The State of Content Marketing: 2023 Global Report- An Overview of Major Trends & Industry Survey

Semrush has released its 2023 State of Content Marketing Global Report. The report tries to address some of the biggest issues for content marketers like how to create content that reaches the desired audience and how to harness the power of content marketing.

The report includes insights from Semrush experts and industry thought leaders who highlighted the trends they’ve seen growing over the past year. The report also consists of major pointers from the Semrush industry survey on what works and what doesn’t in content marketing. The survey offers useful direction for business founders, Chief Marketing Officers, and marketing managers alike.

Here are the major highlights of the report.

1. Understanding What Your Audience Needs and Values Will Be Your Key to Content Marketing Success in 2023

To get the hang of what to include in your content, you can try going a bit deeper to understand your audience. You can also surf through social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to check out the discussions happening there.

Once you’ve accumulated ample data from all these sources, you can use these to improve your content. The more value-adding you can make it, the better your results are going to be.

2. Improving Content Quality Will Be Your Number One Priority

Every time someone lands on your website or blog, they need something useful and original that can be of some value to them. As long as you can focus on your content quality, you’ll always have more website visitors, conversions, and click-throughs.

Therefore, try tailoring your content to your audience’s needs so that it can answer all the doubts of your readers and offer them a great user experience too simultaneously.

3. Proving Return on Investment Will Be a Principal Aim

With COVID-19 wreaking havoc on almost every brand’s marketing budget, companies might want to cut unnecessary ad spending and focus on more important things than tinkering with TikTok. This is because social media and paid ads make up less than 10% of B2B website traffic, leads, and sales.

So, which is the largest and the most effective source of ROI for brands?

The answer is organic search and referral traffic- for every industry ranging from manufacturing to technology and pharma to non-profits. And all of it is generated by content marketing. Content marketers will determine which outcomes the sales and brand departments need the most, which can help sew together the content marketing strategy and business outcomes.

4. Businesses Will Look for Reliability Over Novelty

With a continuous shift in the algorithms of social media platforms, they’ll continue to become less predictable and more unreliable. Therefore, the content published on a platform owned by a business, i.e., their websites, will become more of a priority in 2023. These in-house platforms will continue to help brands earn leads and sales and grow as more content and traffic are added to these.

With the rise of ChatGPT, website owners will be able to produce content more easily and quickly. However, that will also lead to the production of fluffy, non-original, and inaccurate content. This means that humanly researched, unique, and high-quality content will be in demand more than ever in 2023.

5. Ranking Will Be Less Important, But Your Click-Through Rates Will Count

The ranking of your content will have no bearing on the biggest trend of 2023. In fact, the biggest trend in 2023 will have a lot to do with click-through rates. That’s because your ranking may rise but your traffic might continue to fall.

Thus, SEO agencies will start tracking click-through rates and deprioritize ranking reports. Moreover, brands will need to focus on qualified and high-converting traffic.

6. This Year Will Be About Buying Growth, Not Building It

With the rise of the creator economy and millions of content entrepreneurs creating their niche media sites, there are innumerable opportunities for brands to invest in these small content brands instead of trying to build their new audiences.

So, before brands go about building another blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, they should take some time to see if there’re options that they can explore with regard to these small creators.

Major Highlights From Content Marketing Industry Survey

The Semrush content marketing industry survey aims to offer marketers an opportunity to learn from others and understand how to create content that aligns with their business goals. The survey includes responders from 34 different countries, with the majority working in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Here are the 5 major insights from the Semrush content marketing survey.

1. Have a Documented Content Marketing Strategy

80% of the survey responders who considered themselves very successful in content marketing in 2022 said that they had documented their marketing strategies. The same is the case with 73% of content marketers who considered their efforts successful.

On the contrary, only 50% of minimally successful and 52% of unsuccessful content marketers document their content marketing strategies.

Therefore, brands with a defined content marketing strategy will have an edge over others in 2023.

2. Prioritize Content Marketing Budgets

Almost 80% of content marketers, who considered themselves highly successful, spend more than 10% of their total marketing budgets on content. On the contrary, only 52% of those who are unsuccessful spend more than 10%.

Therefore, it’s clear that a fixed and substantial marketing budget has a big role in defining the success of content marketing strategies.

3. Promote Your Content Creatively

When it comes to content promotion, there was a big difference between successful and very successful content marketers and those who are minimally successful or unsuccessful. The top performers are much more likely to have different and creative promotional strategies for their content.

4. Prioritize Your Content Marketing Team

The content marketing success of brands heavily depends on a solid content marketing team. The survey reveals that 66% of highly successful content marketers have more than four specialists in their team, as opposed to just 32% of content marketers who were unsuccessful.

On the other hand, 34% of respondents who were unsuccessful in content marketing don’t have any content specialists at all.

Thus, brands need to give more importance to their content marketing teams and have dedicated resources for the same.

5. Measure Your Return on Investment

Metrics are important as they show you what to focus on. It comes as no surprise that respondents with the most success in content marketing measure their ROI effectively.

Bottom Line

Despite a shaky economic outlook in the coming year, things are definitely positive in the world of content marketing. Most companies are maintaining or growing their teams. And 97% are finding some degree of success with their content marketing efforts.

Going forward, brands need to prioritize audience research and define and document their content marketing strategy. Also, they must prioritize content marketing budgets and set enough aside to develop and promote their content.

To delve deeper into the findings of the report, download the full report here.