[SlideShare]: 25 Content Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know

Content Marketing is a popular way for brands to reach target audiences with creative, relevant and engaging content. In fact, 86 percent of B2C brands and 91 percent of B2B brands are currently using Content Marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

If you’re interested in Content Marketing and want to know more about how brands are using strategic content pieces to connect with consumers, check out the newest SlideShare from Mindstream Media Group:

25 Content Marketing statistics every marketer needs to know

View original on SlideShare

Our Content Marketing statistics collection covers topics like:

  • How Content Marketing helps brands connect with huge audiences of dedicated internet users.
  • Consumers reliance on the internet to find the information they need to make purchase decisions.
  • The kind of content that brands need to create to cut through the online clutter.
  • How brands are fine-tuning their Content Marketing efforts and strategies.
  • The return on investment for brands who fully invest in Content Marketing.
  • How improving process, strategy and procedure can provide a huge boost to Content Marketing efforts.
  • The challenges brands face when managing their content efforts internally.
  • How creating high-quality content drives incremental Content Marketing success.

Related – [Infographic]: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Content Marketing


Are you ready to stop blending in and start standing out? Outshine your competitors with Content Marketing campaigns from Mindstream Media Group. Contact us to learn more.

Not ready yet? No problem. Check out our Content Marketing 101 series to learn how Content Marketing can help your brand reach potential customers.

[Guide]: The Ultimate Guide to Launching Effective Content Marketing Campaigns

 

The Ultimate Guide to Launching Content Marketing Campaigns

Who should read this guide?

Brand marketers looking for the best ways to reach target audiences, increase leads and guide prospects towards a purchase. Whether you’re new to Content Marketing or just looking for ways to improve your current efforts, this guide will give you the information you need to create effective content pieces.

What you’ll learn from this guide?

1. What is Content Marketing

Defining the practice and explaining the difference between Content Marketing and basic content creation.

2. Why your brand needs Content Marketing

Explaining the benefits of Content Marketing and how it can help your brand connect with target audiences.

3. How to launch Content Marketing campaigns

Detailing the steps your brand needs to take before launching effective Content Marketing campaigns.

Excerpt:

As a practice, Content Marketing is constantly evolving, so the definition has to evolve as well. Here’s a widely accepted definition from the Content Marketing Institute that’s been updated to reflect how the practice has changed:

“Content Marketing is 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.”

A lot of brands create content and some might even consider what they’re doing to be Content Marketing. But, there’s a big difference between content creation and Content Marketing.

[Guide]: The Ultimate Guide to Launching Effective Content Marketing Campaigns

Want to learn more? Check out our Content Marketing 101 series. And while you’re there, subscribe to Mindstream Media Group’s blog for regular updates.

Content Marketing 101: 10 Steps for Developing Effective Content Marketing Strategies

This is the fourth post in our Content Marketing 101 series. Make sure to subscribe to our blog for more helpful tips for marketers.

Welcome to Part 4 of our Content Marketing series. As we covered in Part 1, Content Marketing is a lot more than just writing copy; it’s a comprehensive process focused on creating content pieces for specific audiences to drive consumer action and achieve business goals. It’s a process that requires a lot of effort behind-the-scenes before any content is ever created.

To give you an idea of what goes into developing a Content Marketing strategy, we’ve summarized the process into an easy-to-follow to do list below. But, unlike most listicle blog posts this to do list comes with no promises that executing the steps will be effortless or quick. Creating effective content isn’t always easy, but when done right, it’s a proven way for your brand to connect with consumers.

To do list – 10 steps you need to complete before launching Content Marketing campaigns

No. 1: Align campaigns with your business goals

At the onset of any marketing initiative, it’s important to make sure campaign objectives align with the overall goals of your organization. Before launching Content Marketing efforts, determine the goals that are most important to your brand and consider the role your marketing team plays to support these goals.

