40 Content Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Needs to Know

Content marketing is the practice of marketing a brand using different types of content, like blog posts, landing pages, ebooks, and more. However, as more content gets published year after year, the internet is getting saturated, and brands have to be more creative to stand out.

To get an understanding of what the state of content marketing looks like these days and how marketers can effectively promote their businesses through content, we’ve put together a list of 40 content marketing statistics.

Dig through each of these stats to discover what it takes to stand out with your branded content this year.

1. The global content marketing industry revenue is projected to reach $107 billion by 2026

The global content marketing industry was valued at around $63 billion in 2022. It’s estimated to hit $107 billion by 2026, a nearly 70% increase in just four years. This just goes to show that content marketing is holding strong, and is a strategy your business should buy into.

2. Most content marketing teams consist of 1-5 people

The majority of B2B companies have small content teams, with 54% reporting a team of 2-5 people and 20% saying they only have a one-person team. The Content Studio’s State of Discontent Report corroborates this, saying the average content team is just 1-5 people.

3. The average content team is managing five different content formats

However, despite most content marketing teams maxing out at five people, they’re also managing an average of five different content formats. These formats range between:

• Blog posts
• Video content
• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Podcast episodes
• Emails
• Case studies
• Infographics

That’s a lot of content for just a handful of people to consistently create.

4. 71% of content marketers have a monthly budget of under $1,000

Even though the average rate that freelance writers charge per blog post is around $550, 7 in 10 content marketers have less than $1,000 to work with each month. This is a sign that many companies are significantly undervaluing content work, overworking their in-house teams, and—we’ll cover more of this later—turning to AI tools to help bridge the gaps.

5. 46% of B2B marketers say their content marketing budget will increase in 2025

Thankfully, some businesses seem to understand the importance of content, and nearly half of B2B content marketers say their budget will increase this year. 

Of those 46%, 33% expect a 1-9% increase and just 13% expect an increase of more than 9%. 41% of content marketers say their budgets will stay the same. And sadly, 8% of marketers expect a budget decrease.

6. 79% of content marketers write their brand’s content themselves

Another stat that given what we’ve seen so far just makes sense. With such small content teams and such small budgets, nearly 8 in 10 content marketers are stuck creating their brand’s content themselves.

Just 17% of content marketers have an in-house writer to help with content and 14% work with freelancers. 

(Note that marketers were able to select multiple choices with this question, meaning that some may be creating their brand’s content while also working with an in-house or freelance writer—but not many.)

7. 87% of B2B content marketers say their content strategy is effective

3% of B2B content marketers say their strategy is extremely effective, 26% report it being very effective, and 58% say their strategy is moderately effective, adding up to 87% (nearly 9 in 10) content marketers agreeing that content marketing is an effective strategy for their businesses.

8. 47% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy

Perhaps a bit contradictory, but not even half (47%) of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. Perhaps if more of these marketers created a fully documented strategy that everyone on the team could easily refer to, they’d see more than moderate effectiveness.

9. The biggest reason marketers state their content marketing strategy isn’t effective is due to a lack of clear goals

42% of B2B content marketers say their content strategy isn’t as effective as it could be due to a lack of clear goals. Again, this goes back to a lack of clear-cut documentation. 

If you create a content strategy that lays the foundation for all the work your content team is doing, you’ll have set goals outlined that can improve effectiveness.

10. 54% of B2B marketers say the biggest content marketing challenge they face is a lack of resources

The biggest challenge B2B content marketers face is a lack of resources. This lines up with the data we’re seeing about the size of content teams versus the amount of content they’re trying to put out.

Other top challenges include measuring the results of their efforts (47%), aligning content with the buyer’s journey (45%), and aligning content efforts across sales and marketing (43%).

11. 55% of B2B marketers say their biggest content creation challenge is creating content that prompts a desired action

When looking specifically at the content creation portion of a content marketing strategy, B2B marketers state their biggest challenge is creating content that prompts the action they’re hoping for, whether it’s a blog subscribe, an email subscribe, a purchase, a sign-up, what have you.

Other top content creation challenges include differentiating their content from competitors (43%), creating content consistently (42%), and creating the right content for their audience (40%).

12. 45% of B2B marketers say they don’t have a scalable process for content creation

Another issue we’re seeing in the B2B content marketing world is that many marketers don’t have a scalable model for creating more content. 45% of marketers say they can’t scale, 20% are unsure if their process would scale, while 35% are satisfied that their model has scalability.

