A recent survey from Zazzle Media shared some insightful thoughts on where content marketing is at in 2019. For those deep in the trenches, this information confirms what trends you’re seeing, but even I was surprised by a few things myself.
Here was what I gathered from the survey:
Content Marketing is Being Taken More Seriously
Many marketing departments struggle with building up their content marketing efforts to where they want it to be and a big reason for that is budget. It can be difficult to convince decision-makers why they should invest more in content marketing, especially with how much it has changed in the last 5-10 years.
Take social media, for example. In the early days, you could put up a post without any visuals and it would do decently well. If you added a photo, even better. Algorithms during that time made it easy for people to see your content and that made it even easier to get likes. And you could do well on all of this for free.
Today, that scenario is long gone. Algorithms make it so that a small portion of your audience sees it. On Facebook, the average post reach is 6.4% of your audience, which is nearly 5 times less than it was in 2010. Your organization also has to try different kinds of visuals, like video, polls and sliding photo galleries to get an audience’s attention and engagement. And, most importantly, you have to “pay to play” if you want more eyeballs and engagement on content. All of this adds up to more money and time.
That’s why it’s encouraging that in 2019, 41% of marketing budgets are spent on content, up from 23% in 2018. The c-suite sees the value of investing in content to bring in more customers.
Voice Search Isn’t Popular, Yet
Only 11% of marketers used voice search last year, but half of searches will be voice searches by 2020. The biggest reason why companies don’t see the value is some haven’t seen it yet. Only 2% said they saw results from voice search while 62% couldn’t tell yet. That makes sense since 70% of those who own voice assistants don’t use them to make purchases. But with so many making voice searches, they’re likely influencing purchasing decisions, even though they may not make the purchase through a voice assistant. Time will tell as 42% of marketers plan to optimize voice search in 2019.
Writing Remains on Top
While there might be all kinds of flashy content out there, written content remains a top focus for content marketers (77%) followed by SEO (45%) and email marketing (42%), all of which also involves writing. Only 5% have voice search as a top focus, so I’m interested to see how priorities change in a few years, but for now, nothing tops a good, written story.
What are your thoughts on the recent data? Does anything jump out at you that I mentioned or was it something else? Share in the comments below.
AFJ Digital 