29 Revealing Statistics About Content Marketing in Europe [SlideShare]

Do you know how your content marketing team stacks up? It's incredibly useful to have an idea of what other content marketers are up to and how they're doing. Not only will it give you a feel for the performance level other content teams are achieving, but it'll also help you find and fix gaps in your own team's processes and performance.

In the ever-evolving world of content marketing, staying on top of statistics, benchmarks, and trends is especially important. We hear from marketers across the globe who are constantly asking themselves questions like, "Are we doing everything we can to stay on top of the latest trends?"

To help out fellow European marketers, our Dublin team dove into some hard data on the state of content marketing in Europe. Alongside Smart Insights, we surveyed over 700 European marketers to see where they've been focusing their efforts most, where they've been struggling, and what their plans are for the remainder of 2015.

For a taste of what we found, flip through this SlideShare and check out the tweetable statistics below. These will give you an introduction to the data we uncovered in our survey.

To learn about these findings in more detail, download the full benchmark report here.

29 Revealing Statistics About Content Marketing in Europe

The hype and success stories have caused more organisations to buy into content marketing.

1		37% of respondents felt that they had good capabilities with support from management. Tweet this stat
2		20% of respondents said they have advanced content marketing adoption. Tweet this stat
3		12% of respondents said they have an optimised content strategy. Tweet this stat
4		Only 11% of our survey respondents said they make little use of content marketing. Tweet this stat

Businesses are increasing investment in content marketing.

5		97% of European marketers believe in the power of content marketing. Tweet this stat
6		71% of businesses are creating more content in 2015 compared to 2014. Tweet this stat
7		Over 25% of companies are increasing internal headcount for content marketing in 2015. Tweet this stat
8		28% of companies are increasing investment in agency resources in 2015. Tweet this stat

The key issues in managing content marketing are the creation of quality content and measuring ROI.

9		Over 66% of businesses see significant room for improvement, rating their content marketing as basic or inconsistent. Tweet this stat
10		55% of respondents found quality to be a challenge with content marketing. Tweet this stat
11		58% of respondents cite content frequency as a specific concern. Tweet this stat
12		Measurement of ROI and content effectiveness is a challenge for 51% of businesses. Tweet this stat

European marketers are finding success with blogging and strategic planning.

13		79% of marketers find that strategy and planning are most effective for distributing content. Tweet this stat
14		67% of marketers have success with blog posts and articles. Tweet this stat
15		45% of marketers rate e-newsletters or online magazines as effective forms of content marketing. Tweet this stat
16		41% of marketers find infographics to be an effective content format. Tweet this stat

European marketers rate SEO tactics more highly than social media for organic content distribution.

17		62% of marketers rate Google organic traffic as a successful tactic for content distribution. Tweet this stat
18		47% of marketers believe Twitter is the best social network for distributing content successfully. Tweet this stat
19		46% of marketers rated Facebook as a successful channel for organic content distribution. Tweet this stat
20		43% of marketers found LinkedIn to be a successful channel for organic content distribution. Tweet this stat
21		Only 15% of marketers found that Google+ is an effective channel for distributing content. Tweet this stat

Despite the competition within organic content distribution, many European marketers are not taking advantage of the targeting techniques of paid media ads.

22		50% of marketers are not using using Twitter ads. Tweet this stat
23		48% of marketers are not using LinkedIn ads. Tweet this stat
24		38% of marketers are not using Facebook ads. Tweet this stat
25		49% of marketers are not using Google Remarketing. Tweet this stat
26		Out of the people who are using paid content distribution, Google AdWords is used the most, with 53% having paid for their ads to show up in search results. Tweet this stat

European marketers are still struggling to measure ROI from content marketing.

27		The most commonly used metric to measure content marketing effectiveness was website visits at 74%. Tweet this stat
28		The second most commonly used metric to measure content marketing effectiveness was social sharing of content at 66%. Tweet this stat
29		Only 39% of marketers claimed they were able to measure return on investment from their content marketing. Tweet this stat

Want to see more data on the state of content marketing in Europe?

Check out the full benchmark report, Driving Content Marketing Success 2015, European Edition.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in January 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.