As a constantly evolving field, content marketing is hard work. From custom content writing to social media engagement, understanding online users’ tendencies, preferences, and needs can make or break a marketer.
There are plenty of opportunities for success in content marketing—and the field is taking note. Participants of the State of the Creator Economy study ranked content marketing as their most effective marketing tactic.
In fact, marketers reported content marketing was 57 percent more effective in 2016 than in previous years. Plus, MarketingSherpa found that 93 percent of brand marketers are planning to maintain or increase their content marketing budget in the next year.
The (sort of) bad news? Marketers, by and large, are still getting their footing with the whole content marketing thing. In fact, Acrolinx reported that 69 percent of content marketing isn’t up to par (e.g., grammar mistakes, factual errors), and more than 4 in 10 professionals said they lack an effective content marketing strategy, according to Ascend2.
The good news? Knowing statistics like these, as concerning as they may be, will make you a more effective marketer.
Here are 16 content marketing facts and figures you’ll want to know:
1. Only 8 percent of directors and 24 percent of senior managers receive social media reports. [Stanford]
2. Up to 130 million Facebook profiles could be fake. [ValueWalk]
3. In 2015, 38 percent of organizations anticipated spending more than 20 percent of their overall advertising budgets on social media channels. [Altimeter Group]
4 More than five million Facebook users are under the age of 10. [Forbes]
5. The average reach of a Facebook post is only 2.6 percent. [Locowise]
6. More than half of companies who market internationally (60 percent) don’t have a comprehensive, multilingual content marketing strategy in place. [Cloudwords]
7. Publishers are producing 16 times more short-form than long-form. Meanwhile, articles between 3,000 and 10,000 words garner the most social shares. [ClickZ]
8. Three-fourths of users (75 percent) don’t go past the first page of search results. [imFORZA]
9. Nearly half of people (43 percent) admitted to skimming blog posts. [Hubspot]
10. A majority of mobile users will exit a website if the site navigation is confusing or if the site loads too slowly (67 and 72 percent, respectively). [Search Engine Watch]
11. A third of content creators were directly asked by a client to not disclose compensation — a blatant violation of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) policies. [IZEA]
12. Most buyers (70 percent) trust consumer reviews as much as personal recommendations. [BrightLocal]
13. A majority of consumers (83 percent) are willing to refer following a positive experience, but only 23 percent actually do. [Texas Tech University]
14. A majority of integrated mobile (IM) marketers (56 percent) don’t have a basic understanding of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines. Only 1 in 10 have a complete understanding. [IZEA]
15. More than 40 percent of marketing materials aren’t used by sales teams. [Qvidian]
16. Content’s effectiveness in the United States has plummeted 12 percent over the past three years. [Annuitas]