Is your marketing team charged with increasing brand awareness, guiding prospective customers through the buying journey, empowering prospects by providing them the information they need to become customers? Chances are, it’s a combination of these objectives and more. Making a list of your brand’s overall goals and understanding what your team can do to support each one is an essential step to developing content that reaches the right audiences at the right times.

No. 2: Identify your target audience

Reaching the right audiences – people who are most likely to buy your brand’s products and services – requires a deep understanding of those consumers. Building out buyer personas is an effective way to get know these audiences. Buyer personas are semi-fictional profiles of your ideal consumers that outline their needs and wants, media habits and the types of messaging that resonates best with them.

Resource:

If your brand hasn’t built out buyer personas, this template can help get you started.

No. 3: Map out your customers’ buying journeys

Now it’s time to determine what information your target audiences need at specific times in their path to purchase. By mapping out your personas’ buying journeys, you’ll get a better understanding of how consumers make relevant purchase decisions and what types of content are most effective at each stage.

This step is crucial because buying journeys are constantly changing. The internet has enabled consumers to conduct in-depth research for any buying decision. When people have a question about a purchase, they can just turn to their phones to find the products and services that best fit their needs.

According to Think with Google, mobile searches for “best” have grown by more than 80 percent in the past two years. And, this trend isn’t specific to high consideration purchases. In fact, searches for “best” are growing even faster among low-consideration products.
Example of growing best searches on mobile via Think with Google
The information consumers need varies from person to person, which means these searches are also becoming much more personalized. Think with Google uses shoes for an example. Today’s consumers don’t just search for “best shoes.” They search for the shoes that are best for them.

Example of growing searches for different types of shoes via Think with Google

 

Resources

Here are some resources to help you find out how consumers are searching for your products and services.

  • Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool – find search volume for relevant keywords.
  • Google Trends – discover top search trends for topics related to your brand.
  • Buzzsumo – analyze what content performs best for any topic on social media.
  • Quora – find top questions related to your brand’s products and services.

No. 4: Identify your brand’s story

Guiding consumers through the buying journey requires messages that resonate with target audiences. Content Marketing can help you do this by sharing your brand’s story in a way that focuses on the needs and wants of the customer rather than the features and benefits of your products and services.
3 components of effective storytelling
The best way to keep the resolution focused on your target audience is to figure out your brands Golden Circle – a three-question exercise to help you nail down the “why,” “how” and “what” of your brand.

Golden Circle-Why How What
The key is to focus on your brand’s “why” and “how.” This keeps the story focused on what your products do for the consumer, rather than just what your products do.

No. 5: Set objectives for your Content Marketing campaigns

Remember, Content Marketing is about creating content with a strategic purpose to achieve business goals. Using your overall business goals from the first step, set clearly defined objectives specific to your Content Marketing strategy. This will keep you accountable and help you make optimizations based on performance.

Resources

Use the SMART framework to define effective Content Marketing goals:
SMART goals

No. 6: Establish editorial rules

Before creating any content, it’s important to determine your brand’s editorial style, voice and mission. This step makes sure the content your produce:

  • Focuses on the needs and wants of your target audiences.
  • Aligns with your overall business goals.
  • Uses consistent style rules.
  • Is free of spelling errors and poor grammar.

Establishing editorial rules has two main components:

  1. Brand editorial guidelines – the rules that will dictate your content’s style (e.g., AP Style, Chicago Style, etc.), voice (e.g., authoritative, conversational, witty, etc.) and publishing frequency.
  2. Editorial mission statement – a guiding principle for creating future content that encompasses your brand’s story, unique value, business goals and buyer personas.

No. 7: Build your content team

If you decide to implement Content Marketing campaigns in-house, you’ll need to determine your team and assign members responsibilities. It’s likely that team members will take on more than one of these roles, but allowing members to focus on and own specific processes will lead to better content in the long run.
Content Marketing team-roles and responsibilities

As you can see, Content Marketing is a very involved process and there’s a lot of different roles for your team to take on. That’s why a lot of brands choose to turn to outside agency partners to help them implement and manage Content Marketing campaigns.