If your content creation process isn’t scalable, that means you’re not able to create more content without paying for more manpower. If you’re trying to keep costs down (as we already established many content marketing teams are), you need to figure out how you can create more content with the same amount of people and resources you have now.

13. Understanding their audience is the biggest contribution to success for B2B content marketers

82% of B2B content marketers contribute having an understanding of their audience to their content marketing success. This is followed by producing high-quality content (77%), possessing industry expertise (70%), and having high-performing team members (69%).

14. 41.3% of content marketers say they aren’t doing enough audience research

Interestingly enough, another study found that just over 4 in 10 (41.3%) of content marketers don’t think they’re doing enough audience research. With so many content marketers believing that knowing their audience is a major contributing factor to success, we hope to see more of them invest time and resources into that research.

15. 87% of B2B marketers say content marketing helped them create brand awareness

Out of the goals that B2B content marketers achieved over the last year, the top one was increasing brand awareness (87%). Other top goals include lead generation (74%), lead nurturing (62%), and customer loyalty (52%).

16. Traffic, social media engagement, and conversions are the top metrics content marketers use to track results

Out of the different metrics and KPIs that content marketers could choose from, 55% of marketers use traffic to track their results, 50% use social media engagement and shares, and 42% use conversions and leads. (Keep in mind that marketers could choose multiple options here, as most track multiple metrics as part of their strategy.)

17. Marketers say the biggest indicators of success are an increase in website traffic, higher search rankings, and more lead generation

74.79% of marketers say one of their best indicators of content marketing success is an increase in website traffic. In addition, 71.43% of marketers say it’s higher search engine rankings, and 63.03% say it’s more leads generated.

18. Content marketing was one of the top three marketing channels for B2C companies in 2024

One of the trends that HubSpot’s State of Marketing 2025 report sees for this year is more visual content that tells a story. And with content marketing being one of the top three marketing channels for B2C companies last year (following email marketing and paid social media content), that makes sense.

19. 58% of B2B marketers say video was the most effective type of content

There are many different types of content that marketers can include in their content strategy, and some perform better than others. The best-performing type of content for B2B companies appears to be video, with 58% of marketers rating that as their most effective type, followed by case studies or customer stories (53%), ebooks/white papers and research reports tied with 45%, and blog articles/posts (43%).

20. Most companies plan to create more case studies, written content, and video content over the next 12 months

68.91% of content marketing teams plan to create more case studies in the next year, 67.23% want to create more written articles, , and 65.55% want to create more video content.

21. 92% of B2B marketers create short articles/blog posts as part of their content strategy

If you talk to any content marketer, you’ll see that most of their strategy is centered around blog content. So it should come as no surprise that 92% of B2B marketers create short articles/blog posts as part of their strategies. 

Just 69% include long-form articles/blog posts, though we’ll look at some more stats around blogging that show us which form is better.

22. The average blog post is around 1,400 words

Shorter blog posts tend to be around 1,000 words or less, while longer blog posts are 2,000 or more. So it makes sense that the average blog post sits somewhere in the middle, at 1,400 words.

23. Longer blog posts tend to perform better

Blog posts with longer word counts tend to perform better. 37% of bloggers report better results for posts between 2,000-3,000 words, and 31% report better results for blog posts that are 3,000 words or more.

By contrast, only 23% of bloggers report better results for posts between 1,500 and 2,000 words, and 20% for posts between 1,000-1,500 words.

24. Publishing more often improves performance

40% of bloggers who report “strong results” publish new blog content daily. 31% publish 2-6 posts per week, 21% post weekly, and 22% post several new blog posts per month. Publishing more often reaps better rewards, which just goes to show why you need your strategy to be scalable.

25. How-to articles and lists are the most common type of blog post

There are different types of blog posts that content marketers use in their strategies. How-to articles and lists sit at the top of the list of most common types, with 74% of bloggers having created how-to articles and 50% having created lists.

Other popular types include:

• Guides & ebooks: 46%
• News & trends: 45%
• Opinion: 43%
• Original research: 43%

26. Blogs with a lot of visual content perform better than blogs without

Half of bloggers report using 2-3 visuals in each blog post, which is good because more visuals = better results. 35% of bloggers report better results for posts with 7-10 images and 33% for posts with 10+ images.

Break up your content with visuals. It’ll improve your results, generating more traffic and more shares.

27. X/Twitter and Facebook are the most commonly used social media platforms for content marketing efforts

We mentioned that many content marketers track social media shares and engagement as part of their content marketing ROI. This is because it’s common for marketing teams to share their content across social media.

