Nowadays, it’s not enough for a brand to have a nice logo and memorable ads.
Marketing experts all around the world have to work hard to generate meaningful content on a daily basis.
From blog posts, infographics, tweets, and gifs to newsletters and emails, content marketing takes on various forms in hopes of increasing sales and user engagement.
But because content marketing is so ingrained in our everyday lives, it seems as though we don’t even notice it anymore.
But not today.
Today we’ll give it all of our attention by going over this collection of must-know content marketing stats.
Let’s jump right into the most important takeaways:
Essential Content Marketing Statistics (Editor’s Choice)
- Content marketing revenues increase by 14% each year.
- 91% of businesses use content marketing tactics.
- In the US, “strategy” is one of the most sought-after skills in the content marketing sphere, appearing in 60% of job offerings.
- Half of all marketers spend less than $10,000 on content marketing annually.
- Global content marketing spend increases by 15.8% every year.
- Influencer market size stands at $13.8 billion in 2021.
- The YouTube influencer market alone is worth $6.6 billion.
- Ryan Kaji, a 10-year-old child, earned around $30 million making video content in 2020.
- Content marketing on social media increases total exposure of their products and services, or so 88% of marketers say.
Content Marketing Stats in 2022
Big companies are shifting towards content marketing more and more, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only sped this trend up.
Let’s look at the most recent numbers.
1. Content marketing revenue increases by at least 14% each year.
(Source: Statista)
In 2016, for instance, worldwide content marketing revenue amounted to $28.1 billion. In 2018, it reached $36.84 billion, and in 2019 it peaked at $42.15 billion.
For comparison, the global revenue of digital advertising reached $463 billion in 2021, which means content marketing accounts for around 10% of the total marketing revenues.
But if we’re talking content marketing vs traditional marketing…
2. Content marketing investments increase every year by up to 15.8% while traditional marketing stagnates.
(Source: Statista)
Although it started to get back on track in 2021, traditional marketing saw a record 5.3% decrease in investments in 2020—presumably because of the pandemic.
Traditional marketing seems to have turned into a prestige symbol for big companies, which now “cannot afford” to not be advertised on TV. But many enterprises (of all sizes) are now setting their sights on digital alternatives and, specifically, on content marketing.
3. The global influencer market size reached $13.8 billion in 2021.
(Source: Statista)
Influencers seem to be marketers’ best friends nowadays. Or at least another weapon in their advertising arsenal.
Content marketing stats show that companies around the globe paid YouTube influencers approximately $6.6 billion in 2020 for sponsored content.
Influencers give a more personal, less branded feeling to a company’s marketing efforts—their content is more “organic”, which helps customers be more receptive to the company’s message.
4. 10-year-old Ryan Kaji earned around $29.5 million in 2020 for content creation.
(Source: Statista)
Content creator statistics become quite surprising when one realizes that Anastasya Radzinskaya (who made a dazzling $18.5 million) also made it to the top-earner list in 2020—and she was only 6 years old at the time!
Both children are YouTube content makers and toy experts, aka the perfect marketers for modern toy companies.
5. The most sought-after marketing skill is strategy.
(Source: Statista)
This is another interesting fact about content marketing, especially for those who plan to start a career in this field—60% of all job postings in the field list “strategy” as a desired skill.
Social media content generation (53%), and SEO (41%) are next on the list, whereas things like metrics (24%), research (20%), and blogging (14%) don’t appear in job offerings as much.
6. The wealthiest content creator on Instagram is Cristiano Ronaldo.
(Source: The Guardian)
Cristiano doesn’t really do traditional marketing. He makes Instagram posts that include a certain product and charges money for that, which is pretty much how content marketing works.
And since hundreds of millions of people around the world pay close attention to what Cristiano Ronaldo eats, drinks, and wears, companies are willing to pay him an exorbitant amount so he makes posts about their products.
He can earn up to $1.6 million for a single post!
How Popular Is Content Marketing?
Popularity is related to effectiveness. And content marketing is effective because it allows people to connect with the company that sells certain products and services.
Absorbing marketing content like blog posts, videos, or infographics, doesn’t feel like you’re engaging in businesslike communication—it feels more natural, which is why it’s companies’ favorite strategy.
Now, let’s see just how popular a tactic it is with the next content marketing statistics.
7. 91% of all businesses worldwide use content marketing.
(Source: Statista)
Content marketing permeated every market niche and every industry. And with so many companies using the same tactics, it’s becoming increasingly more challenging for marketers to create relevant, high-quality, traffic-attracting content—or so half of the surveyed professionals say.
But, specifically, what percentage of marketers use content marketing?
8. 43% of North American B2B marketers use content marketing techniques.
(Source: Statista)
B2B content marketing stats show that there has been a linear increase in the number of B2B marketers using these strategies over the years. In 2017, 37% of North American B2B marketers documented a content marketing tactic, but that number turned into 39% in 2018, 41% in 2019, and 43% in 2020.
The growing trend is also present in the B2C sector, where 73% of North American marketers develop and publish content, though (like in the B2B sphere) only 42% have it documented.
9. A content marketing manager can earn up to $795,000 per year in the US.
(Source: BuiltIn.com)
The growth of content marketing is also quite evident when we consider the salaries of those working in this field.
As of 2022, the average base salary in the US is around $82,465, though the minimum salary for the position currently falls at around $33,000 per year.
10. Domino’s Pizza uses content marketing very efficiently.
(Source: IZEA)
It turns out that many people choose to forgo a caterer and just have pizza on their wedding day (genius or what?), and Domino’s decided to turn this little fact of life into a content marketing strategy.
