80 Content Marketing Statistics For 2024

Content marketing is arguably the most effective type of marketing in 2024.

But, it’s not the same as it was just a couple of years ago. To stay ahead of your competition, it’s necessary to analyze the landscape and take a step back to look at the wider picture every once in a while.

This is why we have collected (what we think) are the most important and interesting content marketing statistics for this year.

Before we dig into it, here’s a little taste of what’s to come:

• 90% of marketers state that they are planning to invest the same amount of money and resources into content marketing in 2023, and 66% report increasing their content marketing budget than that of 2022
• The top four content formats are blogs, videos, images, and infographics
• The single top content format in 2023 is video
• 81% of marketers report content marketing being a core business strategy
• On average, the top 1 result on Google ranks for almost 1,000 relevant keywords

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General Content Marketing Statistics

Let’s start with the more generalized content marketing statistics before we delve into more nuanced aspects of content marketing.

Out of the remaining 18%, 10% are not using content marketing, and 8% are not sure if their company is using content marketing, so the percentage of the businesses actively investing in it is likely even higher than 82%.

People are naturally wary of more traditional and “salesy” marketing techniques, so one of the absolute best ways to win over their trust is by providing them with helpful and engaging content, and establishing yourself as an authority in your field.

Cheaper does not always mean better, but it definitely seems to be the case with content marketing.

You read that right – producing high-quality content directly leads to an increase in sales, so if your website still doesn’t have a blog with regular, informative uploads, you should make it a priority right now.

But, if we take a look at all B2B marketers, only 43% of them report having a documented content marketing strategy. So, content marketing is directly linked to overall marketing success.

Producing high-quality, engaging content on a daily basis is very resource-intensive, but a great way to keep your audience engaged.

People like to do research before they buy from a business, so make sure that you have plenty of information available both to educate your users about your product/service, and help them solve their particular pain points.

Content Marketing Trends

Content marketing is only growing more popular amongst marketers, which is evidenced by the following trends.

Content is king, and with so many platforms and formats available for us at all times of the day, it’s only logical that businesses are going to keep increasing their spending on creating more content.

Not only have videos taken over the world of B2C  (especially with TikTok and YouTube shorts), but most B2B consumers would learn about a company from a video rather than another type of content, which has led B2B marketers to invest in video marketing even more heavily.

You almost can’t go wrong with content marketing. Whichever channel you choose, there are tons of opportunities to capture your audience’s attention. Even if you’re just an aspiring marketer, content marketing should be your primary focus.

Even if social media is not your main content distribution channel, it is still worth maintaining at least a Facebook or LinkedIn group, as well as a Twitter account for your business.

What’s surprising to see is that amongst seniors, social media usage has increased even more – it’s up 66%.

Before the pandemic, virtual events weren’t nearly as popular as they are now. Even now that the pandemic is fading away, people have seen the value and benefits of hosting and attending virtual events as opposed to physical ones.

With that being said, physical events are definitely not going anywhere. In fact, they’re coming back strong.

Backlinks are very powerful for SEO, but the ultimate success metric universally accepted by marketers is your website’s organic reach, and it’s likely to remain that way forever.

This is rather surprising – we started using AI tools for writing content, and it has helped us drastically reduce the time needed for producing guest posts.

Perhaps the other 67% simply haven’t tried such tools yet?

Unless you have a dedicated designer or the budget to outsource visual content, it can be very difficult to produce both written content and visual content in a way that will be consistently engaging for months on end, and over a third of content marketers agree.

Even though only about a third of all marketers state that such campaigns are actually effective, almost half of all marketers plan to invest in them this year.

With so much content production required, it’s no surprise that the three most sought-after roles are related to content.

If you have read our recent SEO statistics article, you know that voice search is getting increasingly popular amongst mobile users.

So, while the competition is somewhat low, optimizing your content for voice search might give you an edge over your rivals.

The Metaverse is coming, and regardless of whether it’s going to flop or turn the world on its head, a lot of businesses are increasing their budgets for virtual and augmented reality technologies.

Infographics are a great way to repurpose written content, and lay it out in an easily digestible format, that is not only easier on the eyes, but is also aesthetically pleasing for the user. In addition, infographics work great as link magnets.

B2C Content Marketing Statistics

Content marketing is the prevalent marketing strategy among B2C marketers – let’s see what 2023 has in store for it.

Same as with B2B content, it’s important to make it actually helpful to your audience instead of just stuffing marketing and promotional messaging everywhere.

This means that the remaining 6% don’t use content marketing at all – which is 2% more marketers than in the world of B2B.

Even though that percentage is really low, it’s still surprising to see marketers who don’t recognize the power and importance of content.

According to Content Marketing Institute, 59% of B2C content marketers reported that Facebook produced the best results for them, while 21% had more success with Instagram.