No. 8: Establish a system for managing content

Whether it’s via Excel Spreadsheets, Google Sheets or task management software, you’ll want to create a system to manage the process of creating, publishing and promoting your content.

Resources

Here are three helpful tools you can set up to help you track your content marketing efforts. You can access free templates for each tool using the links below.

No. 9: Come up with a plan to repurpose content

Creating effective content can be very time-consuming. Make sure you get the most value out of every piece of content by setting up a repurposing plan.

Here are just a few ways you can repurpose content:

  • Create blog posts by breaking up long-form content pieces.
  • Write a long-form content piece like an e-book by using a series of related blog posts.
  • Republish content on other websites.

Benefits of repurposing content

No. 10: Determine your plan to track and measure results

Implementing a Content Marketing strategy requires a lot of effort, don’t let all that work go to waste by not monitoring the performance of your content.

Start by determining which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you want to track. Review your goals from Step 5 and select KPIs that help you determine if your content efforts have been successful at achieving them. For example, let’s say one of your goals was to increase leads coming from your website. Obviously, you’ll want to track the number of users and visits to the site. But, a visit isn’t necessarily a qualified lead. Instead, make sure to set up tracking for site visitors who completed an action indicating they’re interested in buying – like filling a form to download a piece of content or adding an item to a shopping cart without checking out.

Resources:

There’s a lot of different tools you can use to track performance. Make sure to select the tools that are best for measuring your KPIs.

  • Website analytics – tracks and reports your website traffic.
  • Webmaster tools – monitors your site’s performance in search results.
  • Keyword rankers – tracks the ranking of your site for relevant search terms.
  • Social analytics – gathers traffic and engagement data from your social platforms.
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) software – manages your brand’s relationships with prospects and customers.
  • Marketing automation – tracks leads through your sales pipeline.

Next steps

These 10 steps are just the beginning of the journey, a critical rite of passage to help set you up for success. But once they’re completed, you get to move on to the fun part – creating content.

Having trouble getting started or need help improving your current content efforts? Contact Mindstream Media Group to learn how our Content Marketing solution reaches the right audiences at the right times.

Download our guide to learn everything you need to know to launch effective Content Marketing campaigns.

The Ultimate Guide to Launching Content Marketing Campaigns

Content Marketing 101: Top Benefits of Content Marketing at Each Stage of the Buying Journey

This is the third post in our Content Marketing 101 series outlining the benefits of Content Marketing. 

Marketers talk a lot about the consumer buying journey – i.e., the process customers go through to make a purchase. But despite all the fanfare, it’s still kind of an opaque concept that varies based on the consumer and what they’re buying. Some purchases are so basic it’s a stretch to call them journeys (“buying jaunts” doesn’t have the same ring to it though), while other purchases require exhaustive research and planning (think of buying a candy bar vs. a new car).

So, the buying journey is more of a flexible sequence of touchpoints organized into four stages, rather than a rigid progression. Still, for most purchases, each of these touchpoints represents an opportunity for advertisers to connect with consumers and encourage them to choose their brand.

While Content Marketing is often thought of as a top-of-the-funnel initiative, there are a lot of ways brands can use content to guide consumers to a purchase. For Part 3 of our Content Marketing 101 series, we’ve outlined some ways Content Marketing campaigns can benefit your brand throughout the journey.

Top 10 Benefits of Content Marketing – By Stage in Buying Journey

Top 10 benefits of Content Marketing by stage in buying journey

Awareness Stage

Increases website traffic

One of the goals of Content Marketing is to increase the quality and quantity of a brand’s website content, which increases website traffic for a couple of reasons. First, an ample amount of quality content gives consumers a reason to visit the site. Second, quality content makes it easier for consumers to find your site. The more content you publish, the higher you’ll rank in search engine results. And, higher search engine rankings mean more visitors (and more leads).

