You can’t go anywhere today without being hit with content marketing — and we’re interested in how effective all that content really is. So interested, in fact, that earlier this year we did a survey of professionals in various fields to see how their content is performing and what their attitudes toward content are.
The results, compiled in our Content Effectiveness Report, gave us great insights, as well as a boatload of content marketing statistics to share with the world. Some of these content marketing stats won’t shock you, but others may come as a surprise and get you thinking about how you can improve your own content strategy.
Here are some of the highlights from the report.
Content demand and personalization
One of our top takeaways is that demand for content isn’t going anywhere. Marketers are reliant on content to achieve their goals, but not just any kind of content will do.
People want, and respond best to, personalized content: Meaning content is customized and relevant for them. Unfortunately, not many brands can keep up with the demand.
- 85% of businesses have seen an increase in demand for content in the last year.
- 87% of businesses say at least some customers expect personalized content, and 43% say most customers expect personalized content.
- 21% of brands personalize more than 75% of their content.
- Only 32% of brands report that the majority of their content is personalized.
Content effectiveness
How and where is content most effective? Most agree that the beginning of the buyer’s journey, in the awareness and consideration stages, is where your content makes the most impact.
It’s widely acknowledged that content can have a major influence on your brand’s success, and most companies believe that their content is relevant and converting customers.
Interestingly, most people think other businesses’ content isn’t relevant, which shows a disconnect between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us.
- 36% of businesses report that a majority of customer decisions are influenced by their brand’s content.
- 68% of brands believe most of their content is relevant to their customers.
- 83% of businesses believe content is most effective in the awareness and consideration stages.
- 86% of marketers and creatives believe content is most effective in the awareness and consideration stages.
- 60% of people in sales believe content is most effective in the consideration stage.
- 67% of survey respondents say content they consume from other businesses is irrelevant or only somewhat relevant.
- Over half of respondents (56%) think other brands’ content is only somewhat or not at all trustworthy.
Content ROI
With all the effort we put into creating content, you can’t help but wonder how much that effort is paying off. Your return on investment is definitely something to keep track of, but very few brands do.
Our survey results show that lots of content is being created and going unused. Content use as a metric is also something that often goes unmeasured.
However people are or aren’t tracking their content, survey respondents estimated that content — specifically personalized content — could, on average, increase revenue by a whopping 48%.
- Survey respondents believe personalized content could increase a brand’s revenue by 48%.
- 48% of businesses say 50% or less of their content is regularly used by stakeholders.
- The majority of sales professionals say they use less than 50% of their brand’s content.
- 23% of brands are unsure how much of their content is or isn’t used.
- Only 27% of brands actively measure the ROI of the content they produce.
Content bottlenecks
It’s no secret that it can be hard to get creative requests turned around in a timely manner. Designers are swamped with requests both major and minor, and many brands have turned to templates as a key part of their marketing strategy and a way to mitigate the creation of off-brand content.
- 77% of businesses see off-brand content created.
- 64% of creative teams spend at least 5-10 hours per week on mundane content and edit requests.
- 32% of content requests take more than a week to fulfill.
- 82% of organizations use templates to aid in content creation.
If you want more than just the highlights, dive into our full Content Effectiveness Report for all the detailed insights, numbers and content marketing statistics. You’ll find stats broken down by industry, info on what kinds of templates are most popular, and much more detail about how confident brands are about their content.
