Content marketing continues to be one of the most valuable tools for today’s online businesses. With content, you can improve your chances of reaching your target audience, boost your search engine standing, and even unlock new opportunities for sales.

The more content you produce, the more you can strengthen your domain authority, demonstrate your thought leadership, and outshine the competition in virtually any industry. Yet, there are still a surprising number of people out there who don’t fully understand the value of content.

That’s why we’re here to help. We’ve explored the wide world of content marketing, to bring you some of the most insightful statistics and insights into the impact and potential of this incredible landscape. Let’s dive in.

Content Marketing Usage Statistics

Content marketing has essentially become the most significant go-to tool for gaining attention online. According to one study, only 10% of marketers aren’t using content marketing today. Content is the easiest way to expand your reach online, while providing your customers with something valuable.

Through content marketing, you give your audience a reason to keep coming back to your website. What’s more, the statistics show that countless customers rely on content on a daily basis, for education, entertainment, and discovery. Indeed, around 26% of US adults are almost always online, while another 77% use the web daily.

1. 82% of marketers say they’re actively investing in content marketing, while only 10% say they’re not leveraging content marketing, and another 8% say they’re not sure if their company uses this strategy or not.
2. 97% of SEMrush survey respondents said content was a tactic that formed a crucial part of their overall marketing strategy in 2021. The company also saw a significant 22% increase in people searching for “what is content marketing” during 2021.
3. Content marketing isn’t just for B2C customers, around 91% of B2B marketers also say that content marketing is a crucial way to reach their customers.
4. 46% of businesses said they wanted to boost their content creation in 2022, highlighting a growing demand for content as a crucial part of the advertising strategy.
5. Only 42% of companies consider themselves to be “effective” at content marketing in the B2B world. Indicating it may take time for certain companies to create a content strategy that really works for them.
6. 60% of marketers in the digital world create at least one piece of content each day according to eMarketer. This could include blog posts, social media content, or videos.
7. 51% of the businesses investing in content marketing publish every day, according to “The Manifest”.
8. 36.7% of marketers say that consistently creating high-quality content is one of the most significant struggles they deal with on a regular basis.

Content Marketing Strategy Statistics

Content marketing works best when there’s a documented strategy behind it. A content marketing strategy helps to guide you towards the best content to use when you’re trying to generate leads, build audience engagement, and develop brand loyalty. A good strategy will also guide your team, and prevent you from wasting money on plans that don’t work.

1. Unfortunately, while SEMrush’s study into the state of content marketing in 2021 found that 97% of respondents were using content, only 57% had a documented content marketing strategy. Even fewer people (19%) said their content marketing strategy was advanced.
2. The CMI found around 63% of companies don’t have a content marketing strategy, suggesting a significant number of brands aren’t planning their content efforts effectively.
3. 66% of marketers say they want to learn how to build a better content marketing strategy, while around 64% say they want to make their content strategy more scalable.
4. Of those using a content marketing strategy to help accelerate the return on investment for their content, 63% say they’re specifically working on building loyalty among existing clients.
5. With so few companies investing in a strong content marketing strategy, it’s probably no surprise that around 60% of people in a Zazzle Media study said they find it difficult to produce content consistently. A further 65% said they struggle to produce engaging content, indicating they’re not happy with the content produced.
6. 55% of successful content marketing strategies produced in 2021 focused on making the quality of content better, while around 46% of those surveyed said they made SEO a priority. 41% of respondents said they used their strategy in 2021 to focus on creating more video and visual content.
7. The top three goals of creating content are boosting sales, increasing positive relationships with customers, and generating brand awareness.

Content Marketing Success Statistics

It’s bizarre to think so many companies still aren’t investing in a full content marketing strategy when you consider just how significant the results can be. SEMRush found that around 78% of the companies who invested in content marketing during 2021 felt their strategy was successful.

Countless other studies have also highlighted the potential impact of content marketing on ROI and business performance. For instance:

1. Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8 times higher for content marketing leaders compared to content marketing followers, according to Aberdeen. Leaders in this context are considered experts regularly producing content for their campaigns.
2. 60% of content marketers agree that content marketing generates leads and demand. A further 70% say that content marketing helps them to educate their audience more effectively, while 60% believe content helps build loyalty with existing customers and clients.
3. On average, content marketing generates three times as many leads as old-fashioned outbound marketing techniques according to Demand Metric. It also costs around 62% less than those outbound strategies.
4. 78% of CMOs say they believe content marketing is the future of all promotional strategies. This means content marketing officers believe more in content marketing than countless other advertising strategies, including paid promotion.
5. 94% of senior marketers thought their content marketing results were significant in 2021, according to Oracle.

