Virtually all content marketers agree that data can boost your strategy and help you make decisions that drive better results. The best outcomes are driven by audience needs and interests — and your strategy should evolve with them.
That said, it’s easy to rely on gut and intuition when time doesn’t allow for digging into the data.
Good news for you: We did the digging into the latest benchmark reports and content marketing research so you can jump straight to the good stuff. From best practices to consumer insights, these content marketing statistics will give you the foundational knowledge to stay on trend.
Keep scrolling (or click below to jump straight to a category) for over 120 content marketing statistics that will help ground your strategy in data-driven insights.
Table of Contents
General Content Marketing Trends
97% of marketers include content marketing in their marketing strategies.
78% of companies that believe their content marketing was very successful in 2021 have a documented content marketing strategy.
Only 30% of marketers say the COVID-19 pandemic will not change their plans in 2022.
65%
of marketers say case studies and success stories are the biggest value drivers for their business.
Marketers rank email marketing, paid search/ads and organic search as the most effective channels.
70%
of marketers use account-based marketing strategies to target their content.
72% of marketers say their company uses reporting tools for data analysis.
58% of companies with more than 80 marketing employees say their efforts were “extremely successful” last year compared to 33% at companies with marketing departments of 30 or fewer employees.
82% of organizations plan to add, remove or replace components of their marketing tech stack to improve performance.
Only 13% of companies rely purely on internal creative ideas, while others employ a mix of company goals, competitor analysis, audience needs and digital data.
Marketing teams need to prioritize collecting first-party data at every stage of the customer journey.
Nearly half (46%) of marketers plan to use better data to create personalized content that serves the customer journey.
The biggest data privacy change to hit marketing in 2021 was Apple’s continued iOS updates.
83% of consumers in 2021 are aware that brands are using their personal data and 71% of users expressed concern over how companies are using their personal data.
67% of marketers want more resources on content creation.
Most marketers agree that blog articles (68%) and downloadable assets like eBooks and white papers (62%) are the best way to learn about content marketing.
B2B Content Marketing Trends
77% of B2B marketers report having a content marketing strategy, though only 40% documented their strategy.
B2B marketers say the top 3 goals content marketing helps them achieve are creating brand awareness, building credibility/trust and educating their audience.
The top 2 objectives for today’s B2B digital marketers are increasing customer engagement and improving customer experience.
66%
of B2B marketers expect their 2022 content marketing budget to increase over their 2021 budget.
Social media has the biggest impact on the customer experience for 57% of B2B marketers.
is the organic social media platform that B2B content marketers use the most and the one they said produces the best results.
50% of B2B marketers outsource content marketing activities.
The top 2 content marketing-related areas of investment for 2022 are expected to be video (69%) and events (digital, in-person or hybrid) at 61%.
67% of B2B marketing executives expect to increase spend on marketing technology.
60%
of B2B marketers say that “wasted time” is the greatest cost associated with lead generation struggles.
68% of B2B marketing influencers regard research and case studies to be the most trusted type of content.
44%
of B2B buyers typically consume 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a vendor.
79% of B2B buyers say that vendor content had a significant impact on a buying decision.
Primary decision makers, internal influencers and researchers agree that pricing is the No. 1 variable that influences decision-making.
B2C Content Marketing Trends
70%
of B2C marketers report having a content marketing strategy, though only 39% documented their strategy.
50% of B2C marketers outsource content marketing activities.
65%
of B2C marketers prioritize the audience’s informational needs over their organization’s sales/promotional message.
Facebook is the organic social media platform that B2C content marketers used the most and the one they said produced the best results.
37%
of B2C marketers are testing and implementing tactics in new social platforms like TikTok, Discord and Twitch.
Influencer marketing is a tactic that 61% of B2C marketers plan to use in 2022.
61%
of B2C marketers expect their 2022 content marketing budget to exceed their 2021 budget.
72% of B2C marketers predicted their organization would invest in video in 2022.
Social Media Marketing Statistics
An estimated 233 million people over age 12 in the US use social media.
69%
of marketers use social media to distribute and promote their content organically.
88% of marketers say social media marketing increases business exposure.
and Instagram are the top 2 platforms used by marketers.
Although Facebook remains a top platform for content marketers, brand use of the platform has been declining since 2019.
80%
of marketers have no plans to use Snapchat.
71% of B2B professionals use LinkedIn to share business-related content.
93%
of brands got a new customer because of a video on social media.
Social listening is the No. 1 tactic used by marketers.
The most
popular publishing cadence for social media marketers is 3 to 4 times a week.
Email Marketing Statistics
54% of marketers use email marketing to distribute and promote their content.
72%
of marketers use email to engage with consumers across the customer journey.
The top 3 emails marketers send are newsletters, welcome emails and product emails.
Weekdays
outperform weekend days for sending marketing emails.
80% of email marketers use name, company name and other profile data to personalize email sends.
On average
more than 65% of marketers create at least 2 versions of an email to segment and personalize the content.
41% of marketers send emails to their mailing lists on a daily basis.
30%
Email marketing is very critical to company success for 30% more marketers now than before the pandemic.
43% of marketers are changing how they measure email performance because of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection.
51% of marketers believe consumers open and read at least half of the emails they receive, though most consumers (59%) report that they open and read less than half.
For every $1 marketers spend on email marketing, they receive $36 in return.
Blogging Statistics
48% of companies that have a content marketing strategy leverage blogging.
77%
of marketers report that blogging drives results.
Writers spend about 4 hours on blog posts.
