Studying content marketing statistics can show you which trends which you can plug into to grow your brand. By understanding what’s working for other brands, you can build an effective content marketing strategy for your own.
This is not to say that what has worked for others will definitely work for you. Rather, you can use these statistics as recommendations for your brand, but you will have to adapt them and evaluate your success before you decide what works.
The last thing you want is to be left behind while your competitors leverage successful content marketing trends. For this reason, you should pay attention to what brands around you are doing to capture attention. With this information, you can at least stand a chance of keeping up with your competition.
If you leverage these content marketing trends right, you can even and stand out from the crowd.
What's on this page?
Benefits of understanding content marketing statistics:
Aside from growing your brand and keeping up with the competition, content marketing statistics can help in the following ways:
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Establishing your brand as a thought leader
When you keep up with content marketing statistics, you retain your place in the market. Beyond that, keeping up with these trends helps you establish a reputation for your brand as a trusted authority. What’s more, once potential customers think of your brand as a trusted authority, they are more likely to turn into paying customers.
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Helping you perfect your craft
If you can plug into content marketing statistics successfully, then you will become a better content marketer in general. Improving your skills will help you to be a more marketable asset to brands that need help with their content marketing.
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Winning more customers
The purpose of content marketing is to share valuable information with your target audience in order to build genuine, long-term connections with them. In other words, if you keep doing your content marketing right, then you’ll win more customers to your brand.
Now that you know how keeping up with content marketing statistics can help your brand, let’s get into the actual statistics for 2022.
2022 content marketing statistics to drive your brand
Rather than just present all the content marketing statistics in one place, we’ve decided to categorize them for you as follows:
- Content marketing strategies
- Online behavior
- Blogging
- SEO
- Visual content marketing
- Video marketing
- Podcasts
- Email marketing
- Webinars
Content marketing strategies
These are content marketing statistics that indicate what content creators like yourself believe, as well as what they are doing in 2022.
1) Content marketing costs 62% less than other outbound marketing tactics but generates 3x as many leads.
What you can do: Traditional advertisements are great, but people also find them intrusive. If you care about building a genuine connection with your target audience, then you need to give them valuable information in a format they’ll enjoy. The way to do this is to invest in different forms of content marketing.
In summary: Ultimately, content marketing will help you cut down on your marketing budget and win more clients to your brand.
2) 78% of CMOs say that custom content is the future of successful content marketing.
What you can do: While content marketing is designed to speak to both potential and existing customers, custom content is designed to retain your existing customers. This content can take the form of blog posts, social media posts, email newsletters, white papers, industry reports, videos, webinars, and more.
In summary: Use custom content to share valuable informative content with existing customers. This keeps them engaged with your brand and boosts brand loyalty.
3) Brands are using Instagram stories more than ever before.
What you can do: In order to stay competitive, you should also use Instagram stories to share valuable information. For example, you could use this platform to share tips and tricks related to your products. Alternatively, you could give your followers a sneak peek into what goes on behind the scenes. Showing your team in action could humanize your brand and generate a connection with your target audience.
In summary: Use Instagram stories to share informational content or show the faces behind your brand.
4) Content is mostly shared on weekdays, and most often on Tuesdays.
What you can do: The reason content is mostly shared on weekdays is because this is when people spend the most time online. If you want your content to perform well online, then you need to share it at times when people are looking. According to Hootsuite, here are the best times to share your content on the different social media platforms.
In summary: Post your social media content when it matters most.
5) 72% of marketers believe that content marketing increases engagement (CMI).
What you can do: If you want to boost engagement with your target audience then you definitely need to amp up your content marketing efforts. However, it’s not enough to simply keep churning content out nonstop. In order for your content marketing efforts to bear any fruit, you need to keep checking in with your audience to see what kind of content they enjoy from you.
In summary: As your audience for feedback on the kind of content they enjoy so that you can produce more of this content.
6) Social media content is the #1 type of content used by B2C and B2B marketers.
