Content Marketing Statistics in Canada

Content marketing is becoming an increasingly important tool for companies and entrepreneurs to reach new customers. It is a cost-effective way to inform your target audiences about the services or products you offer and it can increase your sales quickly.

In this article, we will focus on content marketing statistics in Canada, including how companies are using content marketing and what are the most popular and successful content marketing strategies.

Content Marketing Statistics for Canadians

• 88% of Canadian companies are using at least one form of content marketing.
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional forms of marketing.
• 84% of consumers expect entertaining content that provides solutions and creates experiences.
• Blogging and videos are seen as key tools in B2B content marketing.
• 82% of B2C companies consider content marketing as a key strategy to reach new customers.
• Regular blogging can increase traffic by 126%.
• 81% of content marketers say video content is the most difficult content to create.
• 95% of all content created for marketing is posted on social media.
• Traffic from Instagram grew by 304.4% in 2021.
• Google is the most popular search engine in Canada with a 91% market share.
• 81% of Canadian companies use email and newsletters for content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Before we get into the statistics, let’s clarify what is meant by content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and posting valuable and consistent content to attract customers from a target audience.

The target of content marketing is to provide value to as much of your target audience as possible. As a result, more members of your target audience will seek your content and you have more chances to convert more of them into customers.

Examples of content marketing are infographics that share, for example, statistics and charts; webpages that offer valuable information to potential customers; podcasts giving potential customers advice and information for free; videos; and books, including free e-books. Other examples include blogs and publishing content on social media.

Why use content marketing?

According to an article on content marketing published by Forbes, there are four steps to the buying cycle: awareness, research, consideration, and buying. Content marketing catches people earlier in the buying process by raising awareness of solutions and educating customers about the products.

By using content marketing, companies can capture the attention of potential consumers much sooner.

Use and cost of content marketing in Canada

Statistics for content marketing show that 88% of companies in Canada use at least one form of content marketing as part of their marketing strategy. 91% of B2B companies and 86% of B2C companies have a content marketing strategy in place.

Content marketing is a cost-effective way for companies to get their message out there, costing around 62% less than traditional marketing. 56% of Canadian businesses say they have plans to increase spending on content creation and 28% will reduce their traditional marketing budget in favor of content marketing.

What consumers expect from content marketing

There is a lot of pressure on companies to create original and exciting content. 84% of consumers expect companies to create entertaining content that tells a story, provides them with solutions, and creates experiences and events.

70% of consumers also want to learn about the products through content marketing.

B2B content marketing

Using blogs is an important tool for B2B marketers as 71% of B2B buyers read blog posts. By posting high-quality content regularly, companies can build trust and credibility. While 81% of B2B companies use blogging as a key marketing strategy, posting regular content poses challenges to companies and 64% of B2B companies outsource their content writing.

Another important tool for B2B marketers is videos since 82% of consumer traffic comes through video content from their blogs, social media, or YouTube. As a result, 64% of B2B marketers have or are planning to increase their video marketing.

The main content marketing challenges B2B companies face include having a small team (67%), and not having enough time (44%). Only 4% of B2B companies feel having a content marketing strategy is not needed. As a result, only 43% of Canadian B2B companies have a documented marketing strategy, 34% say they have “an approach” but it is not formalised and 21% publish content but they have no strategy for it.

B2C content marketing

More and more companies understand the value of content marketing with 82% of B2C marketers conserving it as a key strategy. Between 2018 and 2019, there was a 68% increase in using audio and visual content to market directly to customers.

60% of B2C marketers say they are committed to content marketing and on average 26% of the total marketing budget of B2C companies is spent on content marketing. However, those that have the most success use at least 40& of their advertising budget on content marketing.

Blogging

Blogs are a great way to raise brand awareness. They are a cost-effective form of content marketing and can generate many new leads. 61% of Canadian consumers say they have purchased after they read a recommendation on a blog and businesses that post on blogs generate 126% more traffic compared to those who don’t.

Publishing sixteen or over blog posts per month results in almost 3.5 times more traffic and while some people may say blogs are not as popular as they used to be, 77% of all internet users still read blogs, and posts with images have a 94% higher viewing rate.

Content marketing statistics show that marketers who create daily blog posts are thirteen times more likely to have a positive return on investment (ROI). Blogs are a great way to create interactive content that draws people in.