Compared to the 78% of B2B marketers performing proper keyword analysis and optimization, B2C content marketers seem to be concerned with it just a little bit less.

B2B Content Marketing Statistics

The B2B world is a little different compared to B2C – but they also share a lot of similarities. Let’s take a closer look.

So, it is safe to say that content marketing is recognized by the entire B2B marketing community, with only 4% not planning on developing a content marketing strategy.

To make content marketing effective, it needs to directly address your audience’s pain points and needs. This is relevant to both B2B and B2C content marketing.

Proper keyword research and optimization of your content is essential for ranking high in search engine results pages, and many marketers take advantage of SEO tools like Ahrefs and Marketmuse to improve their content.

LinkedIn is the social media for finding jobs and connecting with industry professionals, and very few B2B marketers don’t take advantage of it.

Coincidentally, only 4% of B2B marketers don’t use content marketing – so it’s safe to assume LinkedIn is only ignored by those that don’t invest in content marketing at all.

Blog posts are the backbone of the majority of B2B content marketing strategies, closely followed by social media groups. These two channels are great for attracting new audiences.

Email marketing, on the other hand, is great at retaining and nurturing existing customers. This applies to both B2B and B2C marketing.

These channels include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, social media advertising, influencer marketing, and, of course, sponsored content.

Creating high-quality custom content takes a lot of time and effort, so for a lot of marketers, it makes more sense to hire a freelancer to do it instead of producing it in-house, especially if the company is understaffed.

This statistic applies to both B2B and B2C marketing.

Search Statistics

Ranking in the top 10 organic search results can do wonders for your business, as supported by the following statistics.

If you don’t count the costs of SEO, any traffic that you get from organic search is essentially free. And while it may take a while to start ranking on the first page of Google, the end result is definitely worth it, as over half of all users find content through search.

Optimizing your content for keywords is one of the biggest aspects of SEO, and this statistic shows just how important it is to target multiple related keywords instead of just the one that gets the most clicks.

Without investing in SEO, you can’t realistically expect your website to perform well in search.

Even in 2023, backlinks from high-quality websites play a major role in rankings, and even though the process of link building is very tedious and time-consuming, it’s definitely worth investing in.

So, if you’re new to SEO, and are struggling to pick the most important metrics to pay attention to, these three are a great starting point – and retain their importance regardless of the stage at which your business is at.

Blogging Statistics

Company blogs are one of the most popular content distribution channels, both for B2B and B2C marketers. Let’s take a look at some specifics.

This means that over two-thirds of your users are merely skimming through your content, and not reading it thoroughly. So, if you don’t structure your content in a way that displays all of the most important points right at the beginning, it’s likely that most people will completely miss it.

The human attention span is only a few minutes, so if you fail to engage with your users in the first minutes of reading, it’s likely that they will never finish your article.

Take this into account when planning out your content calendar.

This shows that PPC is by no means a replacement for proper SEO. People don’t trust links with a big “AD” tag next to them,  so they’re more likely to click on the first organic search result.

And over 90% of web pages receive zero organic traffic from Google.

Out of the remaining bloggers, 26% usually monitor analytics, 26% do it occasionally, 12% never do it, and 4% report not having access to analytics.

Not all types of articles will be easy to optimize from these scores, especially ones that discuss very niche and nuanced topics. So, if your copy is not graded at 90-100, there is no reason to obsess over it as it won’t have any effect on your rankings.

Mobile Statistics

Smartphones are basically prosthetic brains at this point, granting people access to infinite amounts of information at any given moment. Of course, this also holds immense amounts of value for content marketers.

Especially now in 2023, most of these mobile phones are going to be smartphones, more than capable of browsing the web, which ties in directly with the following statistic.

Which only reinstates the importance of proper mobile optimization for your website.

These needs can be anything from ordering food, buying new clothes, plane tickets, or even finding real estate to move into.

Not only does virtually everybody use their smartphone every day to find the answers to literally all of their needs, but they also do it for a large amount of time on a daily basis.

Mobile is a huge market, and if you haven’t yet tapped into it, not only are you missing out on traffic and sales, but also an enormous audience constantly looking for your content.

When designing your website, it’s essential to take mobile devices into consideration. Make sure that your layout is fully responsive and that it loads within a second or two on mobile – otherwise, you will lose out on an enormous chunk of mobile traffic.

It’s annoying to look at a blank screen for over three seconds, and if it’s taking more than that to load your page, people will simply go to your competitors if their site is better optimized for mobile.

This makes sense since the majority of mobile searches are done by people addressing their immediate needs – finding store locations and ordering products online.

Mobile advertising is one of the largest markets, simply because of how much reach it has. Every single person interacts with their phone multiple times throughout the day, which gives marketers plenty of opportunities to deliver their marketing messages.

