66 content marketing stats for 2022

In this article we are going to highlight the following:

Here are the most interesting content marketing stats we think you should know.

1. 82% of marketers actively invest in content marketing, 10% say they don’t use content marketing, and 8% are unsure if their company uses content marketing (HubSpot).
2. 43% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy and 60% of the most successful B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy (Content Marketing Institute).
3. 69% of marketers actively invest time in SEO (HubSpot).
4. 60% of marketers say that content marketing generates demand / leads. Additionally, 70% of marketers say content marketing helps keep audiences informed and 60% say it helps build loyalty with existing customers / customers (CMI).
5. Video is the main form of marketing media to be created in 2021, followed by blogs (used by more than half of marketing teams) and infographics (HubSpot).
6. 73% of people admit to skimming blog posts, while 27% consume them thoroughly (HubSpot).
7. 71% of marketers say targeting strategic keywords is their top SEO (HubSpot) tactic.
8. 51% of companies that invest in content marketing publish content on a daily basis (The Manifest).
9. Although 32% of respondents say they are overwhelmed by the amount of content available, a majority (44%) say they typically consume three to five pieces of content before contacting a provider (DemandGen).
10. 69% of respondents prefer to learn about a product or service from a short video. 18% prefer to read a text-based article, website or post. 4% prefer to view an infographic. 3% prefer to download an e-book or manual. 3% prefer to attend a webinar or pitch. 2% prefer a sales call or a demo (Wyzowl).
11. 81% of marketers view content as a core business strategy (CMI).

As you can see in the previous section, most successful content marketers have a documented content strategy in place. Here are some stats to inspire your strategy.

1. The three most important goals in content creation are increasing sales, building customer relationships, and increasing brand awareness (eMarketer).
2. Content marketing generates more than three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less (demand metric).
3. 72% of the most successful marketers in North America measure the ROI of their content marketing (eMarketer).

This is what B2B marketers say about their content marketing efforts.

1. Only 4% of B2B marketers do not plan to develop a content marketing strategy (CMI).
2. 87% of B2B marketers prioritize the audience’s information needs over the company’s sales / promotional messages (CMI).
3. Content creation is the most common outsourced content marketing activity among B2B marketers (CMI).
4. The top three organic content distribution channels used by B2B marketers are social media, email, and their organization’s blog / website (CMI).
5. LinkedIn is used by 96% of B2B content marketers (CMI).
6. Only 28% of B2B marketers do not use paid content distribution channels (CMI).
7. 78% of B2B marketers use keyword research for SEO while creating content (CMI).

Let’s see how the responses from B2C content marketers compare to their B2B counterparts.

1. Only 6% of B2C marketers do not plan to develop a content marketing strategy (CMI).
2. Content creation is the most common outsourced content marketing activity among B2C marketers (CMI).
3. The top three organic content distribution channels used by B2C marketers are social media, email, and their organization’s blog / website (CMI).
4. The three most common content formats used by B2C marketers are blog posts / short articles, email newsletters, and videos (CMI).
5. B2C marketers who use at least two organic social media platforms report that Facebook (59%) and Instagram (21%) have the best overall content marketing (CMI) results.
6. Only 28% of B2C marketers do not use paid content distribution channels (CMI).
7. 73% of B2C marketers use keyword research for SEO while creating content (CMI).

As our collected statistics have already proven, most content marketers do keyword research and invest in SEO. In other words, they’re investing in organic search. Let’s see what else we can find through this marketing channel.

1. 90.63% of the pages don’t get any organic search traffic from Google (Ahrefs).
2. 68% of online experiences start with a search engine (Brightedge).
3. 71% of B2B researchers start their research with generic search instead of brand search (Google).
4. 53% of shoppers say they always do research before making a purchase to ensure they are making the best possible choice (Google).
5. Only 5.7% of the pages will rank in the top 10 search results (Ahrefs) within one year of publication.
6. Almost two thirds of online searches worldwide are carried out using mobile devices (perficient).
7. 69% of marketers actively invest in SEO (HubSpot).
8. The three most commonly used metrics for SEO are keyword ranking, organic traffic, and time spent on the page (HubSpot).
9. In general, the more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it receives from Google (Ahrefs).
10. The average page with the first ranking will also rank in the top 10 for almost 1,000 other relevant keywords (Ahrefs).
    
