Content marketing trends for 2016

As content creation continues to grow in importance in PR and marketing, the Content Marketing Institute recently conducted marketing research on the status of content marketing in the UK. The research outlines benchmarks, budgets, and trends.

There are a growing number of marketers who are moving from traditional marketing practices towards online content marketing. When it comes to content creation and distribution, 88% of the marketing respondents said they are planning to create more content in 2016. In regards to marketing professionals already incorporating content marketing in their strategies, 37% stated that they have developed a well-defined content marketing strategy.

There are, however, a number of challenges that marketers are facing when it comes to content marketing. These include producing engaging content, measuring that content's effectiveness, producing content consistently, measuring ROI and producing a variety of content.

If you are looking to take your content marketing strategy to the next level, it’s important to understand your organisational goals for content marketing. The top goals respondents outlined during the research include sales (84%), engagement (83%), lead generation (81%), brand awareness (78%), customer retention/loyalty (75%), and lead nurturing (75%). Once you understand what you are looking to achieve, you can create that cater to your goals and target audience.

A selection of the types of content that content marketers are currently creating include social media content (94%), eNewsletters (87%), blogs (84%), videos (83%), case studies (82%), illustrations/photos (75%) and infographics (71%).

When it comes to the distribution of content, the use of social media platforms has increased dramatically over the last year. The largest growth outlined by the research was seen in YouTube with an increase from 68% to 81% in the last 12 months. The top social media platforms currently being used by content marketing in UK include LinkedIn (93%), Twitter (92%), YouTube (81%), Facebook (78%) and Google+ (74%).

Background

Content Marketing in the UK 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends was produced by Content Marketing Institute and sponsored by Lionbridge. The sixth annual content marketing survey, from which the results of this report were generated, was mailed electronically to a sample of marketers using lists from Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs, the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), the Business Marketing Association (BMA), Blackbaud, Industry Week, New Equipment Digest, and WTWH Media. A total of 3,714 recipients from around the globe completed the survey. This report presents the findings from the 133 respondents who said they were for-profit marketers in the UK (65% B2B, 11% B2C, and 24% both B2B+B2C). Access the report here:

The infographic included in this feature is created by video production specialist Hyperfine Media.

Written by Garth Haley, corporate videographer, editor and animator at Hyperfine Media