Content Marketing Blogging Statistics

Blogging is one of the most common forms of content marketing, and one of the top ways to generate attention for your brand online. Blogs are effective in a number of ways. Not only do they demonstrate your knowledge to your target audience, but they can also be extremely effective building your search engine presence.

There are currently 600 million blogs on the internet, out of around 1.7 billion websites in total. However, the number of active bloggers is constantly on the rise.

1. 70% of people prefer to get their information from blogs compared to traditional advertisements, and most find blog content to be more authentic than other branded content.
2. How-to articles are one of the most popular forms of blog content (77%), followed by trends and news (49%), as well as guides and eBooks (47%). Most companies will experiment with a wide range of different kinds of blogs.
3. Blog posts are ranked among the most shared content online, which indicates why today’s companies would want to use them as a lead generation strategy.
4. Around 53% of marketers say they consider blogging to be their most critical marketing concern.
5. Though longer content can be engaging for some audiences, Medium found that engagement rates on blog posts often start to drop with a reading time of longer than 7 minutes.
6. Alongside social media posts (94%), blog posts and short articles (80%) were among the most common types of content used in 2019.
7. As the number of blogs continues to increase worldwide, customers are searching for more unique insights. Unfortunately, only around 41% of bloggers create their content based on original research.
8. The average blog post published in 2021 was around 1416 words long. However, according to Orbit Media, bloggers producing articles longer than 3000 words (36%) saw the strongest results. Additionally, 38% of bloggers who spent more than 6+ hours on their posts also said the experienced strong results.
9. 47% of bloggers will usually include two or three images in their posts, while around 3% include 10 or more images – highlighting an increased focus on visuals. In total, around 90% of typical blog posts contain images.

SEO and Content Marketing Statistics

One of the most common reasons companies use blogs and written content for content marketing, is to leverage the benefits of search engine rankings. To achieve better positions in the Google results, and similar search engines, you need to be able to tell the search engine crawlers what your website is about. Companies can do this with keywords, and various other strategies associated with search engine optimization.

Around 69% of marketers are actively investing in SEO, and of those using search engine optimization, many say the top three metrics they consider are keyword ranking, organic traffic, and time spent on the page.

1. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, and this number is only increasing as the world becomes more digitized.
2. Google found around 71% of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search rather than using branded search. Furthermore, 53% of B2C shoppers say they always do their own research online before making a purchase.
3. Search engine optimization takes a lot of work. Only around 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication. However, the average #1 ranking page will usually also rank in the top 10 for nearly 1000 other relevant keywords.
4. Around 51% of all content consumption on the web today starts with an organic search on a site like Google.
5. Voice search is rapidly becoming a more important consideration in today’s SEO strategies, as virtual assistants become more common. However, only 12% of marketers currently use voice search tactics in their strategies.
6. 3 in 4 smartphone owners will turn to search immediately to address their needs, before looking for solutions elsewhere.
7. 95% of people will only look at the first page of the Google search results. This means if your content is appearing on the second page of Google, most people won’t see it.
8. Almost half of the clicks on the search engine result pages (SERPs) will go to the top three results at the very top of the page.

Audio and Podcasting Statistics

Podcasts have been rapidly gaining more attention as a valuable tool for content marketing in recent years. As consumers look for more convenient ways to tune into the content they enjoy on a regular basis, content is gaining traction as a valuable tool for passive engagement. Around 82.4% of people who listen to podcasts spend over 7 hours a week listening.

Podcast listeners are also more likely to be actively engaged on other channels. Around 94% of podcast listeners say they interact with brands on social media.

1. Around 45% of global internet users between the ages of 25 and 34 say they listen to podcasts today. In the US, around 1 in 5 Americans listen to audio books, and 40% listen to podcasts. In fact, around 15% of Americans say they listen to podcasts at least once a week.
2. 80% of podcast listeners remain engaged with the content all the way through, listening to either most, or all of each episode.
3. Edison research notes that each week in America, there are more podcast listeners today than there are Netflix account holders. Weekly listeners usually tune into around eight podcast episodes each week.
4. Podcasts are most likely to appeal to people between the age of 35 and 54. However, around 68 million Americans in total said they listened to some form of online audio in 2021. Edison Research also found 52% of men listen to podcasts, while around 48% of women listen regularly.
5. The State of Inbound report found 17% of marketers now plan on incorporating podcast or similar audio content into their content marketing strategy.
6. The average time spent listening to online audio is around 16 hours, or fourteen minutes per week. 48% of the podcast listening consumers do is at home, while 26% is done while driving.

