Content Marketing—Statistics, Evidence and Trends

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Even when armed with The Ultimate Content Marketing Guide for B2B Professionals , It’s not always easy convincing business leaders to give you a marketing budget and support for a new initiative like a b2b content marketing strategy. It’s quite a fresh approach compared to traditional marketing and requires a long-term, customer-centric, value-led view of engagement.

We appreciate that you’re juggling a lot of factors when trying to get buy-in from your business leaders and marketing teams. To help, here are common questions and recent B2B content marketing statistics you can use when building your case.

Does Content Marketing Really Work?

Research and case studies over the past decade have generated a wealth of content marketing effectiveness statistics. When it comes to questions like “what is the ROI of content marketing?” data shows it consistently outperforms traditional advertising and paid search. It’s as simple as that.

• When researchers pitted content marketing against paid search, they found that content marketing typically had lead generation stats 3X greater than traditional marketing (Kapost/Eloqua, 2012).

• Content marketing lead generation statistics for website conversion rates show that content marketing adopters were nearly 6X higher than non-adopters (2.9% to 0.5%) (Aberdeen Group, 2013).

• Companies using content marketing generated 97% more backlinks and landed 434% more search engine results pages (SERPs) than those that didn’t. It cost 62% less and resulted in 5X as many sales leads (SEMrush, 2019).

• 36% of enterprise marketers say they’ve shifted paid advertising budget dollars to content marketing in the last 12 months (Content Marketing Insititute/MarketingProfs, 2020).

• 98% of B2B marketers now believe that content performance justifies its cost (Walker Sands, 2019).

• A content marketing ROI case study by Tiger Fitness showed the got a 60% returning customer rate with video content marketing (Marketing Sherpa, 2017).

It's important to note that the long-term, cumulative-impact nature of content marketing requires a different approach towards measuring ROI than traditional advertising. To learn more about how to measure content marketing performance, check out our article "Understanding the Impact of Your Marketing Activity". The Content Marketing Institute also has a great primer on the topic.

Why Content Marketing Is Important for B2B

High quality content plays a critical role in spreading awareness and forming an initial impression of your brand. It also ties content marketing and sales together, as it helps cultivate the trust prospects need to connect with your sales team. It can also promote a deeper relationship. This is why a content marketing plan is so important, especially when there are fewer opportunities to physically meet with prospects or existing clients. SEO and content are now inextricably linked, as search engines continue to prioritise relevancy and quality for search results.

• 72% of marketers reported their business views content as a core business strategy (Content Marketing Institute/Informa Connect, 2020).

• 45% of marketers said that at least 50% of their campaigns are content-led (World Media Group, 2019).

• 48% of business buyers said they engaged with between three and five pieces of content before connecting with a salesperson. 30% said they consume five or more pieces of content before even engaging with a salesperson (Demand Gen Report, 2020).

• 52% of buyers said they were definitely more likely to buy from a vendor after reading its content (MarketingCharts, 2020).

• 70% of marketers said that SEO was better than PPC for generating sales (Databox, 2019).

• 67% stated that SEO is the most effective tactic they implemented in 2019. 51% considered updating existing content to be the second most effective tactic (SEMrush, 2019).

How Does Content Marketing Compare to Social/Email?

In today’s competitive attention economy, people are getting burned out by constant exposure to mass targeted, poor quality messaging. B2B and B2C consumers alike are pushing for more trustworthy, personalised content – otherwise, they won’t consume it.

• One in three adults (35.7%) in the UK have slashed their social media usage in the last 12 months. 29% cited feeling overloaded as their reason for deleting or suspending their social media account. 26.7% reported a lack of trust (i.e. fake news) (Exposure Ninja, 2019).

• 50% of marketers say that personalizing content and experiences is a key challenge for social media from now on (Hootsuite, 2019).

• Only 57% of personal emails are now being opened by recipients, while only 37% are viewed as being useful (Adobe, 2019).

• 27% of marketers report an average email open rate for bulk sends of only 11-15% (Validity, 2019).

When paired with marketing automation, content marketing allows businesses to create and deliver highly targeted, relevant content. This is exactly what is now needed to run effective social and email marketing campaigns.

• 72% of consumers now only engage with personalised marketing messages (SmartInsights, 2019).

• Triggered email open rates are 76% higher, on average than non-triggered email open rates (Epsilon, 2019).

• Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns (Mailchimp, 2017).

How Can Content Marketing Help a Business?

Content marketing helps brand awareness and engagement by ensuring that you have content products throughout your customer journey. B2B statistics show that buyers not only engage with content but share it with their networks if they find it to be valuable. Besides increasing brand awareness with new prospects, content marketing can help to strengthen your relationship with existing customers.

• 86% of B2B marketers have used content marketing in the year to raise brand awareness (Content Marketing Institute, 2019).

