Research reported on eMarketer has shown that overall, content marketing budgets are growing, indicating that more and more marketing teams are beginning to trust the ability of CM techniques to increase their sales.

Of all the respondents to the research, 41% confirmed that between 10 and 50% of their budget is currently being allocated to content marketing.

The survey also produced some interesting information about the different areas in which firms were deploying the marketing. The leading channel was the company website, which was mentioned by 88% of voters.  E-mail campaigns covered 73% and traditional PR 70%.

Perhaps the most interesting statistic, though, was that social media actually outranked traditional organic search work by 4%, with the former being mentioned by 68% of those surveyed.

Paid search received acknowledgement from 43% of users.

The article pinpointed the fact that the company's own website remains the most commonly used channel for content marketing, although more and more firms are adding blogs to their page in order to generate fresh content.

One thing is clear, though: content marketing is becoming an increasingly vital part of the overall marketing strategy for more and more companies across the world, and any company looking to remain at the cutting edge should continue to invest in it.