Visual Content Marketing Statistics

The most common form of content considered by many marketing teams is often “written” content like blogs or eBooks. However, this is also quickly followed by visual content. Visual content can run the gamut from infographics and images shared across social media, to videos promoted on your own website, or channels like YouTube.

Video is one of the most popular forms of visual content marketing, with 86% of businesses using video as a marketing tool. However, there are various other options. For instance, 84% of people who use infographics find them useful.

1. YouTube is the second most visited site in the US by organic traffic, and one of the top sites worldwide. According to Google, videos on YouTube connect with more 18 to 49 year olds in a week than all cable TV networks combine.
2. Around 70% of viewers purchase products from a brand after seeing that item on YouTube, but the quality of the video content counts. Video viewers say video relating to their passions is 1.6 times more important than content with a high production quality.
3. 79% of people say they’ve purchased a piece of software or downloaded an app after watching a video. What’s more, 96% of people have watched an explainer video when learning about a service or product.
4. 91% of marketers say the challenges of the pandemic have made video a lot more important for brands. Around 85% of people also said they wanted to see more video content from brands in 2021.
5. Millennials are the generation who consumes the most video, with 75% of consumers aged between 18 and 34 watching videos once per day. Of all the channels used to watch video, YouTube is the leading source, attracting 75% of viewers compared to Facebook’s 64%.
6. 40.8% of companies say original graphics like infographics and illustrations helped them achieve their marketing goals in 2020. Another 23.7% of companies said videos and presentations helped them reach their goals.
7. Short-form video is increasing in value, with 89% of global marketers now saying they plan to spend the same or more on short videos going forward. HubSpot also found 29% of marketers are planning to use short videos for the first time in 2022.
8. 56.6% of marketers said they pivoted more of their content strategy towards visuals in the pandemic. Original graphics like illustrations and infographics were the visual tools companies used most frequently (32.5%).
9. 36.7% of companies say their biggest struggle when producing visual content is knowing how to produce it consistently, while 22.9% struggled with finding the right data or copy. Around 20.5% of respondents said they struggled with ensuring great design.
10. 38% of marketers say they’re only planning on using infographics for the first time in 2022.

Content Marketing Trend Statistics

As the marketplace for advertising and customer communications continues to evolve, the trends companies leverage is changing too. In the past, blog and written content used to be the most common way to connect with customers through content marketing. However, in recent years, we’ve seen a rising increase in visual content, short-form video, and audio.

Some of the latest trends in content marketing revolve around the increase of webinar and live-stream content, as well as the new introduction of XR content.

1. Around 87% of companies consider webinars to be an effective tool for lead generation, and around 49% of companies plan on investing in more webinars going forward. Studies also show 2-5% of webinar attendees make purchases, while up to 40% become leads.
2. 93% of marketers consider interactive content as being an effective tool for reaching customers in the modern world of content marketing. Around 88% of companies say they will be making between 10 and 30% of their content interactive going forward.
3. 61% of content marketers believe that by the end of 2022, they’ll be spending more of their budget creating content for in-person events, to help recreate connections with their audience on a face-to-face basis.
4. Around a quarter of VR users believe virtual reality technology has strong potential for brands and marketers.
5. Facebook Live (a popular tool for live streaming content) is capable of generating up to 10 times more engagement than traditional videos on social media.
6. Around 42% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot said they plan on increasing their budget in both augmented reality and virtual reality in the years ahead.
7. 33% of customers who say they don’t yet use automation or artificial intelligence to support their content marketing efforts are planning on doing so by the end of 2022. However, these companies also still plan to use real-life professionals in their team.
8. According to the Content Marketing Institute, virtual events were the B2B channel most likely to produce the best results in 2021.

Finishing Thoughts

We’ve only just touched on some of the most important statistics from the content marketing world here. It’s worth noting there are dozens of different forms of content to explore, from email marketing for nurturing your consumers over time, to social media marketing, which often forms a significant part of many content marketing plans.

The key thing to remember is no matter what kind of content marketing you’re spending your budget on, the right strategy should generate a positive return on investment. Content marketing continues to be one of the most valuable tools for any brands.