What you can do: Since you want to go beyond keeping up with your competitors to stay ahead of the pack, social media content is definitely something you should be focusing on. Even so, when developing a social media outreach strategy, you should find out what kind of content works for each platform.
In summary: Find out which platforms your audience spends the most time on and what content works best for these platforms.
7) 60% of marketers produce at least one piece of content every day.
What you can do: In order to stay competitive, you should keep up with these marketers by also producing some content every day. With an endless variety to choose from – from blog posts, to infographics, eBooks, white papers, social media posts and more – this shouldn’t be too difficult.
In summary: Produce at least one piece of content a day to break through the noise and stay top of mind.
8) 77% of brands have a content marketing strategy (SEMrush).
What you can do: If you want to stay competitive, then you should also have a content marketing strategy that works for your brand. Make sure you track your performance so that you can figure out what works and what needs tweaking.
In summary: Develop a content marketing strategy and revise it as many times as you need to for it to be effective.
9) 96% of the best content marketers say content marketing has helped them build trust and credibility with their audience (Content Marketing Institute).
What you can do: As a content marketer, you’re always looking to build trust and credibility with your audience. For this reason, you should always aspire to produce valuable content which your audience will appreciate.
In summary: Establish a track record of producing valuable content which people appreciate.
10) 90% of these content marketers have succeeded by focusing on the audience’s need for information (Content Marketing Institute).
What you can do: In order to determine what information your audience needs, you can run a survey or ask them to share feedback. Once you have an idea what they need, then you should produce more of it.
In summary: Ask your audience what they need and produce more of it.
11) 94% of content marketers changed their strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What you can do: These content marketers changed their strategy in response to changing needs. If you want to stay relevant in the midst of this uncertain time, you should touch base with your target audience and find out how their needs have changed. Only when you do this will you be able to satisfy these needs.
In summary: Connect with your target audience, find out how their needs have changed and produce content that satisfies these needs.
12) 73% of top content marketers nurture their audiences.
What you can do: You need to not only take time to understand the sales cycle but also develop the right kind of content for each stage of the cycle. By doing this, you’ll connect with each member of their audience where they are and guide them through the buyer journey.
In summary: Guide your leads through the sales cycle with the right content, so that they can convert into paying customers.
13) 81% of content marketers are committed to building trust in 2022.
What you can do: Make sure you are open and honest in your content. Failure to do so will lead to you violating the trust your audience has in you. Unless you want your audience to go running to your competition, don’t give them any reason to distrust you.
In summary: Always be honest with your content.
14) 68% of content marketers are determined to boost loyalty among current customers in 2022.
What you can do: As other brands seek to boost loyalty in their clients, so should you. After all, the last thing you want is to lose clients who are on the fence about your brand to the competition. Find out what your clients value and give it to them.
In summary: Take steps to boost brand loyalty so that you don’t lose clients to your competition.
15) Web traffic and total sales are the top two most common measures of content marketing success.
What you can do: Use your web traffic and sales figures to determine how well your content marketing is going. While measuring sales is straightforward, there are a few tools designed to help content creators to measure web traffic. In addition to web traffic, you can also keep track of other metrics such as page load time, conversion rate, bounce rate and more.
In summary: Keep track of your sales and web traffic so that you know how well your content marketing is going.
16) Marketers create content for multiple audience segments at once – usually 3 segments.
What you can do: Segment your audience according to stages in the buyer journey, or interests. Create content designed to fulfill the needs of each segment and share this content consistently to create a connection with your target audience.
In summary: Segment your audience and design content to fulfill the needs of each segment.
17) 47% of people surveyed in 2022 spend more than $10k on annual content marketing.
What you can do: This is an increase of 9% from 2019. If you want to remain competitive, then you need to consider boosting your annual content marketing budget. While your budget doesn’t necessarily have to match the $10k, it should align with your content marketing goals.
In summary: Establish a budget that allows you to meet your content marketing goals.
Online behavior
These content marketing statistics highlight how people in your target audience spend their time online. These statistics also cover what your target audience believes about brands that do content marketing. With this information, you will have a better idea of how to reach these people.