Impact of monthly blog posts on inbound leads

Source: HubSpot

But it’s not enough to just create content, your brand needs to create the right content. To rank well in search results, this usually means long-form, high-quality pieces.

The impact of word count on search engine rankingSources: Backlinko and Can I Rank?

That doesn’t mean longer content equals quality content, it’s just that search engines prefer longer pieces. But, quality should always trump quantity. Here’s how Senior Google Webmaster Trend Analyst, John Mueller sums it up:

“In most cases, quality is better than quantity. Our algorithms explicitly try to find and recommend websites that provide content that’s of high quality, unique and compelling to users.”

Grows your social media audience

Growing a social media following requires staying active across platforms. While the ideal post-frequency varies by platform, typically accounts that post more often have more followers, especially on Twitter.

average number of tweets by follower base

Content Marketing gives your brand a steady flow of high-quality original material to share so you can limit the amount of content your re-post from other brands.

Builds up your email list

Content Marketing helps build your brand’s email and prospect lists by producing strategic content pieces designed to promote profitable consumer action like filling out a form to download content or subscribing to your brand’s email newsletter. These actions (i.e., conversions) often require consumers to enter contact information like their email.

Related – [Infographic]: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Content Marketing

Consideration Stage

Increases website engagement

We covered how content increases website traffic, but what about once consumers are on the site? Content Marketing can increase website engagement by:

  1. Providing visitors with high-quality content they’ll want to consume.
  2. Encouraging users to visit related pages or download relevant content.
  3. Prompting users to contact your brand.
Drives social engagement

Building a large social following is good, but building a large social following that’s highly engaged is even better. Content Marketing fuels this engagement with content that resonates with audiences and encourages followers to interact. And the numbers back this up: blog posts with more than 1,500 words receive 57 percent more social shares than blogs with less than 400 words (again, still focus on the quality of that content, not the quantity).

Impact of word count on social media sharesSource: Quick Sprout

Builds a deeper connection with consumers

In the consideration stage, differentiating your brand is essential. To do this, brands need to communicate the unique value they provide to consumers in a way that resonates with target audiences on a deeper level. A great way to do that is with a common Content Marketing tactic – storytelling.

When done right, storytelling strengthens your relationships with your customers and target audiences. For example, Dollar Shave Club built its brand on an industry-disrupting value proposition – an online subscription model that shipped affordable razors directly to customers’ homes – and content that resonated with consumers on a deeper level – by making them laugh. DSC’s first displayed their Content Marketing prowess when they exploded onto the scene in 2012 with the video below, which the company uploaded to YouTube for free.

Over the past few years, the video accumulated more than 25 million (free) views as DSC captured more and more of the razor market, gained millions of subscribers and eventually cashed in for a cool $1 billion when Unilever decided to just buy the startup rather try to compete.

Here’s how DSC’s CMO Adam Weber once explained the company’s marketing success in an interview with eMarketer: “(It’s) because we can tell stories well. We can find a resonant idea, we can deliver it in a relatable voice and connect one-to-one… The way to reach (consumers is) to have that authentic feel, is to be relatable, allow guys to put themselves in your shoes as a brand, as opposed to talking at them or talking above them.”

Decision Stage

Delivers the information that consumers need at the right moments

On average, customers need about 4.5 online interactions with a brand before converting. That’s plenty of opportunities for your brand to deliver effective messaging to help a consumer choose your products and services. In some ways, Content Marketing can be a more effective approach than traditional advertising in this stage. High-quality content can project expertise and inspire trust by focusing on the needs and wants of consumers. Whereas advertising can come off as salesy by focusing on the features and benefits of a brand’s product and services.

Builds better retargeting audiences

This benefit of Content Marketing often flies under the radar. To better explain this, here’s a high-level overview of how retargeting works. When consumers visit a website, advertisers can place a tracking code known as a cookie in the user’s browser to identify them as they visit other sites. So, if this visitor leaves your site without converting, you can show them ads as they surf the web.

