Survey Results: 80% Growth in Content Marketing Spending in 2020

Marketing of good content - valuable content is the goal for 2020

More, harder and more often is the recipe for … wasted budgets! The times when more = better are slowly fading into oblivion. The era of content marketing has arrived. According to new research conducted by World Media Group among marketers from around the world, as many as 80% of them expect the number of campaigns based on content marketing to increase over the next two years.

What distinguishes content marketing from classic display marketing?

The most important feature of this form of promotion is that it is engaging and helpful content that brings value to the recipient. - describes Sergiusz Lelakowski, Product Manager at Audience Network, specializing in the execution of content marketing campaigns supported by Big Data analysis, and then adds: - A properly conducted content marketing campaign, in addition to achieving image goals, allows the brand to increase the effectiveness of performance activities. Thanks to data, we are able to increase the number of conversions and reduce the cost of acquiring them.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing activities are very diverse, but the most popular include: materials created as part of a company blog, video files on YouTube, official documents, podcasts or webinars. However, that is not all - today companies can support content campaigns with Big Data analysis, which brings a range of benefits affecting campaign effectiveness, including primarily: understanding audience profiles and personalizing the message, ongoing campaign optimization, and the use of data for retargeting campaigns.

Content-centrism

World Media Group survey results

According to the results of new research carried out by London-based World Media Group, in which 269 marketers from around the world took part, the coming years will belong to content marketing. As the survey results indicate, as many as 8 out of 10 marketers (~79%) announce that they want to increase the number of this type of campaign. Fewer than one in five (~19%) marketers said they believe content marketing campaigns will remain at the same level. Only 2% of respondents expect a decline.

Brands that want to effectively compete for customers must achieve the status of an opinion leader and trusted expert. How to do this? By offering valuable content. This is an excellent opportunity to increase the conversion rate, which determines the profitability of the investment by assessing what effect the brand can expect. A solid marketing strategy based on content marketing includes both content creation and a plan for its multichannel distribution - advises Sergiusz Lelakowski.

The human, the algorithm whisperer

The role of artificial intelligence

What significantly contributed to the development of this strategy is technological progress. Thanks to AI algorithms, a marketer can focus on creating engaging content, and artificial intelligence will do the “dirty work” for them.

- “Chatbots, messaging apps, programmatic sales - these are just a few areas that AI can handle. Thanks to such assistance, a marketer can focus, for example, on storytelling. We live in an era in which content distribution is carried out by intelligent algorithms that handle this task better than humans.” - notes Grzegorz Kosiński, CEO of Audience Network.

Big Data in practice

Why has the era of content marketing arrived?

Although the effectiveness of content marketing is indisputable, as the report's authors remind us, the strategy is no less important, defining, among other things, the method of distributing the created content. When we do not know whom, where and when we are looking for, it resembles a children's game of blind man's buff.

That is why Big Data solutions are also used in content marketing, and they positively influence the results of content campaigns. All thanks to the fact that the marketer gains access to knowledge about internet user behavior. The source of this information is the analysis of user data, thanks to which the person preparing the campaign knows who the content should reach. On this basis, it is possible to prepare, for example, lookalike profiles and retargeting campaigns that will increase the effectiveness of every pound spent.

Developing and implementing a content marketing strategy supported by Big Data is a multi-stage process that begins with analysis. Its goal is to gather information about the recipient of the message. The conclusions obtained in this way will be used to prepare an effective, personalized campaign. Then the content materials are distributed among a previously defined target group, and based on the analysis of the best-converting user profiles, twin profiles are identified and targeted by the campaign, which is intended to increase the campaign's reach. Finally, a campaign report is prepared. And what results can marketers expect?

“Thanks to adopting such a strategy for distributing content marketing materials, the brand Kayet, belonging to the Biedronka retail chain, achieved a CTR result 78% higher than estimated before the campaign started. This result was achieved by combining 3 important elements: content marketing, Big Data analysis, which made it possible to create behavioral profiles, and finally retargeting.” - says Marcin Filipowicz, vice president of Audience Network.

Carrying out such a campaign would be impossible without the DMP platform, which helps in combining data and analyzing it. Thanks to Big Data analysis, marketers not only save time, but also make more informed and smarter decisions; the combination of martech technology and content marketing brings extremely promising results.

Summary

The World Media Group report shows that as many as 80% of marketers plan to increase the number of content marketing campaigns in the next two years, while only 2% expect a decline. The key to success is combining valuable content with Big Data analysis, which allows precise targeting of audiences and real-time campaign optimization.

The example of the Kayet brand from the Biedronka chain shows that such an approach can bring spectacular results – the campaign achieved a CTR 78% higher than assumed, thanks to the combination of content marketing, behavioral profiles and retargeting.