Content marketing has only gotten more popular. As the years go by, more and more brands use it and more and more people consume it. How do we know? We looked at the top 2018 content marketing statistics out there and crunched the numbers.
Whether you’re a marketer who needs to convince the boss that content marketing is worth it, or a stats nerd who lives for numbers and data, the top content marketing statistics in 2018 will give you an idea of where content marketing stands today, and where it can go in the future.
Top 2018 Content Marketing Statistics
Usage
First things first, take a look at who’s using content marketing. You can break down brands that use content marketing into two big categories:
- Business-to-business, aka B2B brands
- Business-to-consumer, aka B2C brands
Content marketing statistics prove it’s most popular with B2B brands.
- According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, 91 percent of B2B brands reported using it, compared to 86 percent of B2C brands.
2018 Content marketing statistics show not everyone is using it.
- Just 9 percent of B2B brands and 14 percent of B2C brands don’t use content marketing.
- But, those who aren’t using it often have plans to do so in the near future.
- More than half of B2B brands that don’t use content marketing claim that they plan to start.
- Just 4 percent reported trying content marketing in the past and abandoning it.
Strategy
A content marketing strategy helps a brand identify its goals, its audience, and its overall plan for content and content marketing. Often, having a strategy can be the difference between success and failure with content marketing.
2018 Content marketing statistics show strategy is not yet the norm.
Not every brand has a strategy in place. In fact, among both B2B and B2C companies, the minority reported using a strategy, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s research.
- 37 percent of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy.
- 38 percent of B2C marketers have a content marketing strategy.
Yet, 2018 Content marketing statistics show strategy is the key to success.
The low numbers of brands and marketers that create strategies for their content marketing should be surprising, especially when you consider that there’s a connection between having a strategy and enjoying success as a content marketer.
- 62 percent of the “most successful” B2B marketers use a strategy.
- 59 percent of the “most successful” B2C marketers use a strategy.
- Perhaps even more importantly, 75 percent of B2C marketers and 72 percent of B2B marketers credited creating or refining a content marketing strategy with improving or increasing their success with content marketing in the past year.
Desire
Now that we’ve looked at who’s creating the content, let’s take a look at who typically consumes content, and what they want from it.
What Types of Content Are Popular?
One of the top content marketing statistics in 2018 shows that customized content is in.
- AdWeek reported that Time, Inc. conducted a survey of 17,000 people. The people surveyed ranged in age from Generation Z (aka teenagers) to Generation X (aka people in their 40s and early 50s).
- An impressive 90 percent of the people surveyed stated that they thought custom content was a good way for brands to engage with them.
- 66 percent of those surveyed stated that they found custom content to be more trustworthy than other forms of advertising.
Customization might be king, but it’s not the only thing consumers want in their content.
- 93 percent of consumers want brands to share interesting things with them.
When it comes to preferred content type, there’s a difference in opinion across different countries.
- According to research from Hubspot from the third quarter of 2017, 62 percent of consumers in Colombia and Mexico ranked video as the type of content they most want to see from a brand.
- Video was big in the US, too, with 52 percent of surveyed people ranking it as the form of content they wanted to see from brands. Over in Germany, the majority of consumers were most interested in email newsletters (50 percent).
It’s also worth noting that some forms of content have seemingly fallen out of favor with consumers. Those include:
- Blog posts – Just 18 percent of consumers in the US, Germany, and Latin America (Colombia and Mexico) said that blogs were the type of content they wanted from brands.
- PDF downloads – Only 17 percent of consumers stated that they wanted PDFs they could download.
- Social videos – Just 34 percent of consumers expressed interest in videos from brands on social media.
Access
In 2018, content marketers cannot ignore the mobile device.
- A September 2017 study from Adobe Digital Insights revealed that the media and entertainment industry saw an 8 percent growth in site visits from smartphones over the past year.
- Meanwhile, site visits overall were down 5 percent.
- Since 2018, smartphone use has climbed 18 percent while desktop use has plummeted 32 percent. Interestingly enough, tablets seem to have fallen out of favor. Tablet use has dropped more than 50 percent since 2015.
Knowing the top content marketing statistics in 2018 can help your brand put together a content strategy and figure out the best type of content to use to reach the greatest audience possible.