A basic retargeting strategy would be to serve a site visitor a generic brand ad after they visit a website. But this strategy ignores the visitor’s intent. A more effective strategy would be to segment users based on the content they consume on your site.

Let’s look at an example. Pretend you’re a financial services brand and a user visits your website to research retirement saving options. They visit a page about IRAs, indicating they’re interested in saving for retirement. By segmenting your retargeting audiences, you can now serve that user customized ad messaging like “Which IRA makes the most sense for you?” And, the more robust your site’s content, the more targeted you can get with this messaging.

Advocacy

Improves the brand-customer relationship

Publishing content on a regular basis helps brands connect with their customers. The more informative, entertaining and relevant that content is, the stronger the bond.

Bitly, the company behind a tool that shortens URLs, is a prime example of a brand who nailed this concept. To help customers understand their product better, the brand created an e-book that featured 37 unique ways real customers had used the tool and more than a dozen interviews with marketers from Bitly’s partner companies.

Increases the chance of future purchases

One of the main goals of Content Marketing is to build strong, personal and long-term relationships between brands and their consumers. This bond helps build customer trust in a brand, which leads to loyalty. And loyalty is huge for brands. Consider these stats:

  • It costs 500 percent more to acquire new customers than it does to keep current ones
  • Repeat buyers spend 33 percent more than new ones
  • Building loyalty with 5 percent more customers would lead to an increased average profit per customer of between 25 and 100 percent

And, that doesn’t even factor in the added benefit of loyal customers recommending your brand to others and raving about you online.

Related – Content Marketing 101: Defining Content Marketing

Getting started with Content Marketing

This is just the start, there are plenty of other benefits to implementing Content Marketing. Realizing the full benefits of Content Marketing isn’t an overnight sensation. It requires a commitment to creating content on a regular basis, the dedication to continuously promote that content and a sound strategy to guide those efforts.
Contact Mindstream Media Group to learn more about implementing or improving Content Marketing efforts for your brand.

Download our guide to learn everything you need to know to launch effective Content Marketing campaigns.

The Ultimate Guide to Launching Content Marketing Campaigns

[Infographic]: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Content Marketing

The vast majority (86 percent) of B2C brands will use Content Marketing to connect with target audiences this year, with three-fourths of them planning on increasing their Content Marketing spend in the future. But, only about a third of those brands classified their Content Marketing as mature (25 percent) or sophisticated (9 percent).

Related – Content Marketing 101: The Ultimate Collection of Content Marketing Statistics

If your brand isn’t using Content Marketing (or needs help growing your current efforts), our latest infographic is for you. It’s filled with stats to you get motivated to start leveraging content to reach target audiences.

[Infographic]: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Content Marketing

Infographic - Top 10 reasons why your brand needs content marketing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content Marketing Trends Infographic

 

Need help with your Content Marketing campaigns? Contact Mindstream Media Group to see how our Content Marketing solution connects brands with the right audiences at the right times.

Want to learn more about Content Marketing? Check out our Content Marketing 101  series and subscribe to our blog while you’re there to get the latest updates delivered right to your inbox.

Recapping the Top 10 Reasons Your Brand Needs Content Marketing

  1. People spend more time online than with any other media, giving brands plenty of opportunities to connect with digital audiences.
  2. Internet audiences see so much content every day it’s easy to get lost in the noise. Content Marketing helps break through the clutter.
  3. Most companies have already implemented Content Marketing and have plans to increase their investment.
  4. The good news for brands who haven’t kicked off Content Marketing efforts is that most other brands are still getting the hang of it so there’s still time to catch up.
  5. Brands who commit to implementing Content Marketing campaigns are seeing more success as they mature.
  6. Content Marketing efforts impact consumer action throughout the buying journey, especially top-of-the-funnel activity.
  7. The more content a brand produces, the more impact those efforts have on business goals like generating leads.
  8. The average blog post is getting longer, which means they take longer to write. But, longer blog posts yield the most success.
  9. Consumers expect content that’s specific to their needs and wants throughout the Buying Journey. It’s up to brands to deliver. (Download our template to learn how to create buyer personas.)
  10. Most brands lack the in-house talent to create long-form, custom content to move the needle on Content Marketing campaigns.