18) The use of mobile devices rose dramatically in 2020.
What you can do: The members of your target audience have been spending more time on their mobile devices since the start of the pandemic. For this reason, it’s important to ensure your content is compatible across different devices. Moreover, you also need to optimize your content for different social media apps.
According to App Annie, here are the most popular apps from 2020.
- TikTok
- WhatsApp Messenger
- Facebook Messenger
In summary: Make sure your content works across different devices as well as different apps so that you reach your target audience.
19) 81% of American adults go online on a daily basis. (Pew Research)
What you can do: You want to put your brand in front of the right eyeballs, right? For this reason, you should take time to find out which specific platforms your target audience hangs out on. Once you know that, then you have a higher chance of connecting with them.
In summary: Adapt your content to the different platforms where your target audience hangs out so that you can initiate a conversation with them.
20) Businesses are the most trusted source of information.
What you can do: This is no doubt good news for your brand. However, the last thing you want to do is take this for granted. Always be open and honest in the brand story you craft with your content. Remember that while people trust businesses as valuable sources of information, it’s easy to lose this trust. All it takes is one mistake or lie, and you could irreversibly lose the trust which you’ve worked so hard to build.
In summary: Be open and honest with your target audience if you want to retain their trust.
21) 90% of customers feel they benefit from content marketing.
What you can do: So we know your customers feel that they benefit from your content marketing, but do we know why? In order to answer that question, you can create a survey to find out what kind of content your target audience enjoys. With this information, you can produce more of that high-performing content.
In summary: Customers are more likely to buy from brands with content. Find out the kind of content your audience enjoys most so that you can produce more of it. This way, you can win more customers.
Blogging
These content marketing statistics refer to what bloggers are doing and how their target audiences relate to their content. If you run a blog, this information will come in handy and help your blog to stand out.
22) Articles with images get shared more.
What you can do: Add one or more images to your blog posts in order to create content that your readers will enjoy. Once you’ve given them informational and engaging content, they’ll be happy to share this with family and friends.
In summary: Use appealing and engaging images to appeal to your readers and encourage them to share.
23) Approximately 80% internet users are loyal readers of some type of blog.
What you can do: Given that so many people are reading blogs faithfully, you should invest in quality, informative content for your blog. Find out the best practices for running a successful blog, including when the best time to post a new blog article is.
In summary: If you can set up and maintain a quality blog, then you can capture some of these loyal blog readers.
24) Blog titles with 6-13 words get the most clicks.
What you can do: If you run a blog, then you should definitely keep your titles within this word count. You can also review old articles and adjust the titles accordingly.
In summary: Maintain a word count of 6-13 words for your blog titles.
25) Longer content gets shared more (SEMrush).
What you can do: If you write blog posts, keep your content on the longer side so that it’s more shareable. What is the recommended length for your blog posts?
In summary: Find out the recommended length for your blog posts to be shareable.
26) The recommended blog post length is at least 1269 words.
What you can do: Since this is the recommended length for a blog post, keep your posts to this minimum length.
In summary: Stick to 1269 words at least.
27) Longform content of 3,000+ words gets 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than other blog content.
What you can do: If you want your content to generate a lot of engagement and a high number of backlinks, then you should aim for at least 3,000 words per article. Given that this is much easier said than done, you can choose a few cornerstone articles and make them longer than the average article.
In summary: 1 out of every 3 articles should be at least 3,000 words long.
28) Listicles are shared 2x more than other blog article formats.
What you can do: For the purpose of developing shareable content, you should try and include some listicles in your blog. For example, a title such as “50 ways to create engaging content,” is much more attractive than “How to create engaging content.”
In summary: Develop some educational listicles as part of your blog content.
29) 51% of companies update old blog articles to boost traffic (SEMrush).
What you can do: Do you want to produce some new content but you don’t have the energy or time to write a new blog post from scratch? All you need to do is go back to old blog posts that have performed well in the past, update them and share them again.
In summary: Updating well-performing blog posts will help you reach a wider audience and renew interest in your blog.
