Julia McCoy
From 2016 to 2021, global industry value will climb by $217.3 billion thanks to a 16% compound annual growth rate, as The Drum reported. What are the factors behind this ballooning growth? According to the report:
Beyond cost-effectiveness, better conversion rates, and brand growth, what are some other reasons we can thank for the content boom?
In many ways, the beginning of the digital content marketing era was experimental. Businesses were figuring out what worked and what didn’t. All the while, search engine algorithms were constantly changing the way content was optimized and discovered.
In fact, it’s only in the last few years that businesses started understanding the need for:
In 2010, when Content Marketing Institute released their first Benchmarks, Budgets, & Trends Report for B2Bs, the biggest content marketing challenges reported were producing engaging content (36%) and producing enough content (21%). Fast-forward to the 2019 report, and the results are very different.
Today, the biggest challenge for content marketers is changes to SEO/search algorithms (61%), closely followed by changes to social media algorithms (45%). That’s a huge leap. The issue is no longer what to produce, but rather how to keep up with the changing search landscape.
We’re finally figuring out this content thing, including:
In short, we’re generally more successful at content than we were 10 years ago – and that’s a big contributor to the industry’s current boom.
It’s a slow journey to see returns from content marketing. On average, it takes months to gain traction, climb the search engine rankings, and begin building authority.
In the early days, lots of brands didn’t wait long enough to see the promised results. Others couldn’t see the value in content, mainly because adopters weren’t sure how to prove ROI.
However, as we improved as an industry, the benefits started coming into focus. We can measure our content marketing and point to concrete numbers that show exactly why it’s a great investment. As a result, more businesses are investing.
We can see proof of that in the global content marketing software market. From 2018 to 2023, it’s expected to enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 18.4%. It should surge from $4.12 billion in 2018 to $9.59 billion in 2023. According to GlobeNewswire,
“Major growth drivers for the market include the growing adoption of content marketing software for personalized marketing, customer engagement, and social media, and an increasing use of omnichannel message for enhancing customer experience.”