Content Marketing 101: The Ultimate Collection of Content Marketing Statistics

This post is the second in our Content Marketing 101 series. Subscribe to our blog to get more updates delivered right to your inbox. 

Welcome to Part 2 of our Content Marketing series. Now that we’ve defined Content Marketing in Part 1, let’s take a deeper dive with a collection of some of the most important stats shaping the practice today.

To help as you scroll through all these numbers, we’ve organized the stats into a few main categories:

  • Digital media audience
  • Content Marketing adoption
  • Content Marketing management
  • Content Marketing successes
  • Content Marketing best practices
  • Content Marketing challenges
  • Content Marketing measurement

Related – [Infographic]: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs Content Marketing

The Ultimate Collection of Content Marketing Statistics

Digital media audience

When you factor in the number of users, the time spent online and the ability to target specific audiences, there’s no better medium than the internet if you’re looking to get your brand’s message in front of as many potential customers as possible.

No. 1: There are 3.8 billion internet users around the world, and that number continues to increase every day.

(Source: internet live stats)

No. 2: In 2018, U.S. adults will spend more than six hours a day with digital media – that’s more than TV, Radio or Print.

Average time spent per day with major media by U.S adults

Average time spent per day with major media by U.S adults

(Source: eMarketer)

No. 3: Every minute, on average, internet users publish 1,440 blog posts on WordPress, share 3.3 million pieces of content on Facebook, upload 500 hours of video on YouTube, send 448,000 new tweets on Twitter and post 65,972 new photos on Instagram.

(Source: Smart Insights)

Content Marketing adoption

Even with an internet audience that’s approaching 3.9 billion (just guessing another 100 million people or so joined the club in the time it took to write the last three paragraphs), brands will have a tough time reaching consumers unless their message resonates with audiences. In this cluttered landscape, Content Marketing offers brands a great opportunity to stand out with messaging that’s designed to educate, inform and entertain audiences, rather than interrupt them.

No. 4: 86 percent of B2C brands use Content Marketing.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 5: 60 percent of B2C marketers say their organizations are extremely/very committed to content marketing.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 6: Almost two-thirds of brands describe their Content Marketing maturity level as in the “first steps,” “young” or “adolescent” stage.

Content Marketing maturity level for B2C brands

Content Marketing maturity level for B2C brands:

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 7: 92 percent of content marketers surveyed say their organization views content as a business asset (i.e., a process with a direct investment and a goal of increasing value over time).

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – 2017 Content Management & Strategy Survey)

No. 8: 75 percent of companies say they plan to increase their Content Marketing investment.

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 9: 43 percent of companies say they plan to increase their Content Marketing staff levels.

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 10: In 2017, 51 percent of companies had an executive in their organization responsible for their Content Marketing strategy (vs. 42 percent in 2016).

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 11: 65 percent of U.S. creative professionals saw an increase in the amount of content they’ve created in the past 5 years.

(Source: eMarketer via Adobe)

Content Marketing management

Many brands are still getting the hang of Content Marketing, especially those managing the efforts in-house.

No. 12: Despite 86 percent of B2C brands reporting they’re actively using Content Marketing, only 46 percent of marketers have a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 13: There are a variety of tactics and strategies brands need to implement to achieve a robust Content Marketing strategy. Even though a lot of brands have at least some Content Marketing structures in place, it varies by item.

Content Marketing structures in place

Content Marketing structures in place

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – 2017 Content Management & Strategy Survey)

No. 14: 46 percent of content marketers always or frequently prioritize providing the right content to the right person at the right time. Across the board, brands have varying success in terms of meeting important Content Marketing conditions.