30) 71% of B2B consumers visit an organization’s blog at some point in the buyer’s journey.
What you can do: While you’re not supposed to market your product directly through your blog, inserting a few mentions about your product can be helpful. Keep your blog articles informative and engaging, but dedicate 1-3 paragraphs to talking about your product.
In summary: Run an informative blog, but use 1-3 paragraphs of each article to briefly talk about your product.
31) 86% of companies produce more blog content than other content (SEMrush).
What you can do: In order to stay competitive, you might want to invest time and energy in growing your blog. Moreover, you should find out what you need to do to make it competitive.
In summary: Invest in your blog and make it competitive.
SEO
These content marketing statistics highlight what content creators like you are doing to boost the online visibility of their content.
32) 95% of people only pay attention to the first page of search results.
What you can do: Given that you want your content to stand out in search results pages (SERPs) on Google, then you need to optimize this content. Pay attention to things that boost your SEO such as using high-ranking keywords and linking to sites with high domain authority scores. If you write blog posts, then it’s important to write these posts in an editor which gives you both a readability and SEO score as you write.
In summary: Optimize your content so that you have a high SEO score and your brand ranks high on search engines.
33) Search is the number one source of traffic to blogs across industries (SEMrush).
What you can do: When you’re writing your blog posts, make sure you optimize them for SEO. Create your content in an editor which rates not only readability but also your SEO. If you can do that, then your blog will rank relatively high in relevant search results across different search engines.
In summary: Pay attention to your SEO score as you write your blog content.
34) Half the clicks on SERPs go to the top 3 results (Ignite Visibility).
What you can do: When you’re optimizing your content for SEO, you should be targeting these top 3 results. It can be helpful to adopt some proven blog SEO strategies to give your blog a much-needed boost.
In summary: Focus on SEO when you’re writing blog articles.
Visual content marketing
If you want to use visual content to get an edge over your competitors, then this is what you need to know.
35) Infographics are the #1 type of content to get shared.
What you can do: An easy way to generate infographics is to summarize your blog posts. Once you’ve developed a summary, you can turn this into an infographic by adding images to your written summary. Repurposing your blog content in this way will ensure you always have information to build another infographic.
In summary: Repurpose your blog content by turning it into infographics, and then share these on social media.
Video marketing
Are you curious about how to use video to promote your brand? With these content marketing statistics, you’ll be well on your way to producing outstanding videos.
36) 86% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.
What you can do: In order to boost your web traffic, you can design engaging and educational videos and post these on your social media. Include calls-to-action for people to visit your website for more advice, tips and tricks, or insight.
In summary: You can turn your blog posts into short videos. However, keep in mind the recommended length of time for your social media videos.
37) 54% of consumers would like to see more video content.
What you can do: This one is easy – you can produce more videos related to your brand and the products you sell! However, take time to learn how to create engaging videos which your audience will remember.
In summary: Create more memorable videos which are related to your brand and the products you sell if you want to remain top of mind among your target audience.
38) 94% of video marketers say video has helped boost user understanding of their product.
What to do: You can give your clients a hand by developing instructional videos to show them how to use your product. In order to create an effective video, you can review the most common questions you receive from your current clients. Create videos that address a client’s needs when they are contemplating buying your product and then share the rest when they pay for your product.
In summary: Create instructional videos and share them with clients during the buyer journey.
39) 17% of marketers plan to add videos to their marketing strategy.
What to do: Once you’ve started producing videos for your brand, perfect these videos so that you can stay ahead of your competition. You can improve on your video content by asking your audience for feedback.
In summary: Ask your audience for feedback and use this feedback to improve your videos.
40) Video has become the most common form of content, overtaking infographics and blogs.
What you can do: Since more and more brands are producing videos these days, you need to pay attention to what your competitors are doing. It’s important to take note of what they do well and what they’re struggling with. With this information, you can create videos that stand out from the competition.
In summary: Look at what your competitors are doing and aim to do it better.
41) 96% of people will watch an explainer video to learn more about your product.
