Content marketing in the UK: 2014 benchmarks, budgets, and trends

Introduction

Welcome to the second annual report on the content marketing practices of UK marketers. This report provides comparisons of UK, North American, and Australian marketers. One of the key findings is that UK marketers (48%) consider themselves to be more effective at content marketing* when compared with their North American (41%) and Australian (33%) peers.

Among the other findings:

- Only 42% of UK marketers say they have a documented content strategy; however, 10% of those answering this question were unsure. This is the highest rate of uncertainty we saw around this question when comparing responses across continents.

- 76% of UK marketers are producing more content than they did one year ago, compared with 72% of North American and 81% of Australian marketers.

- UK marketers (89%) use Twitter more often than their North American (84%) and Australian (79%) peers do; however, like those peers, they rate LinkedIn highest in terms of effectiveness.

- UK marketers allocate more of their total marketing budget (31%) to content marketing when compared with North American (29%) and Australian (27%) marketers.

- UK marketers are fairly challenged in regard to producing enough content (46%) and producing engaging content (44%).However, they use more content marketing tactics on average than their peers across the globe, and they use those tactics more frequently.

That—in addition to their confidence in their effectiveness—leads us to conclude that content marketing is alive and well in the UK.

You can download the full report here.