified content marketing talent: 16%
- Creating educational content vs. product-centric content: 14%
- Other: 1%
How will COVID affect your Content Operations and Plans?
- 30%: We will do selected events offline, while still focusing on online events (e.g., webinars)
- 30%: It won’t change anything
- 30%: We will start planning content for the longer term
- 26%: We will switch to regularly hosting and attending in-person events
- 26%: We will increase our content marketing budget and grow our team
- 20%: Our content team will be back in the office (or in a hybrid mode)
What are the Key Areas of Content Marketing Investments?
- Social media and community building: 41%
- Better quality of written content: 40%
- Content promotion and distribution: 40%
- Video: 35%
- Customer research: 34%
- SEO: 33%
- Better content analytics: 31%
- Other advanced visual content (e.g., data visualization, interactive content): 23%
- Integrated content marketing campaigns: 22%
- Growing the content team: 21%
- Events (in-person, hybrid, and digital): 16%
- Content design and user experience (UX): 14%
- Audio content: 11%
- Other: 0%
Which Results did you achieve after updating you content?
- Engagement went up: 45%
- Rankings or traffic increased: 43%
- Nothing changed: 11%
- Rankings or traffic decreased: 7%
- Engagement went down: 7%
- We didn’t update our content: 4%
- Other: 1%
Most Successful Content Types by Format
- Video: 37%
- Blog post: 36%
- Success stories: 22%
- Case studies: 16%
- Webinars: 16%
- Infographics: 15%
- Product guides and manuals: 13%
- Data visualizationsL 12%
- Ebooks: 11%
- White papers: 11%
- Print: 11%
- Podcasts: 10%
- Quizzes: 7%
- Other: 2%
How many people do you have in your Content Marketing Team?
- 1-3 specialists: 42%
- We don’t have a dedicated content team or person: 21%
- 4-10 specialists: 20%
- 11-20 specialists: 9%
- 21-35 specialists: 3%
- More than 50 specialists: 2%
