In Content Marketing, Everyone Wants to Do More with Video, Report Reveals

As more people are creating more content, the question if it delivers the expected results often remains open.  According to the results from a recent survey, marketers can create not just more content but content that produces better results, based on focusing efforts in the highest performing areas.

The report by Parse.ly, an analytics platform built for content creators, takes into account a survey of more than 800 content marketers worldwide in November 2021. The goal was to learn how these businesses are using content for growth, how much they are spending on that content, what channels they want to pursue next, what technology they’re integrating with, and trends they see heading into 2022. 

There were 832 unique respondents across various roles, industries, company types and geographic location. B2B technology companies (26.5%) were by far the most well-represented. Intrigued? Take a peek at the key findings here:

• There’s a deep desire to do more with video, if they only had the resources. Video isn’t just for young, glam consumer brands today – a finding that underscores a desire for deeper human connection. Businesses of all sizes, across industries and segments want to get in on the action — and no wonder, considering the higher audience engagement levels that come with video.
• 2022 expected to be the year video takes a greater starring role in enterprise and B2B content marketing circles. For one, as smartphones and handhelds continue to close gaps in video quality and editing capabilities, it wouldn’t be surprising to see content teams take a DIY, guerilla marketing approach to video shoots and production to promote assets, webinars, events, and more.
• Content drives growth. In 52% of companies, more people are creating more content — no wonder, when everyone wants to grow their customer base and improve their relationships with those customers. Content drives top-of-funnel activities — meaning brands are thinking about the all-important initial connection they make with customers, wherever they are.
• The biggest challenge? Measuring the impact of content to justify further investment. Tracking revenue back to content is hard — really hard. Content marketers today largely rely on metrics like clicks or views. Marketing teams aren’t short of measurement tools — more than 3 in 4 survey respondents use metrics to measure their content performance. The questions is whether they using the right metrics and the right tools.  Page views and email clicks, so-called “vanity metrics,” offer little hard analysis of how content is performing, and don’t tell the full story of a customer’s lifecycle journey. Almost half of respondents (49%) don’t know how their content is performing — leaving them making key content decisions by gut feel.
• Advertising is still king. Of those organizations that do have goals tied to revenue, how do they use content to achieve them? Advertising, sponsored content, driving traffic to sales, retention and expansion are the most popular revenue-driving content activities. 56% of respondents said their organizations are using content in the form of advertising placements to drive revenue. 20% state advertising placements as the most effective revenue driver.

With so much time and resources going into content especially over the last two years, forward-thinking companies need to take important aspects into consideration. Not just clicks or views, but the context of content placement, the particular platform/channel, as well as the actual attention metrics should be considered in content marketing. Novelty Media, via SmartAdd, offers an innovative solution capitalizing on actual human attention as the main measurement metric, thus easily tracking revenue back to content. We are an attention-based media channel transforming the routine moments of smartphone usage into an impactful content-viewing experience. Sparked your interest? Keep following our Marketing Bites to find out more about SmartAdd.