Why is Content Marketing So Important?
Stats to showcase the importance of pharmaceutical content marketing.
Content marketing is a minefield that can be difficult to navigate.
But despite the challenges that come with creating and distributing content, the reasons why a content marketing strategy should be undertaken cannot be understated.
Here is why content marketing is important with a few stats that can help you make your way through it.
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THE REAL VALUE OF VISUAL
Let’s begin with visual content; a generic area that includes many different types of content. Of all the active companies in the world, 70% of them invest in content marketing, which includes all visual marketing strategies. 1/4 of marketers are investing in content marketing relating to product promotions and just over 20% of marketers are investing in branded storytelling.
Marketers spend time/budget on creating content for social accounts and websites which is why it is helpful to know the stats relating to the content. 32% of these marketers will state that visual imagery is the most important form of content for their marketing.
Some more stats to demonstrate the value of visual: 80% of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing, 63% of marketers use visual assets in their video marketing, and 60% of marketers use visual assets in their blogging.
According to Brain Rules, people are likely to only remember 10% of the information they see or hear three days after hearing it. Alternatively, if a relevant image is paired with the information, those people are more likely to retain 65% of the information three days post-hearing it.
VIDEO MARKETING IS STILL AN OPTION
Mobile-friendly content is becoming more important in the pharmaceutical industry simply because more people are viewing content on their mobiles devices as opposed to desktop. Mobile usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the last two years.
According to Cisco, by the year 2021 traffic from videos will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic. YouTube is a popular form of social media with 83% of consumers saying they prefer it to any other form of social media, with the user base is almost split down the middle from a gender perspective at is male at 55%/45% with men just edging it. Video content is still on the rise, 54% of consumers have expressed an interest in seeing more video content than they do currently.
Video is a brilliant content technique for pharmaceutical markers that want to produce help videos or informative content - 70% of YouTube viewers watch videos for this very reason. Half of YouTube subscribers between the ages of 18–34 would even drop whatever they were doing to watch a new video from their favourite channel! The pharmaceutical sector can make good use of these videos to promote their content with 83% of people using YouTube and its search features as the leading source of video content, although Facebook is not far behind with 67%.
If you are still not convinced about video, and particularly YouTube videos, YouTube reaches more 18+ viewers during prime time viewing than any cable TV network. Over the last few years, video streaming has become increasingly more popular. Live video streaming platform Twitch has seen an increase of more than 13 million average daily streaming hours between 2012 and 2017. In 2018, HubSpot found 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business they follow and support.
AUGMENTED REALITY…
Visual content is important but so is knowing the trends associated with it. Emarketer state that seven in ten media planners want to use Augmented Reality (AR) in their future strategies – an interactive experience of a real-world environment in which the objects from the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information.
By 2018, 35% of marketers used live video. On Facebook, the non-live videos have an engagement rate of 2.2% compared to live videos which are receiving a 4.3% engagement rate. Think with Google state that 85% of adults say they consume content on multiple devices at the same time which is why it is important to make your content compatible with different platforms. Using live content could be an asset in pharmaceutical marketing because it could help you position yourself as a thought leader and grow your SEO presence. Imagine what AR could do?
INFOGRAPHICS ARE QUICK AND EFFECTIVE
Infographics are a great way to reach your audience with quick and informative facts, this type of content is the fourth most common type of visual content marketing. Over the last four years, infographics have become increasingly more popular in the B2B sector. In fact, over the last few years, they have become 65% more popular according to The Content Marketing Institute. Try to accompany your information with imagery because people who follow text accompanied by illustrations do 323% better than people just reading text.
If you are looking for a platform to assist you with infographic creation then Visme is an easy to use visual content creation and collaboration platform. With Visme, you can create professional-looking infographics in minutes. Visme includes a drag and drop editor and a library of hundreds of templates, photos and animated characters. Besides infographics, Visme can be used to create other forms of visual content like presentations, banners, etc. Combining simplicity with flexibility allows you to create engaging visual content
KNOW WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE ENGAGE WITH
Knowing where your audience is active is key as this will help you determine where to market your products, services and visual content. In a general survey, 70% of people said that they watch Facebook stories more often than on any other platform. 35% of people say they thought they engaged more with short narrative styled stories.
It’s important to remember, as Digiday state, that 85% of Facebook users watch videos on the platform without any sound so if you are going to opt for video content try and produce it so that the message still comes across even if there is no sound. For example, in a poll of over 300 consumers, only 29% of them said they always listen to videos with sound.
Historically, Tweeting has been all about the text but that’s not so much the case anymore as it was found that tweets accompanied by an image received 150% more retweets than those without visual content. Visual content is also important within articles. Of course, within an article, the most important feature is the information but a study by Buzzsumo showed that if you accompanied the text with imagery every 75-100 words you could receive double the amount of social media engagement.
Your Facebook posts like twitter can benefit from featuring images. Posts on Facebook with images receive 2.3-times more engagement than those without. Facebook is a good platform to share your video content because by 2017 more than 500 million Facebook users were watching videos on Facebook every day.
MORE SOCIAL MEDIA STATS
Social media is a channel you really want to be active on, and if not, you are missing out on a large market. 42% of the world’s population use social media which equates to over 3 billion users worldwide. In terms of generation, 90.4% of millennial’s use social media (which is expected), 77.5% of generation X have an active social media account and 48.2% of baby boomers are active on social media (Emarketer).
Last year, Hootsuite found that 366 million new people started using social media which is more than a million new users joining every day. On average each person will spend 2 hours and 22 minutes on social networks and messaging. The example below is taken from the screen time of two mobile devices and both consumers have at least three social platforms that they are active on all week.
Facebook’s audience is becoming more relevant for the pharmaceutical sector because we are aiming at an older high educated audience, research has shown that the Facebook usage among teens is gradually dropping, 71% of teens claimed to use the platform in 2015 this has now dropped by 51%. Americans make up 68% of Facebook users and 74% of all Facebook users will check the platform on a daily basis. Most people will access Facebook around eight times a day and a large percentage will access it by mobile.
Social Sprout stats show that Facebook ads containing images will be between 75% to 90% more effective than those without. The best time to post on Facebook is weekdays from 10am to 3pm, Wednesday is the best day to post while Sundays show the least traffic. It is important to remember that 3% of Facebook profiles are in fact fake.
CREATING BETTER EXPERIENCES
Making sure your customers are happy and engaging with your content is important because 71% of consumers who have had a positive social media experience with you are likely to recommend you to others (on other channels). Make sure you know where your consumers are at - 80% of companies felt they delivered exceptional social media customer service while only 8% of the consumers agreed.
We are not alone in thinking social media is important - 73% of marketers believe that their social media efforts make a positive effect on the business. Social networks are one of the largest sources of inspiration for consumers 37% of consumers will use social networking to find purchase inspiration. Make sure to keep generating good, captivating content because 50% of consumers say that seeing user-generated content would increase their chances of buying products through a brands social media.
