Even in tough economic times, money is still flowing into content marketing initiatives. In a December 2008 content marketing research study from Junta42, an online content marketing resource and vendor-matching tool, more than half (56%) of marketing- and publishing-decision makers plan to increase their content marketing spending for 2009 (31% increase significantly, 25% increase slightly). Only 13% plan on decreasing their content marketing spending (9% decrease slightly, 4% decrease significantly).Surveyed marketers were very clear that social media will be on the top of their investment list in 2009. In terms of most important products/tactics, social media (other than blogs) resonated with 68% of subscribers, followed by enewsletters/email (60%), blogs (56%), case studies (55%), online video (51%), white papers (46%) and microsites (43%).
"These findings are an acceleration of what we have been seeing for the past few years," stated Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and author of "Get Content. Get Customers." "If marketers will spend less in 2009, it won't be coming from their content development budgets. More and more marketing professionals now realize that tomorrow's marketing is all about developing a conversation with customers. Without valuable, relevant and compelling content, that's pretty much impossible. The numbers show that."
The Junta42 community is made up of both corporate marketers and publishing/agency professionals. For the study, 42% were corporate marketers, 22% traditional publishers/media, 19% marketing/advertising agencies, 15% custom publishers and 3% association marketers. 85% of the surveyed audience makes marketing purchase decisions for their organizations.
The Junta42 email study was delivered during the first week of December. 1706 subscribers were invited to take the study, in which 196 completed the survey (11.5% return).
