Content takes a Notable Share of Marketer Budgets

  Digital marketing has driven home the importance of content, as marketers strive to keep customers engaged and drive brand awareness. These were the top two benefits of content marketing, according to an August 2013 survey of marketers in North America from Unisphere Research. And marketers are certainly putting money behind that effort: 48% of respondents reported devoting at least 10% of their budget to content creation, with 19% of marketers allocating 25% or more.

That said, there are still holdouts among marketers who either do not think content is critical to their strategy or have not yet moved significant resources into the category. A notable 36% of marketers spent less than 10% of their budgets on content creation.

So what kinds of content are marketers primarily producing? In the survey, articles and videos topped the list, at 76% and 60%, respectively. And these, and other forms of content, were most often created in-house—87% of marketers said they created digital content internally.

Where companies may be stalling is in making content especially responsive to the channel where it is viewed. The study found that 56% of marketers most of the time or all of the time leveraged the same content in every channel.

The company website remains the most important channel for content, with 88% of marketers citing it. That was followed by email campaigns (73%) and public relations (70%).

Following close on the heels of these top three content channels was social media (68%), where marketers are increasingly looking to get their content out to a wider audience.

Courtesy of eMarketer