With traditional marketing becoming less and less effective, any forward-thinking marketer knows that there is a better way to do things! Enter content marketing. Content marketing allows you to provide useful and interesting information to your customers rather than just bombard them with sales pitches or product information. Imagine a world where prospective clients look forward to engaging with your marketing, that dear friends, is the world of content marketing.
So how is it measuring up?
A recent survey by Zazzle Media asked thousands of marketers to share their opinions on content marketing. The information gives an inside view as to what is really going on in the world of content marketing and tells us a bit about the results derived from it within the marketing industry.
So with no further ado, let’s take a look at what those asked considered to be successes and challenges within the industry in 2019.
Marketing budgets
In January 2019 a whopping 41% of marketing budgets are being allocated SOLELY on content creation. This is compared to 23% the previous year. That is a noticeable increase and we predict (pretty confidently) that figure will continue to rise.
Wider business goals
In 2018 45% of those asked felt that their content marketing strategy linked to all other parts of the business but again we see a large increase by 2019 with the figure now at a huge 89%. This is further proof in the pudding to the effectiveness of content marketing on the whole. (mmm….. pudding……).
Best Practice
The number of marketers who know best practices has increased by 10%, with only 1 in 5 knowing the ‘best way’ to run a content marketing campaign back in 2018. This has now risen to a third of surveyed marketers being clear on how to do it. Excellent figures!
Top Focus Areas
When asked what channels will be their top focuses for content marketing in 2019; 77% said that they will be focusing on written content, 45% chose SEO, email marketing was 42%, video 40%, organic social interestingly is 23% and PPC and paid social was slightly lower, both at 17%. Digital PR, interactive content, offline PR, voice search and programmatic were all lower than 10%.
Influencers
Over 12 months, from 2018 to 2019, 15% fewer marketers used influencers. However, for those that did found them highly effective with 61% of marketers reporting that influencers were productive for them - and most importantly 100% said they would use them again. 23% of marketers are using influencers in 2019.
Voice Search
We recently looked at audio marketing and touched on the increase of voice-controlled technology. Only 2% of those asked reported that voice search had delivered results for them, while 38% said it hadn’t. The key statistic here is that 62% of marketers said that it was too soon to tell, and we believe that it will be easier to gage a better understanding of its success in the future.
Effectiveness of Content
47% of those asked said that content marketing was VERY effective for their brand, and only 3% said not so effective. No one asked said that it wasn’t effective at all. We’ll just leave that there.
Results
How do you even measure the success of content marketing? Well...
- 89% of the results are based on an increase in website traffic. - 65% look for improved SEO rankings.
- 62% subscriber growth 51% increased sales.
- 46% reported better sales lead quality.
- 34% look for a lift in brand awareness.
This shows that success is generally measured by increased website traffic opposed to what you might automatically believe to be the best way to judge its success; an increase in sales.
So, what are you waiting for? Content marketing works for all business types and sizes and Purely Personal Marketing are Content Marketing Queens! We eat, sleep, breathe and create content – all – day – long! (with the odd cup of tea thrown in where necessary).
Get in touch with Purely Personal Marketing for more information on how our expertise and creativeness can help your business reach more customers.
For information on Social Media Marketing, just drop us an email at purely-personal@outlook.com
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