While marketers have in the past had a tough time measuring content performance, recent research [download page] from Parse.ly indicates that they’re now taking a more scientific approach to content marketing, with this having an impact on their content measurement. In fact, two-thirds (66%) of marketers surveyed for the report indicate that they have a data-driven approach to content marketing, with a further 22% share indicating that they’re getting there.
As a result of this approach, fully 86% of respondents indicate that they measure the performance of their content, an important point as content’s importance as a revenue driver grows.
They appear to be measuring their content quite frequently, too. About one-fifth (21%) indicate that they looked at content marketing performance data daily or more in the past 12 months, and a further 43% said they looked at such data on a weekly basis. In sum, close to two-thirds are looking at content marketing performance data on at least a weekly basis.
Testing is less frequent, though still occurs quite often. About 1 in 10 (11%) said they ran tests on content materials once a day or more during the past 12 months, and an additional 35% share said they did so once a week. As such, close to half (46%) run tests on content materials at least once per week. Most commonly, though, marketers are running tests on content materials once a month, with 39% share professing to doing so.
Widely Used MarTech Tools
The research also delves into the tech brands that are being used by marketers.
Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics technology, by 65% of respondents, ahead of Adobe Analytics, at 31%. While Google Analytics adoption is fairly consistent across company sizes, Adobe Analytics is more commonly used by mid-sized and large companies than by smaller ones.
Among email platforms, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the leading tool, narrowly ahead of Salesforce Pardot, Marketo, Mailchimp, and HubSpot. Both Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo have wider adoption among larger companies, while Salesforce Pardot and Mailchimp usage are more consistent across company sizes.
When it comes to social media tools, respondents are most commonly posting directly on social media, although this is more common among smaller than larger companies. Hootsuite and Sprout Social are the leading technologies used, with the former more popular with larger companies.
As for customer data platforms (CDPs), Salesforce is the clear leader (55%), ahead of Segment (29%) and Tealium (22%). There’s less variance in usage of these platforms by company size, per the findings, though Salesforce is more dominant among enterprise firms. Some 15% of smaller companies (0-200 employees) don’t use a CDP, compared to just 3% of those with more than 1,000 employees.
Finally, Salesforce continues to be the leading personalization technology used by respondents, as is Google among multivariate testing tools.
For more, download the report here.
About the Data: The results are based on a November 2022 survey of 1,544 marketers at B2B, B2C and both B2B and B2C companies across a variety of industries.
