Content Marketing Sees Spike In Spending, Spreads To Social Media: Junta42 Survey

“Customers are finding more ways to block unwanted messages,” said Joe Pulizzi, President & Chief Content Officer, Junta42, a leading content marketing vendor-matching service. “In order to get attention, marketers must develop valuable, relevant, compelling and consistent messages so that prospects actually ‘opt-in’ to receive the marketing. It's the ultimate non-sell. Tomorrow's marketing is all about publishing.”

Pulizzi said the growth around content marketing efforts will continue to soar based on the company’s data. The majority of marketing professionals polled in the survey plan to increase their spending on content marketing initiatives in 2010 and are planning to allocate an all-time high of 33% of their overall budget to such efforts.

Only 7% of participants predicted they would spend less this year than in 2009, according to the survey, which polled over 250 marketers. The 59% of marketers who plan to increase their spending on content marketing compares favorably to previous years when 56% (2009) and 42% (2008) of participants were predicting an upturn in their content marketing spending. As a percentage of overall budgets, marketers are increasing their content marketing spending 11%, which equates to 33% of the total marketing budget, up from 29% in 2008.

Smaller companies spend more than twice that of larger companies as a percentage of their overall marketing budgets on content initiatives, investing approximately 40% on content projects. Larger companies (more than 100 employees) allocate an average of 18% of their overall budget to content marketing. Marketers are still keenly interested in tapping the potential of social networking sites to get compelling information to potential customers.

“In content marketing, David can outperform Goliath,” Pulizzi said. “Larger brands are still buying more media (having larger budgets). Smaller brands are leveraging content marketing as a more cost-effective marketing opportunity. Smaller brands don't have the well-worn marketing paths of larger brands, so we see them moving faster on this trend.

Nearly ¾ of survey participants are leveraging their content through social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

“Businesses are realizing that their customers are using social media,” Puilizzi said. “Instead of developing their own communities, marketers are smart to go to where customers are and get involved in the conversation. To succeed at social media, marketers must develop content strategies and have something valuable to say.”

Pulizzi said a social media strategy is not an option anymore. “Since almost all people are using some type of social media, if we are not there, we are losing out on developing relationships with those customers. Also, customers can be powerful marketing arms to share our content for us...social media was built for sharing,” he said.

For marketers tapping into social network strategy, Pulizzi offers these basic starter tips:

• Understand the informational needs of your customers
• Know how those informational needs mix with your marketing goals and objectives
• Develop a content program around those needs
• Be consistent (content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint)
• Listen and continually evolve the program

The survey also found that 6 in 10 marketers surveyed use both blogs and eNewsletters to communicate with customers. The survey, which polled over 250 marketing professionals, indicated a surprising uptick in marketing professionals who feel they "need to know" more about mobile content solutions, rising 63% over 2009.