Frequency in which content-related processes meet various conditions

Frequency in which content-related processes meet various conditions

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – 2017 Content Management & Strategy Survey)

Content Marketing successes

As brands continue to grow their Content Marketing efforts, many are starting to reap the rewards of those efforts. Content Marketing is like a snowball rolling down a hill. As campaigns pick up speed, increased content output leads to a greater return on investment in terms of meeting business goals. The number of content pieces isn’t the only factor, though, brands are also seeing success with longer content pieces.

No. 15: 66 percent of brands are more successful at Content Marketing now than a year ago.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 16: 75 percent of successful B2C marketers cited a change in strategy as the No. 1 factor for increased Content Marketing success over the past year.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 17: 74 percent of companies have experienced an increase in lead quality because of Content Marketing.

Areas that brands have reported improved results from Content Marketing

Areas that brands have reported improved results from Content Marketing:

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 18: Brands that publish more than 16 blog posts per month receive 4.5 times more leads than brands that publish 0 – 4 posts a month.

(Source: HubSpot)

No. 19: The length of a typical blog post increased from 808 words in 2014 to 1,142 words in 2017.

(Source: Orbit Media Solutions)

No. 20: 56 percent of bloggers report strong results from articles with more than 2,000 words compared to 20 percent from articles with less than 500 words.

Bloggers who report strong results based on word count

Bloggers who report strong results - based on word count

(Source: Orbit Media Solutions)

Content Marketing best practices

As more brands continue to implement campaigns and practitioners hone their craft, Content Marketing strategy has continued to evolve. Today’s consumers are treating search engines like personal advisors, asking questions that used to be reserved for friends and family. Content marketers have responded to these trends by creating custom content for specific audiences at specific stages in their buying journeys.

No. 21: Over the past two years, mobile searches with the qualifier “for me” have grown over 60 percent.

(Source: Think with Google)

No. 22: Mobile searches with the qualifier “should I” (e.g., “what should I get for lunch”) have grown over 65 percent in the past two years.

(Source: Think with Google)

No. 23: 73 percent of leading brands create content for specific buyer personas. And, 52 percent of those brands create content for specific stages in the buying journey.

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

Content Marketing challenges

Brands have faced a variety of stumbling blocks while implementing Content Marketing campaigns. One of the main reasons for these challenges is in-house content teams often lack the time or ability to develop a sound Content Marketing strategy and create effective content.

No. 24: The top two skill-sets missing from Content Marketing teams are content creation (41 percent) and Content Marketing lead (21 percent).

Greatest skill-set missing from in-house content teams

Greatest skill-set missing from in-house content teams

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 25: 64 percent of brands cited “how to build a scalable content strategy” as their greatest educational need.

(Source: Curata – 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study)

No. 26: Brands cited the bandwidth to create content as their greatest Content Marketing challenge (43 percent of respondents).

(Source: Widen Enterprises)

Content Marketing measurement

One of the most significant challenges brands face (so much so that we moved it into its own section) is measuring the effectiveness of Content Marketing campaigns. But, that’s not to say that many brands haven’t overcome this challenge.

No. 27: 43 percent of B2C marketers measure the ROI of their Content Marketing campaigns.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 28: The top reason why B2C marketers don’t measure Content Marketing ROI is they “need an easier way to do this” (45 percent of respondents), followed by “no formal justification required” (34 percent) and “we don’t know how to do this” (26 percent).

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

No. 29: For B2C marketers who measure Content Marketing results, 79 percent say they can demonstrate how those efforts have increased audience engagement, 65 percent can demonstrate how they’ve increased leads and 58 percent can show how they’ve increased sales.

(Source: Content Marketing Institute – B2C Content Marketing)

If you’re interested in implementing or improving your brand’s Content Marketing strategy, make sure to keep reading our Content Marketing series and subscribe to our blog for regular updates.

Download our guide to learn everything you need to know to launch effective Content Marketing campaigns.

The Ultimate Guide to Launching Content Marketing Campaigns