Bloggers
who update old content are nearly 3 times more likely to report “strong results.”
Articles with 7 or fewer words in their H1 get 36% more average organic traffic than those with 14 or more words.
Headings with “guide” in the title attract 3 times more organic traffic than others, and those containing “how to” outperform by 1.5 times.
On average, paragraphs with 90 words and sentences with 28 words are too long for high readability scores.
The average
blog bounce rate is 82.4%.
Re-optimizing your content can increase the number of clicks a page generates by more than 40%.
70%
of websites in the HR industry that generate more than 100,000 organic visitors per month write 2 or more blogs per week.
1,774 is the average word count for top-ranking articles.
Visual Content Marketing Statistics
Almost half (48%) of marketing content contains visuals.
49% of marketers primarily use visual content on blogs and websites followed by social channels such as Facebook and Instagram.
56% of content marketers who use infographics say that they’re the most effective marketing content type.
Articles
with infographics drive 8x more clicks than those without.
Blogs with infographics generate nearly twice as many new referring domains per month than those without.
Blogs
with infographics are more likely to end up in Google Image Search for target terms.
58% of marketers outsource graphic design services.
42%
of marketers plan to increase budget in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Around 50% of content marketers spend less than 5 hours a week creating visual content.
A central
design system is the most common practice for ensuring content quality and consistency.
Blue and green are the top color preferences for consumers that visit business websites.
Video Marketing Statistics
The primary form of media used in content marketing is video.
The top 3
video distribution channels for marketers in order are social media, websites and YouTube.
92% of marketers value video as an ‘important part’ of their marketing strategy.
The majority of marketers say video has helped them increase understanding of their product or service (94%), improve brand awareness (93%), boost traffic (87%) and generate leads (86%).
93% of sales and marketing professionals believe that video converts the same or better than other forms of content.
3 out of 4
marketers said the pandemic made it more likely they would create video.
91% of organizations are maintaining or increasing video content production budgets.
71%
of marketers plan to increase their YouTube video marketing efforts.
88% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
69%
of people say they’d most prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video.
62% of consumers say they prefer to watch video content on a smartphone or tablet.
Video ads
are the No. 1 way consumers discover new brands that they later buy from.
Website User Experience Statistics
Web visitors spend an average of 5-7 minutes on company websites.
88%
of the U.S. population aged 12 and over own a smartphone and 51% own a tablet.
Google recommends a load time of 5 seconds or less on mobile devices with 3G connections.
15.3 seconds
is the average load time for a mobile page.
1 in 2 users abandon websites that take more than 6 seconds to load.
Consumers
are most sensitive to website speed when moving from product detail pages to add to basket.
Half of all people say they’d be willing to give up animation and video for faster load times.
81%
of marketers know speed impacts their conversions, yet only 3% say faster load times are their top priority.
Both B2B (69%) and B2C (67%) marketers say website engagement provides the most insight into content performance.
63%
of companies use website analytics to create personalized/customized content.
Search Engine Optimization Statistics
69% of marketers actively invest time in SEO.
61%
of marketers say improving the quality and authenticity of their content increases organic search ranking.
Over 50% of marketers use keyword rankings and organic traffic to measure the success of their SEO strategies.
Almost 25%
of companies invest in mobile optimization as a top SEO tactic.
Google Analytics is the most popular SEO tool among marketers.
Over 40%
of shoppers go to Google when researching a purchase they plan to make in-store or online.
Nearly 1/3
of all mobile searches are related to location.
Search Engine Marketing Statistics
74%
of brands say that pay-per-click is a huge driver for their business.
58% of marketers spend less than $50,000 per year on PPC tactics.
The top
platforms that brands spend money on are Google (90%), Facebook (81%) and Microsoft (59%).
65% of marketers say paid search is the most effective PPC channel.
79%
of marketers report buying paid advertising on social media in 2021.
78% percent of marketers rely on Google AdWords and social media advertising to promote their messages.
Marketers
rank PPC as one of the top 3 best channels for high-volume leads.
54% of marketers conduct paid campaigns to generate better quality leads
Sponsored
search results account for 65% of clicks, compared to 35% for organic results.
About half of adult US internet users said that when brands use their data in advertising, it helps them discover (50%) and find (49%) products and services that interest them — but 44% said this often feels invasive.
Audio Content Statistics
68%
of people in the US over age 12 have listened to online audio in the last month.
28% of people in the US over age 12 listen to a podcast on a weekly basis.
Spotify
is the most popular online audio platform.
80% of marketers who leverage audio content and podcasts plan to invest the same amount or more budget in 2022.
51% of podcast listeners who are 18+ and listen to 5 or more hours of podcasts every week say they pay more attention to ads on podcasts than on other media.
53% of podcast listeners say their opinion of a company is more positive when it’s on a podcast they regularly listen to.
Virtual Event Marketing Statistics
40%
of marketers plan to increase their investment in virtual events, webinars and conferences in 2022.
It takes event organizers up to 10 hours to prepare an online event.
59% of companies host webinars for lead generation and marketing purposes such as promoting their brand, product or service.
Webinars are the highest-performing video format for more than half (51%) of B2B marketers.
53% of virtual event consumers said they plan to attend both virtual and in-person events in the future — even when it is safe to gather in person again.
Almost half (49%) of B2B buyers say webinars are the most valuable content format in the early stages of the buying process.
Virtual event
attendees say that quality of speakers (64%) and relevance of content (63%) encourage them to sign up for events.
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