The Importance of Content Marketing

Chart of the day: Research with almost 1,000 content marketers reveals how important content marketing is to marketing teams.

Most people say content marketing is at the core of the marketing team.

Please note that the research is split into visionaries and leaders, those who are experts in content marketing or leaders. Most marketers also use an editorial calendar.

If you're looking for an editorial calendar, Smart Insights have one right here.

Content marketing is a huge part of marketing, it works with SEO, email marketing, and social media. Quality content drives traffic and conversions.

The research also found that most content is produced by the marketing team or freelancers, marketing have control of the content that goes out and agencies are used by just 10% of respondents. This suggests that marketing as a whole are embracing content marketing so much, that everyone is involved in a lot of cases. It also suggests marketers are using trusted authors and freelancers, over agencies and have control of content marketing over other parts of the businesses.

What about measurement of content marketing success? Less than 20 percent don't measure content. Amongst those who do, traffic metrics and engagement metrics are the most commonly used. We'd expect if this research is repeated a year from now, that conversion metrics will be in the increase, as the focus on content marketing is moving towards the measurement of conversion success. We know content marketing can deliver conversions and ROI, so we expect an increase in emphasis on this metric over the next year.

• Source: Skyword 
• Sample: Just under 1,000 content marketers
• Recommended resources: Editorial Calendar template spreadsheet - Content Marketing Strategy Guide