Today’s consumers are shutting off traditional marketing. They’re ignoring magazine advertisements, fast-forwarding through TV advertising, and using ad blockers on their web browsers. Marketers have seen traditional marketing techniques slowly loosing their effectiveness and have found a solution to re-engage consumers: Content marketing. Content what, you ask?

This technique is so effective that marketers are now allocating 25% of their marketing budget to the practice.

In content marketing campaigns, firms create and distribute relevant, substantive, and valuable content—branded with the firm name—to attract and engage an audience. This technique is so effective that marketers are now allocating 25% of their marketing budget to the practice. It is changing how companies interact with consumers, and how consumers connect with companies.

Wishpond made and infographic vibrantly illustrating the importance of content marketing. The numbers that popped out to us:

• Blogs giving B2B companies 67% more leads per month;
• Blogs and social media reaching 8 out of 10 of all U.S. Internet users; and
• 68% of consumers spending time reading content from brands they are interested in.

What stands out here is the near-universal acceptance of content marketing in the business-to-business context, with nearly 91% B2B marketers employing it. We’re also struck by the facts about blogs, which confirm that despite all the new social-media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), blogs remain a mainstay of content marketing. In fact, Twitter’s primary value, one could say, is to drive traffic back to those blogs.

The only conclusion to draw here is that content marketing, and blogs in particular, serve professional service providers well. So enjoy the infographic, and if you need help with your content marketing, know that HC stands ready to assist.