Videos

While videos might be one of the best ways to bring in more traffic, they are also some of the most challenging content marketing tools, with 81% of marketers saying video content is the most difficult kind of content to create. However, 99% of marketers who already use video as part of their marketing strategy say they will continue in the future.

Video marketing works because 65% of people remember visual content better and video is even more memorable than still images. 75% of consumers watch videos at least once a day and 87% of them wish brands would post more videos.

Millennials are the most likely generation to consume video content, with 77% watching at least one video every day and 50% saying they will stop what they are doing to watch an entertaining new video. They are also the age group most likely to trust video content at 40%.

Social media

While other forms of content marketing are also useful, 95% of content used in content marketing is posted on social media, according to the Content Marketing Institute. 70% of marketers have also opted for paid advertising on social media and 40% of brands already use Instagram. 75% of Facebook users visit the website at least once a day while Instagram is visited by 500 million people every day.

Canada is one of the most connected countries in the world, with around 25 million social media users. In 2022, Canadian brands spent $3.93 billion on social media advertising. This has already overtaken the prediction that by 2024, Canadian businesses will spend $2.85 billion on social media advertising.

Facebook is still the most useful social media for content marketing with referrals from the platform representing 53.9% of website clicks from social media in 2021. However, Facebook’s annual growth has slowed down and in 2021 was only 2.8% compared to Instagram’s 304.4% and Reddit’s 263.3% click rate growth. Traffic from Instagram will likely grow further with more companies using external links, for example, on their Instagram stories.

SEO

For any content marketer, mastering SEO is vital as most traffic to their websites comes through search engines and Google holds 91% of the search engine market in Canada. The other search engines are Bing with a 4.5% market share, Yahoo! with 1.65%, and DuckDuckGo with 1.22%.

Data on online searches shows that  64.5% of online searches are four words or longer, so websites and blog posts that utilise longer key phrases are likely to rank higher on searches.

Appearing on local searches is key for brick-and-mortar companies as 75% of consumers who find helpful information about local companies are more likely to visit the physical store.

SEO leads have a 14.6% closing rate, which is significantly higher than leads from traditional outbound leads, including direct mail and print advertising, which have a 1.7% closing rate.

Emails and Newsletters

81% of companies use emails and newsletters to market their products or services. Over half of Canadians will check their email over fifteen times a day and 17.4% say they check new emails as soon as they receive them. 23.7% of Canadian consumers check their email each time they pick their phone up and a quarter have a habit of checking emails first thing in the morning.

Consumers aged 25-34 are most likely to open marketing and newsletter emails as 31% of them say they open all the emails they get. They are also the most likely age group to purchase something after receiving an email. 75% of people in that age group have made a spontaneous purchase based on email or newsletter marketing, compared to 50% of the overall population.

Which content marketing strategies did companies feel were the most successful in 2021?

According to a survey by Semrush, 55% of companies feel that improving the quality of their content made the biggest difference for them and 46% feel that search engine optimization was their biggest content marketing success in 2021.

Other big successes were creating and posting videos and other visual content for 41% and repurposing existing content for 35% of the companies. The least successful strategies were trying out new channels at 20% and using social media influences in their content at 14%.

Content marketing goals

Moving forward, 45% of Canadian companies want to use content marketing to increase the awareness of their brand and 37% want more traffic to their website. 36% of companies will also focus on generating leads, while only 27% say they want to increase sales and revenue through content marketing.  23% of Canadian companies also look to improve customer loyalty and engagement.

The key areas for content marketing investment among companies in Canada are building their social media presence and community with 41% and improving the quality of their written content with 40%. Only 11% of the companies said they would invest in producing audio content.

What are the challenges of content marketing?

While 92% of marketers and businesses identify content marketing as an important asset for them, creating and posting valuable content consistently can be challenging. 61% of companies say changes to algorithms on search engines pose the biggest challenge for them when content marketing, while 45% are also concerned about algorithm changes on social media.

36.7% of content marketers find the constant need to create engaging visual content challenging. 27% of businesses say they find the lack of data challenging when creating their content. 28% of them feel that not having a solid content marketing strategy makes creating content challenging for them.

Conclusion

For most companies, content marketing needs to be a part of their marketing strategy if they wish to grow and attract more customers. Changing algorithms and time pose challenges to companies using content marketing. However, it is a way more cost-effective way to reach new customers.

Content marketing also allows companies to capture the consumers’ attention at an earlier stage of the buying process than traditional forms of advertising. It is certain that. content marketing is here to stay and is likely to become an even more important part of marketing strategies in the future.