Video Marketing Statistics

Let’s see exactly what makes video content such a great investment for your content marketing strategy.

And this is not a surprise, as video is a much more engaging way to explain difficult topics. Most people don’t read blog posts all the way through, and so having things explained to them visually is more effective, and does a better job of retaining them.

When it comes to digesting content research from Isoline Communications found that 55% of B2B buyers find video content the most useful, and on average they consume 4-5 pieces of content before contacting a supplier. So you need to think about creating multiple content types that can help them across their research and decision journey.

If you have an explainer video on your website about your product or service, people will watch it before reading any of the written content.

So, if you don’t have any yet, it’s time to start working on them.

Be the 87th percent to instantly capture the attention of 96% of your visitors and better explain exactly what your business is about.

Of the remaining users, 18% prefer to learn product information from an article, 4% would like to see an infographic, 3% would take an e-book, and only 2% would actually rather learn about your product directly from a sales call or a demo with you.

YouTube gets around 35 billion monthly visits and has completely replaced television for a lot of adolescents and young adults.

What we said just above about YouTube replacing television for people is not just a bold claim by us – it’s a fact provided by Google’s statistics on YT’s reach for 18- to 49-year-olds.

Not only is YouTube great at providing people with all types of entertainment content, whenever they need it, but they are also a great way to teach them about your product or service, and help them make a more informed decision regarding whether or not to purchase from you.

According to Google, most people have made a purchase as a direct result of watching a YouTube video.

Of course, it’s easier to get people to download your software if it’s free, but even if it’s not, a video is the best way to showcase its features in a very engaging and informative way without spending the time on providing every single potential customer with a personalized demo.

So, if you’re a B2B brand and still don’t have an official YouTube channel with informative videos about your product or services, you are missing out on a big chunk of potential customers.

This ultimately means that the exact person in your video is not important, as long as you are able to deliver high-quality content that directly addresses your audience’s needs and wants.

Don’t worry if you don’t have the budget for a professional camera, light setup, or extensive editing skills. Even just recording yourself on your mobile phone while doing something or explaining a topic of interest to your target audience can perform very well on YouTube.

Likewise, spending thousands of dollars on recording and editing does not automatically grand you millions of views, if your content is not helpful or interesting.

The users are directly saying that video marketing is a much better way to communicate with them, so listen to your audience and provide them with what they need!

Podcast Statistics

While less popular than video, audio podcasts are still a great way of reaching consumers – let’s look at some numbers.

Or, more than the entire population of the United States. Sure, that’s not the 35 billion clicks that YouTube is getting, but it’s a large and very dedicated audience.

Podcasts are the radio of today, and having over half of an entire country’s population being active podcast listeners really shows you the scale of the industry.

Netflix is great for watching movies and shows, but it’s surprising to see that it’s entire user base is overshadowed by podcast listeners every single week.

The older generation is a lot more into listening to podcasts, and it makes sense – since they might not have as much time to watch YouTube videos during the day.

Commutes can be extremely boring and even frustrating, as can be mundane everyday things like cleaning, cooking, and some work tasks that don’t require much brain input. So, most podcast listening is done during those periods of time.

16 hours is a pretty long time, so it is evident that podcast listeners are dedicated to this form of media, which is supported by the following statistic.

This coincides with the average listening time being 16 hours, considering the average podcast is around 1-2 hours in length.

Considering that the average podcast length is around an hour, this is pretty impressive. Very few people actually read through an entire blog post, so throwing some podcasts into your content marketing mix can be a great way to retain your users and engage with them much more effectively.

An almost perfectly equal gender breakdown.

Most podcasts discuss somewhat niche and advanced topics, so it makes sense that they are more popular amongst older people with an education and not younger people – they tend to prefer YouTube.

These statistics just give a sense of scale on how large the podcast audience really is in the United States.

Most people use Spotify for listening to music already (ourselves included), so having access to podcasts on the same app is very convenient. All of the biggest and most popular podcasts are available on Spotify, and being amongst them can give you much-needed exposure.

Despite podcasts being so popular amongst American households and having such a dedicated audience, the competition is relatively low, compared to other content distribution channels.

So, if you have content that can be delivered in the form of a podcast, it might be a good idea to start recording right now, while other companies are focusing more on different channels.

The industry is experiencing rapid growth, so don’t wait until the landscape is too competitive to get into podcasting within your niche.

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Now Over To You

Content marketing is a great way to increase sales, boost awareness, establish yourself as an authority in your field,  and achieve higher rankings in search engines.

In many ways, content marketing is the only type of marketing that consumers really trust and appreciate in 2023.

Constantly producing high-quality content and promoting it through the appropriate channels is a lot of hard work, especially if you take things like SEO and link building into consideration.

So, if you’re looking for ways to streamline your content promotion, link building, or need help booking more podcasts, book a demo with us to learn how we can help you.