How does your content marketing strategy compare to your competitors’?
Knowing who your competitors are, what they’re offering, which platforms they’re using, how they’re communicating with their customers and what people are saying about them, is key to creating a killer marketing strategy.
While it’s easy enough to look at a competitor’s website or social media pages, it’s a bit more difficult to get into the nitty gritty of how their content marketing functions on a daily basis. Fortunately, SEM Rush has surveyed more than 1,200 marketing professionals across 39 different countries for their Global State of Content Marketing Report.
The findings detail everything from what’s working well for organisations and how they’re measuring success to what their goals and biggest challenges are.
Only 9% of companies have full confidence in their content marketing strategy
91% of marketing professionals who were surveyed by SEM Rush said that they’re using content marketing as an approach in their business. Among those, 77% have a content marketing strategy.
So far, this all sounds great. It’s a bit more alarming to find out that only 9% of respondents rate the performance of their content marketing strategy as excellent however. 43% said they class their marketing strategy as good, 38% said average, 8% rated theirs as fair and 2% said poor.
Measuring success
Whether it’s an email, social media post or paid advertising, how do you measure the success of your marketing campaigns? The most common key metrics used by SEM Rush’s respondents include:
How much organic traffic is coming to the website (76%)
How many leads are coming through (62%)
Sessions/page views on their website (60%)
Conversion rate (47%)
Time on page (39%)
Tried and tested methods
When asked what the most efficient content marketing tactics implemented by their team in 2019 was:
67% said search engine optimisation
51% found updating and repurposing existing content to be very effective
37% embraced technology and creating more video and visual content
36% saw great success from publishing ‘how to’ guides and/or educational content
Content marketing goals
The Global State of Content Marketing Report also wanted to identifypriority goals that businesses are hoping to achieve through content marketing by the end of 2020.
75% of businesses said they want to generate more quality leads
71% would love to attract more traffic to their website
56% aim to improve brand reputation
45% want to improve customer engagement and loyalty
Content marketing teams
The vast majority of businesses (78%) have between one and three specialists in their content marketing team. 18% have four to ten and just two percent have 11-20.
Writers and content creators top the leaderboard for the types of specialists employed by businesses to make up their marketing team.
Image source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics/
Content marketing challenges
When asked about the top challenges teams face when it comes to content marketing;
54% said creating content that generates quality leads
52% said creating content that attracts more traffic
45% struggle to develop content that resonates with their target audience
44% feel they need to improve the SEO performance of their content
34% find it difficult to come up with ideas for creating new content
Technologies used in content marketing
SEM Rush asked their survey participants, ‘which technology does your team use to leverage your content marketing efforts?’
85% said website analytics tools
73% use SEO tools
67% do regular social media posts
57% have embraced email marketing software
47% use a content management system (CMS)
42% use writing and editing tools
Content creation
With the vast majority of businesses saying they utilise this function of their website, the most popular type of content is blogs. This is followed by emails, infographics and then case studies.
Image source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-marketing-statistics/
Content marketing distribution
When it comes to the most popular channels for distributing content, 94% of companies use social media, 76% use email marketing, 46% rely on PPC/paid advertising and 30% use external publications and guest posts.
Outsourcing content marketing
What are the most popular content creation services to outsource?
Writing (53%)
Graphic design (34%)
Video design/animation (32%)
If you need help with any aspect of your content marketing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Copyworks and we’ll be happy to help.
