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Semrush, a SaaS development company, recently released its annual State of Content Marketing Global Report. The firm analyzed more than 500,000 blog posts and 200,000 tweets, and more; interviewed many content marketing experts, and surveyed upwards of 1,500 marketing professionals worldwide to come up with the insights contained in the report.
The study documents big changes in content marketing over the last year and points toward ones to expect in the years ahead.
In this article, we’ll share some insights from the report that will help you figure out whether you’re keeping up, or falling behind, in your content marketing efforts.
Insights from Semrush's 2022 State of Content Marketing Global Report
Ninety-seven percent of survey respondents said content is a part of their marketing strategy.
Is content marketing a part of your overall marketing efforts? If you can’t answer that with a definitive YES, it’s time to play catch-up. With content being so prevalent, upping your game must become a top priority for your business.
Only 19 percent of marketers feel their content marketing efforts have reached their maturity, while 42 percent report they are just getting started with content marketing.
Even though almost all companies are doing content marketing, if you feel like you’re less a leader and more a laggard, don’t worry. With more than two out of five firms reporting that they’re content marketing newbies — and fewer than one out of five saying they’re highly experienced and successful — you’re in good company. Make it a priority to learn about — and leverage — content marketing best practices. By the end of 2022, you could find yourself among the two out of five professionals that consider themselves to be competent at content marketing, or maybe even a leader in your industry.
More than nine out of ten marketers surveyed said that they’d achieved some level of content marketing success in 2021.
Do you find that your business occasionally or regularly has some content marketing wins? Good for you! If you never have any wins, it may be time to increase your knowledge about the discipline or bring in some expert help to guide you.
If you feel that you win at it most of the time, you may not be measuring results accurately. Content marketing moves at such a fast pace these days even top experts lose out to competitors every now and then.
Survey respondents say content marketing is most heavily used by them early in the customer journey.
According to the report, the top three goals marketers use content marketing to achieve are:
Increase brand awareness: 45 percent
Attract more traffic to a business website: 37 percent
Generate leads: 36 percent.
Are you leveraging content marketing to attract new prospects and turn them into leads? If not, you could be missing out. It’s time for you to monitor your top competitors to learn how they’re using content to bring in new customers. Leverage some of what they’re doing at your business and try adding some fresh twists to it that reflect your brand and your unique value proposition.
The report shows most successful content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy.
In fact, 78 percent of survey respondents that reached or exceeded their goals have a written content marketing strategy. When it comes to companies that fell short of their goals, 81 percent do not have a documented strategy.
If you don’t have a clear and documented content strategy that includes goals, these statistics should convince you that it’s time. It’s the one proven way to set a solid foundation for future content marketing success. Consider your content strategy document as similar to a blueprint for a house. Without one, you may be able to build something, but it’s unlikely to stand up.
Marketers report other factors that contribute to content marketing success include conducting content audits, paid promotion, and expanding a content team.
How many of these things is your business doing? Perhaps it’s time to follow your peers and leverage what the best content marketers are doing right now to achieve success.
We take a deeper dive into conducting content audits in this article.
The study reports that content quality is the number one driver of organic search ranking success. If you create quality content that your customer base finds useful, you will see positive results over time.
