Content Marketing Trends Shaping 2009

Content marketing entered 2009 as a term a small group of advocates had been pushing for about two years, still competing with related labels like inbound marketing for how the industry would eventually describe this work. This year, the practice grew faster than the terminology did.

The recession made the budget argument impossible to ignore

Unlike 2008, when the economic downturn was still unfolding, 2009 opened with marketing budgets already cut and companies looking for ways to keep generating leads without the media spend they’d relied on before. Blog posts, case studies and downloadable guides don’t require a media buy, just staff time, and that made them an easier line item to defend to a finance department scrutinizing every expense this year.

HubSpot’s growth gave the “inbound” framing more visibility

HubSpot, founded in 2006 around the idea of earning traffic and leads through useful content and search visibility rather than buying ad placement, has grown substantially through this stretch of the recession, and its marketing has done a lot to popularize inbound marketing as a term companies recognize. Content marketing and inbound marketing still overlap heavily and get used somewhat interchangeably, but inbound has arguably gained more traction in mainstream business conversation this year.

Twitter went from niche to mainstream

Twitter’s user base grew dramatically through 2009, moving well beyond the tech and media crowd that had used it in its earlier years. For content marketers, that mattered directly: a blog post or guide now had a fast, low-friction way to spread beyond a company’s existing audience, through retweets rather than relying solely on search rankings or email lists built up over time.

B2B companies kept leading the way

As was true last year, the most structured content programs are still concentrated among business-to-business companies with longer, more considered sales cycles, the kind of purchase where a prospect wants a detailed guide or comparison before ever speaking to a salesperson. Consumer brands are engaging with content too, but often through social media presence rather than the white papers and long-form guides that define B2B’s approach.

Measurement is still catching up to the enthusiasm

Even as more companies invest in content, few have a reliable way to tie a specific blog post or guide directly to revenue. Most are still relying on traffic and lead volume as rough proxies, which works well enough to justify continuing the investment but isn’t yet the kind of precise attribution that would let a marketing team confidently reallocate budget between individual pieces of content.

Where the term stands now

Content marketing in 2009 is less a settled discipline than a fast-growing set of practices still searching for its permanent name and its rigorous measurement standard. What’s changed since last year isn’t the definition, it’s the number of companies doing it out of necessity rather than curiosity, which is quietly building the case history the term will eventually be built on.