In fact, statistics show that X/Twitter and Facebook are the two most commonly used social media platforms for content marketing, with 43% of marketers using the former  and 42% using the latter.

28. 81% of B2B marketing teams are using generative AI

One of the biggest trends we’re seeing in the content marketing world is the incorporation of AI into strategies. So it should come as no surprise that more than 8 in 10 B2B content marketers are using generative AI tools to help with their content marketing process.

29. 80% of bloggers are using AI

And when it comes to content marketers who are just creating blog content, 80% of them are also using AI to help. Artificial intelligence is here to stay, so it’s time to figure out how to make it work to your advantage.

30. Marketers who don’t use AI cite accuracy and copyright concerns as two of their main reasons

When marketers who don’t use AI were asked why, 35% of them cited accuracy concerns and 26% cited copyright concerns. When AI tools are trained on other peoples’ work, these concerns are extremely valid, and are why AI use needs to be done with a grain of salt.

31. 46% of content marketers would start using AI if there were tangible proof that the content was original and could rank

Perhaps further proving the worry that AI content is regurgitated from other areas on the web (which, by nature, it is), 46% of content marketers say they would start using AI tools if they could see real-life proof that AI-generated content was completely original and could rank in search results.

32. ChatGPT is the most commonly used AI tool by content marketers

There are a number of AI tools that can be used for writing and content marketing, but ChatGPT is by far the most popular. 29% of content marketers say they use ChatGPT in their strategies. This is followed by Midjourney and Gemini, both of which only 3% of content marketers reported using.

33. 67.2% of content marketers have a positive sentiment around the role of AI

Regardless of the concerns that many marketers have around AI, the outlook still looks good for the revolutionary technology. 67.2% of content marketers have a positive sentiment around the role of AI in their work, with just 15.3% having a negative attitude towards it and 17.6% remaining neutral.

34. 79% of businesses report an increase in content quality when using AI tools

Another statistic in AI’s favor tells us that nearly 8 in 10 businesses have reported an increase in their content’s quality when they incorporate AI into their creation process.

35. Brands that use AI tools claim to have better content marketing results than those who don’t

Another one of the main reasons that marketers are likely feeling positively towards the technology is due to the increase in performance they’re seeing due to its usage. 82% of businesses using AI tools claim their content marketing efforts are very effective, compared to just 18% of brands who don’t use AI.

In addition, 68% of businesses report an increased ROI in content marketing thanks to AI. If you know how to properly use it, AI can be a huge asset to your content team.

36. The biggest use for AI in content marketing is researching content and topic ideas

So let’s talk more about how to properly use AI. 58% of content marketers are using AI tools for researching content and topic ideas. This is a huge help to the content planning process and can make it go much faster.

Other use cases include:

• Rewriting and paraphrasing content: 52%
• Writing content: 50%
• Creating a content strategy: 47%
• Adding content and ideas to expand text: 40%
• Creating outlines: 39%
• Optimizing copy to hit target keywords: 33%
• Audience research: 30%
• Improving readability: 29%

37. The top benefits of AI in content marketing include increased productivity, reduced manual effort, and faster content creation

Using AI tools in your content strategy can provide a number of benefits. 47.3% of content marketers report increased productivity, 46.9% say AI reduces their manual efforts, and 44.4% say they can create content faster.

38. Content marketers want to test AI tools for content creation, SEO, image generation, and video generation this year

Businesses are looking to try even more AI tools in 2025. The top AI tools content marketers want to test are:

• Specialized AI writing tools: 55%
• AI SEO tools: 54%
• Image generators: 53%
• Video generators: 52%

39. The average content marketer earns $111,891

If you’re interested in finding a content marketing role, the average salary is $111,891/year. This is just a 0.48% increase from last year, meaning salaries appear to be plateauing for now.

40. 49.24% of content marketers are satisfied or very satisfied with their salary

Regardless of the plateau, nearly half of content marketers are satisfied or very satisfied with their salary. 26.46% report being neutral about their income, and just 24.30% feel dissatisfied.

Use these content marketing statistics to inform your strategy

What content marketing looks like for a business continues to change year after year. While blogging remains the main facet, other strategies are becoming more popular as well. And this year, we’ve made a huge focus on the role of AI in content marketing.

Keep these statistics in mind to help you adjust your own content marketing strategy to the state of the industry. This will help you remain competitive so you can reach a wider audience through your content.