What you can do: Create a few explainer videos to walk clients through how your product works. Sharing this content with your leads will help you convert them into paying clients more easily. Moreover, if clients know they can rely on you to teach them how to use a complex product, they’re less likely to go checking out your competition.
In summary: Produce explainer videos so that potential clients feel more confident about using your product.
42) By 2022, videos will occupy 82% of all internet content.
What you can do: In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to figure out how to go beyond creating good videos to create exceptional videos. Ask your audience for feedback on the kind of videos they enjoy and track the engagement on videos you’ve produced in the past.
In summary: Create exceptional videos so that you can stand out from the crowd.
43) Promotional videos and brand storytelling videos are the most common types of video.
What you can do: Design promotional videos and invest in brand storytelling, but also find out what you can do to give your content that extra kick. Once you find out what kind of unique content you can create, you’ll have an easier time standing out from your competition.
In summary: Invest in promotional videos and brand storytelling but find elements that will make your content stand out.
Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to promote your brand while educating your audience. If you’re considering launching a podcast, then these content marketing statistics will help.
44) 90 million Americans listen to podcasts at least once a month.
What you can do: If you can repurpose some of your blog content in the form of podcast episodes then this could go a long way towards helping you grow your audience. Once you’ve set up your podcast, you should promote it widely on the platforms where your audience spends a lot of time.
In summary: Repurpose your content as quality and informative podcast episodes, and promote these episodes where your audience hangs out.
45) 45% of worldwide internet users aged 25-34 listen to podcasts regularly.
What you can do: If your target audience is in the 25-34 age range, then a podcast is a good way to reach them. Since podcasts offer you a way to promote your brand while educating your audience, they can be an effective marketing tool. Even so, you might want to run a survey on the kind of content people enjoy in their podcasts. This information will provide guidance as you develop a content calendar.
In summary: Launch an engaging podcast to connect with people in this age range.
46) 39% of men and 36% of women in the US are monthly podcast listeners (Edison Research, 2020).
What you can do: If you want to reach these demographics, then one way to do it is by launching a podcast. Find out what kind of podcasts are popular among these segments and offer them similar content.
In summary: Find out the kind of podcast content that is popular among this demographic and offer them something similar.
Email marketing
A great email marketing campaign can help you stay connected to your target audience throughout the buyer journey. With these content marketing statistics, you can create an effective email marketing strategy.
47) Email marketing is the top content marketing strategy for nurturing audiences.
What you can do: Use a good email marketing strategy to connect with your leads and guide them through the sales funnel. If you keep in touch with potential customers throughout the buyer journey, then they might just turn into paying customers.
In summary: Use email marketing to keep in touch with potential customers and maintain contact even after they become paying customers.
48) Marketers who use segmented email campaigns receive as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
What you can do: Segment your audience so that you’re sending everyone on your mailing list content that is relevant to them. With a segmented email campaign, you can meet each of these people where they are and connect with them in a memorable and effective way.
In summary: Segment your audience and send different content to each segment according to their needs.
Webinars
Webinars can help you establish your brand as a thought leader while also promoting your products. Here are some useful content marketing statistics to help with your webinars.
49) Email drives 57% of webinar registrations.
What you can do: If you’re running a webinar, then sending emails to potential attendees might boost your registrations. In order to do this effectively, you can make a list of previous webinar attendees and update it regularly. Alternatively, you can collect these email addresses via a landing page on your website.
In summary: Send emails to previous webinar attendees and website visitors to promote your current webinar.
50) 59% of webinar attendees register the week before the webinar, and 17% register on the day of the webinar.
What you can do: Given that potential webinar attendees will be paying more attention the week before your webinar, you can boost your advertising efforts for this webinar on this week. Additionally, you should keep advertising until the actual day of the webinar so as to get some last-minute registrations.
In summary: Boost advertising for your webinar on the week leading up to your webinar.
Over to you now:
Content marketing statistics are usually an accurate indication of what your competitors are doing. Therefore, by studying these statistics you can get a good idea of what works, what doesn’t work and what’ll give you an edge over your competitors.