Con­tent mar­ket­ing trends that help you get your strat­e­gy in order. Con­sumers want infor­ma­tion! They want to feel in con­trol and make their own deci­sions. This behav­ior means that com­pa­nies need to pro­vide peo­ple with valu­able con­tent to build trust instead of mar­ket­ing hype. Con­tent mar­ket­ing has been a grow­ing trend for sev­er­al years, and it’s not going away. Fol­low­ing are the major con­tent mar­ket­ing trends today and beyond.

1. Case stud­ies are one of the grow­ing areas of con­tent mar­ket­ing. Case stud­ies are espe­cial­ly impor­tant for com­plex prod­ucts and ser­vices. Case stud­ies help peo­ple under­stand what prob­lem does a prod­uct or ser­vice solve and lets them come to an under­stand­ing that “this is exact­ly what I need.”

2. White papers and e‑books are the sec­ond impor­tant tac­tic to use in con­tent mar­ket­ing. White papers work most­ly in the B2B con­tent mar­ket­ing sec­tor. E‑books and videos fill the sim­i­lar niche of mar­ket edu­ca­tion for B2C con­tent mar­ket­ing. This con­tent aims to pro­vide answer ques­tions how to get most out of the prod­uct or ser­vice. Cre­ate con­tent that buy­ers need to feel com­fort­able about their pur­chase deci­sions and pro­vide sto­ries from exist­ing customers.

3. Busi­ness blog­ging has become so main­stream that it hard­ly needs men­tion­ing but it will con­tin­ue to be the foun­da­tion of all con­tent mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. The blog is the hub that com­bines all your con­tent from plain text posts to inter­ac­tive e‑books and cours­es. This hub is your link mag­net and get­ting links to con­tent stored on your blog is one of the most effec­tive tac­tics for some time to come. Why Busi­ness­es Need to Blog?

4. Sto­ry­telling becomes more impor­tant. The rea­son for this is that when con­tent mar­ket­ing matures and the vol­ume of avail­able con­tent explodes then great sto­ries get the edge. Write about per­son­al expe­ri­ence and spice the­o­ry up with real life exam­ples and you’ll get con­tent that peo­ple want to read and share.

5. Con­tent mar­ket­ing bud­gets increase. In B2B sec­tor mar­ket­ing bud­gets will move from oth­er areas to con­tent mar­ket­ing as it proves to be a more effec­tive tool. Con­tent mar­ket­ing will gen­er­ate results long after you made the ini­tial invest­ment in time and resources. The growth of con­tent may cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion where mar­ket­ing bud­gets decrease as mon­ey spent on in-house con­tent mar­ket­ing will be pay­roll expense.

6. Cre­at­ing enough con­tent will be the great­est chal­lenge for con­tent mar­ket­ing. As the need for qual­i­ty, orig­i­nal­i­ty, and sto­ry­telling increas­es, mar­keters are hard pressed to come up with enough new con­tent. High­er need for con­tent may lead to more con­tent cre­ation being out­sourced as in-house resources become exhaust­ed or do not meet the qual­i­ty standard.

7. Social media will be the most pop­u­lar chan­nel to dis­trib­ute the con­tent. Chan­nels like Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn, and oth­ers work best for the con­tent that makes peo­ple want to share what they have found. Store the con­tent on your self-host­ed blog and dis­trib­ute it through social networks.

8. Top goals for con­tent mar­ket­ing will be sales and reten­tion. B2B con­tent mar­ket­ing is more ori­ent­ed towards gen­er­at­ing leads and sales. In the case of B2C brands, the goals are reten­tion and cre­at­ing word of mouth.

9. Mea­sur­ing results gets more impor­tant and more real. Most con­tent mar­keters con­tin­ue to use traf­fic as a mea­sure­ment KPI. How­ev­er, grow­ing num­bers of mar­keters turn more tan­gi­ble results like sales and leads.

10. Cre­ate once use every­where! Mar­keters will use more for­mats, tac­tics, and chan­nels to dis­trib­ute their con­tent try­ing to max­i­mize the val­ue they get from each piece of con­tent. Using a con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy like Social Media Bomb will stretch a sin­gle piece of con­tent over a long peri­od. Sim­i­lar­ly, refur­bish­ing old con­tent and find­ing peri­od­i­cal­ly repeat­able top­ics will light­en your con­tent cre­ation load.

11. Con­tent use on mobile devices is explod­ing. Mak­ing your con­tent mobile-friend­ly will give you an edge over you more old-fash­ioned com­peti­tors. Cre­ate mobile lay­outs for your blog and web­site, make them loca­tion aware if appro­pri­ate, add click-to-call. Make sure your e‑books, case stud­ies, videos and oth­er con­tent is usable on mobiles. Hint: try to read a let­ter sized PDF on your smartphone.

12. Con­tent cura­tion as an alter­na­tive or addi­tion to actu­al­ly cre­at­ing your own con­tent. Mar­keters who lack the resources to cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous stream of orig­i­nal and engag­ing con­tent turn to cura­tion. Col­lect­ing impor­tant pieces of valu­able con­tent and dis­trib­ut­ing it through your own social media chan­nels or newslet­ters. You will lose the val­ue of peo­ple vis­it­ing your site for the con­tent, but you will get the image of “being in the know.” The best strat­e­gy would be to find a bal­anced mix of your own mate­r­i­al with curat­ed con­tent from part­ner and even competitors.

13. Video con­tent will grow. It’s eas­i­er than ever to cre­ate video con­tent, but it’s still under used com­pared to video con­sump­tion by the con­sumer. When we have asked dif­fer­ent audi­ences what kind of con­tent they would like to have, the video is an over­whelm­ing win­ner every time. Tip: cre­ate easy to fol­low videos (max 2 min­utes) long to engage peo­ple and make them take next step or share your con­tent. For longer videos, you need real­ly com­pelling con­tent to make peo­ple sit through you 10–30 minute production.

14. Info­graph­ics are one of the fastest grow­ing con­tent for­mat. Info­graph­ics have visu­al appeal and eas­i­ly digestible infor­ma­tion that makes them fun to con­sume and easy to share. At the same time, info­graph­ics are rel­a­tive­ly easy to cre­ate as the main effort goes into graph­ic design and the research part is mod­est com­pared to oth­er forms of content.

15. Short­en­ing atten­tion span. Short videos and info­graph­ics point in the direc­tion of ever increas­ing infor­ma­tion over­load. Short, con­cen­trat­ed pieces of con­tent should be used to engage audi­ences in the ini­tial stages of inter­ac­tion. This will lead them to more demand­ing con­tent and ulti­mate­ly to con­vert­ing to leads and customers.

16. Tar­get­ing con­tent to buy­er per­sonas. Under­stand­ing the moti­va­tion of poten­tial cus­tomers will help you cre­ate sto­ries that con­nect and engage. Inter­view your tar­get audi­ences and find out why they buy. Tar­get­ing con­tent will get you a lot more results form the same budget.

17. Email. The most effec­tive mar­ket­ing chan­nel. What­ev­er the goals of your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy one of the most impor­tant step is to get the per­mis­sion of the poten­tial buy­er to con­tin­ue the dia­log. This way you can influ­ence them dur­ing their path to con­ver­sion. Use all tools avail­able to build an opt-in house list of prospects and then con­vert them.

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