The Wedding Registry launched in 2017. It’s an online page where customers can create their event, have their loved ones give them Domino’s gift certificates, and then write about their experience.
Basically, it’s Domino’s making the best of pizza-lovers’ wedding hype by transforming regular orders into a special experience—witty catch-phrases and COVID-19 adaptations included.
11. Half of marketers spend less than $10,000 a year on content strategies.
(Source: Statista, Forbes)
This is perhaps one of the most important content marketing facts—unlike, say, TV ads, producing emails and videos is quite cheap, yet they can reach millions of people. In other words, content marketing is a relatively inexpensive strategy for numerous businesses around the world.
How much should you invest on it?
Some professionals say content marketing spend should account for approximately 30% of your total marketing investment, but the actual number varies from company to company.
12. 67% of SMBs use blogs for marketing.
(Source: Statista)
Lead magnets and SEO are also popular content marketing strategies among SMBs, though they’re not quite as popular as blogs.
One of the things that makes the latter so great is that they’re actually pretty flexible in terms of content. Though the majority of bloggers write how-to articles, many of them also make use of infographics (30%), conduct interviews (41%), write opinion pieces (44%), and talk about current events and trends (49%).
This means that there’s a lot of content marketing potential right there for you to exploit.
How Effective Is Content Marketing?
It’s tricky to get a solid estimation of the effectiveness of content marketing. You can see how many clicks an article gets or how many times a video has been played, but it’s hard to say for sure if either of those are what caused leads to convert.
The best thing we can do is look at certain metrics related to very specific types of content, which is precisely what’s coming up next.
13. 20% of US marketers believe that users actually read the content they develop.
(Source: Statista)
According to a content marketing study, most marketing professionals either believe or strongly believe that their strategies are effective. In fact, 31% of marketers claim users click on the links within the text.
However, the statistics also show that marketing experts are somewhat less optimistic about their content directly affecting the users, with only 14% of them strongly agreeing with this statement.
14. In terms of content marketing, lead generation is the most important metric.
But there are other indicators that also tell you how effective your marketing efforts are. In fact, half of the worldwide industry professionals regard new and returning visitors as crucial metrics, whereas 46% of them pay close attention to conversion rates.
According to marketers, other important indicators are interactions on social media (32%), time spent on a page (29%), number of downloads (25%), and page scroll (10%).
15. Emails are the most effective content marketing tool.
(Source: Statista)
The effectiveness of content marketing tools vary depending on who you ask. For instance, the majority of marketers in the UK agree that emails (65%) and social media content (57%) are the most powerful resources to reach consumers, but opinions are split 50-50 regarding blogs.
Fewer marketers think ebooks (36%), videos (28%), and infographics (20%) are impactful, whereas webinars, online presentations, and illustrations fall even further down the perceived-effectiveness scale.
Still, here are some content marketing software options in case you intend to give emails, infographics, or webinars a try.
16. Email marketing campaigns boast a 261% ROI.
(Source: First Page Sage)
Content marketing ROI statistics vary across different channels. For instance, Facebook ads have an 87% ROI (calculated over a three-year period) whereas online PR can get you a slightly smaller figure (62%).
As for email campaigns, they’re the third most profitable digital marketing strategy, right behind SEO (748% ROI) and Webinars (430%). That said, the effectiveness of each channel also varies depending on the industry.
For instance, email marketing is great for the automotive and healthcare industries, but you’d do much better with LinkedIn if you’re aiming for the legal sector.
17. 88% marketers worldwide believe that content marketing on social media increases the exposure time of their products and services.
(Source: Statista)
Moreover, 79% report that social media content marketing leads to increased traffic, 69% say that it generates leads, and 61% state that it helps build a loyal fanbase.
As you see, it’s not really content marketing vs social media marketing, as if they were two drastically different things. They actually overlap significantly.
We already mentioned LinkedIn as one of marketers’ preferred social media channels, and the next one on the list is Instagram. Back in 2017, Instagram only had around 25 million business accounts, but now there are more than 200 million!
So, taking a not-so-wild guess here, we’d say something is definitely working for companies on that social media platform.
18. 81% of marketing experts consider videos essential aspects of their strategies.
(Source: Statista)
Content marketing stats show that people generally prefer to watch a video rather than read a relatively longer text, which is why videos are becoming increasingly popular.
According to the latest statistics, 73% of marketers use livestream videos, which allows them to establish a more direct contact with their users, whereas 54% of marketers add videos when building the company's landing page.
Moreover, content marketing statistics indicate that 47% of companies embed videos in their emails, which is an example of how different subtypes of content marketing can be combined.
Final Thoughts
The value of content marketing lies in its outreach, permeability, accessibility, and novelty. For the moment, this whole sector grows rapidly, but then again, what we now refer to as “traditional marketing” was once quite novel and revolutionary.
So, although content marketing will probably not be the go-to solution forever, it’s still the most effective strategy for now—and probably for the near future as well.
This collection of content marketing stats shows an incredible diversity in tools and instruments you can use to catch your audience’s attention.
Each company has its own way of making meaningful marketing content, and there are no “recipes” or quick solutions, so don’t be afraid to give it a try.
Get creative.
Be natural.
And, perhaps, get in touch with an influencer or two.
Sources
Unaware that life beyond the internet exists, Nick is poking servers and control panels, playing with WordPress add-ons, and helping people get the hosting that suits them.