11. There is no correlation between Flesch Reading Ease scores and ranking positions (Ahrefs).
    

Hand-picked statistics for this cornerstone of many content strategies.

1. People rarely read online. They are much more likely to scan than read word for word. They just want to choose the information that is most relevant to their current needs (Nielsen).
2. 70% of people prefer to get information from blogs than from conventional advertising (demand metric).
3. To date, there are more than 600 million blogs from 1.9 billion websites worldwide. Its authors write over 6 million blog posts daily or over 2.5 billion annually (Hosting Tribunal).
4. How-to articles are the most popular content formats (77%), followed by news and trends (49%), and guides and e-books (47%) (Statista).
5. Only a third of bloggers regularly check their blogs’ traffic analyzes (Statista).
6. Engagement begins to decline for posts with a reading time of more than seven minutes (medium).
   

As Hubspot reports, video is the main form of marketing media to be developed in 2021. It seems that video marketing is no longer an option.

1. 70% of viewers bought from a brand after seeing it on YouTube (Google).
2. 79% of people say that watching a video convinced them to buy or download a software or app (Wyzowl).
3. 50.9% of B2B decision-makers use YouTube to research purchases (Hootsuite).
4. YouTube is the second most visited website in the US after organic traffic (Ahrefs).
5. YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in an average week than all cable TV channels combined (Google).
6. Video viewers say engaging with their passions is three times more important than content with famous actors (Google).
7. Video viewers say engaging in their passions is 1.6 times more important than high-quality content (Google).
8. 86% of the companies use video as a marketing tool (Wyzowl).
9. 91% of marketers think the pandemic has made video more important to brands (Wyzowl).
10. 96% of people watched an explanatory video to learn more about a product or service (Wyzowl).
11. 85% of people want to see more brand videos in 2021 (Wyzowl).

Brands like Slack, Shopify, and Basecamp have already invested in creating a branded podcast. These statistics show that marketers should at least consider promoting it on podcasts.

1. U.S. podcast advertising spend is projected to hit $ 1.74 billion in 2022, up 23% from 2021 (Statista).
2. 57% of Americans listen to podcasts (Edison Research).
3. 80% of podcast listeners hear all or most of each episode (Podcast Insights).
4. Weekly podcast listeners tune into an average of eight podcasts per week (Edison Research).
5. There are more podcast listeners in America every week than Netflix account holders (Edison Research).

Is visual content important? Is there such a thing as best day to post? How do people decide which link to click? Find out below.

1. People who follow instructions with text and images do 323% better than people who follow instructions without images (WH Levie, H.Lentz).
2. The majority of marketers surveyed say that visual content is an important part of their marketing strategy. 64% say visual elements are either important or very important. Only 9.6% do not need visuals for their content marketing (Venngage).
3. There is no “best day” to post new content. Social shares are distributed evenly across the posts published on different days of the week (backlinko).
4. The average time a reader assigns to a newsletter after opening it is only 51 seconds. Participants in the study read only 19% of the newsletters in full (Nielsen).
5. When deciding which links to click on the web, users choose the ones with the highest information smell, which are a mix of clues obtained from the link label, the context in which the link is displayed, and their previous experience (Nielsen) received.

Final thoughts

I hope you have gained valuable insight from the statistics collection above. After all, it’s always a good idea to look for data-driven answers to your marketing hypotheses.

But let’s remember that it is wise to be cautious about any statistic. Statistics are generalizations of only part of the reality around us. In addition, they are methodologically not always impeccable: small sample sizes, P-hacking and incorrect correlations are widespread.

So if you’ve just read data that contradicts your professional marketing experience, don’t throw away your content strategy just yet. Instead, dig deeper.

Finally, if you want to learn more about content marketing, we have a few guides ready for you:

Do you have questions? Ping me on twitter.