KEY TAKEAWAYS Content marketing budgets grew — and are expected Changes to SEO/search algorithms and data to continue to grow. management/analytics are top-of-mind issues Forty-three percent of respondents who are familiar with their in 2021/2022. company’s content marketing budget said their 2021 budget Concerns about algorithms (62%) are nothing new — they’ve been a increased over 2020. Furthermore, 66% expected their 2022 content top area of importance in our past annual studies as well. This year, marketing budget to increase over their 2021 budget. See page 42. data management/analytics (50%) came in as the second top area. This makes sense in a digital sales environment and as data becomes Investment in events is expected to increase in 2022. more important to organizations in general. See page 47. Fifty-two percent said they expected to increase investment in in- person events, 39% in hybrid events, and 33% in digital events. See In addition to spending more on events, marketers page 43. expect more investment in videos, owned-media assets, and paid media in 2022. Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles We asked respondents which areas of content marketing they expect replaced internal communication as the top content their organizations to invest in during 2022. The top four answers marketing challenge. were videos (69%), events (61%), owned-media assets (57%), and paid While communication is still a challenge (38%), creating content that media (55%). See page 48. appeals to multi-level roles within the target audience (44%) and accessing subject matter experts to create content (42%) are now the top two challenges. Why? It could be because more marketers are using content collaboration tools (73%). In addition, there have been numerous job changes over the last 18 months. See pages 14, 24, and 46. 52