The executive summary

We quizzed hundreds of marketers about everything from their budgets to their blog posts. Here are the (sometimes shocking) headlines.

The executive summary

How are content budgets shifting?
What does ‘personalized’ content really look like?
And what are today’s most successful marketers doing differently?

These are just a few of the questions we wanted to answer when we commissioned Sapio Research to survey marketers on both sides of the Atlantic.

What we learned,
in a nutshell

Marketers now have more money to spend on creating and distributing the white papers, blog posts, infographics, and other content pieces of their dreams.Most marketers have seen their content marketing budget grow over the last twelve months, and even more expect it to grow over the next twelve.

$345,000 or £277,000

The average content marketing budget

But despite having deeper pockets than ever, marketers are struggling to create innovative, engaging content.

And more often than not, their strategies fail to fully deliver.

Heartbreakingly, only 42% of marketers can bring themselves to rate their content strategy as ‘very successful’.

56%

Of marketers say their content strategy is rarely or only slightly successful

61%

Of these marketers say creating innovative, engaging content is a major challenge

Don’t worry, that’s all the bad news out of the way.
And there’s plenty more good news to come.

For instance: Dig into the data, and it’s clear that the marketers with the most successful content strategies have a lot in common. What’s more, the stuff they’re doing is within the reach of almost any marketer.

Especially one with an increasingly generous budget.

These ‘very successful’ content marketers are more likely to create content with consistently on-point branding and design, to personalize content, and to drive that personalization with analytics.

They’re also more likely to consider behavioral psychology, create longer and more interactive content pieces, and track metrics such as total read time and number of sessions.

In fact, the most successful content marketers are more than twice as likely to take a strongly data-led approach to their B2B marketing strategy.

What does this mean for your content strategy?

Simply put, the things you probably think make a difference to your content’s performance… do.

Applying deep personalization, consistent design, and behavioral psychology.

Having the right insights and being led by the data. It all helps. And if your own content budget is growing, now could be the perfect time to add these strings to your content creation bow.

You can steal some strategic moves from our most
successful respondents by following these six best practices:

01. Create a mix of short and in-depth content

02. Use psychology to optimize engagement

03. Embrace the innovative and interactive

04. Apply data-driven personalization

05. Ensure everything is visually on-brand

06. Measure a deeper set of metrics

Swim straight to a chapter…

The methodology
Content budgets and barriers
Content format
Content design, personalization, and psychology
Measuring performance
The disarmingly simple conclusion