• 81% of B2B respondents say they share business-related content with their LinkedIn network. 70% say they pass along content to peers and colleagues via email (Demand Gen Report, 2020).

• 63% of marketers have successfully used content marketing to build loyalty with existing customers in the past year (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs, 2019).

Statistics about content marketing show that it can help improve your overall sales and marketing efforts. More personalised, relevant content helps better qualify and cultivate leads. Prospects hear consistent messaging as they pass from marketing to sales – creating a more cohesive experience and establishing you as an authority.

• 74% of companies found that content marketing increased lead generation, both in quality and quantity (Curata, 2017).

• Businesses with a content marketing strategy achieved 27.1% higher win rates and 18.1% higher quota attainment than those without a content strategy (CSO Insights, 2019).

• 88% of purchase decision-makers believed that thought leadership was effective in enhancing their perceptions of an organisation (Edelman, 2019).

• 49% of respondents used content marketing successfully in the last 12 months to generate sales/revenue (up from 39% reported in 2019) (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs, 2020).

What Audience Preferences Should You Be Thinking About When Building Your Strategy?

It’s important to carefully research what your target audience will find relevant, their communication preferences, and content consumption habits. This will help you build out a content calendar that truly addresses their needs, creating a solid foundation for future engagement.

• 50% of marketers ranked the ability to understand and connect with the audience’s values, interests, and pain points as the top success factor for their strategy (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).

• 65% of B2B buyers cited vendor websites as one of their most highly influential content sources. 48% said third-party websites were the most important and 39% found third-party articles by independent publishers most influential (MarketingCharts, 2020).

• Over half (51%) of consumers say that email is the best way for brands to contact them (SmarterHQ, 2019).

• When asked how their content consumption habits have changed over the past 12 months, 51% of B2B buyers placed a higher emphasis on trustworthiness of the source. 44% prefer content optimised for mobile devices, 43% prefer content from industry influencers, 43% prefer shorter formats, 39% get more content from social/peers, and 34% prefer more interactive content (Demand Gen Report, 2020).

What Are the Latest Trends in Content Marketing?

Content marketing growth statistics show that 77% of marketers say that their company has a content marketing strategy. Meanwhile, 69% of successful B2B marketers now have a documented content marketing strategy (up from 62% in 2018).

One important trend is that marketing automation and AI are on the rise in helping implement and manage content strategies.

• In 2020, the global artificial intelligence (AI) software market is expected to grow approximately 154% year-over-year (Statista, 2020).

• 75% of marketers say they use at least one type of marketing automation tools (Social Media Today, 2019).

• Content quality, quantity, and performance measurement are expected to be top content marketing priorities in 2020 (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs, 2020).

• 51% of marketers agree that using more data to create customised content around their customer journey is a top priority for the next 12 months (Altimeter, 2019).

• 54% of B2B marketers use marketing automation software to assist them with their content marketing efforts. 75% of B2B marketers say marketing technology provides better insight into how content is performing (Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs, 2019).

• According to B2B marketers, the top advantages of marketing automation are improved user experience and relevance of communications (60%). Higher conversion rates (59%), better quality leads (57%), and generating more leads (57%) are other top advantages (Emailmonday, 2020).

Content statistics also reveal that B2B buyers increasingly expect various types of content throughout all stages of their purchase journey. In response, marketers are getting savvier about making the most of their content through reformatting to meet this demand.

• Top content formats B2B purchasers engage with during their buying process include video (65%), white papers (60%), blog posts (56%), webinars (54%), case studies (54%), research/survey reports (54%) and e-books (48%) (Demand Gen Report, 2020).

• Nearly 90% of marketers find repurposing content to be more effective (and cost-efficient) than creating new content from scratch. Top ways to reuse blog posts are as a video, a downloadable PDF, or an infographic (Databox, 2019).

• Video content marketing statistics show 95% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service. And 83% say video has helped them generate leads (Wyzowl, 2020).

What Is the Future of Content Marketing?

We believe that content marketing should begin with a firm foundation for creating positive and impactful relationships. 68% of all B2B marketers say they’ve used content marketing successfully to build credibility with their audience (CMI).

Successful B2B marketing must be more digital and more human, focusing on delivering useful, meaningful, and relevant customer experiences. This is backed by research showing top-performing B2B content marketers put their audience’s informational needs ahead of their company’s sales/promotional message.

Towards this end, marketers are increasingly leveraging automation to assist with audience research, content creation, delivery, and tracking content marketing ROI statistics.

We hope these content marketing statistics will be useful in framing how content marketing can help your business. If you need even more data, we were contacted by Laborator after we wrote this article. They have some great statistics, including valuing the the content marketing industry at $412.88 billion.

If you have additional questions content marketing, automation, or marketing strategy, contact the experts at 1827 Marketing.