In the 21st century, content creation and consumption share an incredible synergy, if not perfect. Ever since the ‘C’ for the pandemic has accelerated content marketing by 207%, B2B and B2C sectors are diving into the whirlwind of opportunities content marketing has to offer. In 2023, 69% of marketers have planned to increase spending on content marketing. While this field of marketing is the modern prompt for lead generation, customer interaction, and brand building, it is intriguing to imagine its whereabouts in years to come.
Why is content marketing important today?
Customers are becoming savvy and traditional advertising methods cannot suffice the competitive edge alone. So, winning customer loyalty is not a breeze — in fact — it is far from that.
Enters: digital content.
To crack through the rage and create a lasting business-consumer relationship, brands need to consistently provide content that educates and entertains their audience. It can be done with strategic content distribution on various outlets, including publications, social media, blogs, and more.
Content marketing is also pivotal in enhancing a brand’s search engine rankings and lead generation. This form of marketing alone helps businesses generate 3X as many leads as outbound marketing while costing 62% less. The success of organic rankings depends on various SEO factors, including keywords, information, and relevant topics.
How is the need for quality content marketing in times of today being fed?
The modern media environment demands that the content caters to the curiosity of customers. Being present on every platform and device is the urgency of the hour, alongside efficiency and diversity in content flavors. Hence, marketers focus on omnichannel content, amalgamating various platforms to reinforce seamless interaction with target customers.
Ecommerce businesses accommodate customer’s shopping needs and queries on WhatsApp and social media. Instagram and Facebook are being used for direct communication with customers over comments, likes, and DMs. Moreover, regular blogs, articles, and social media content gives leverage for brand visibility and credibility.
Content marketing trends you need to look out for
In 2022, videos, images, and blogs were the top three forms of content businesses preferred to create. This ultimately gives a boost to competitive strategies and hurricanes of trends, which, if not kept up with, could leave businesses miles behind. Rising from the hunger for newness, there’s now a focus on doing things out of the box but faster than ever!
One of the recent trends proposing efficiency to the marketers is none other than Artificial Intelligence.
In a Hubspot survey, 75% of marketers agreed to Generative AI tools like ChatGPT helping them create more content than ever. Companies like Salesforce, Slack, and Shopify are using the ‘overnight’ famous AI to generate emails, schedule meetings, draft replies, and enhance customer interaction through FAQs.
However, the use of AI for content creation has also birthed a trending argument: robots cannot inject human touch into words.
Many brands are shifting towards the gig economy aka the freelance culture. Freelancers offer various content creation services, such as writing, graphic designing, video creation, and social media management. This helps businesses gain access to top talent and explore fresh (and a variety of) ideas to enhance brand visibility. Not to skip, the gig economy also offers flexibility, agility, and cost-effectiveness. As per Statista graphic design, video creation, and copywriting ranked top as the types of content that were outsourced the most in 2022.
But, where’s the spice? It’s in the Fast content.
The term ‘fast content’ came to fore in 2011 when Snapchat introduced a community-building platform for users through short content. The stream now continues to Instagram Stories, YouTube Shorts, GIFs, and whatnot! Users want to squeeze easy and bite-sized knowledge from various platforms. It doesn’t have to tamper with the quality as long as businesses maintain the harmony between on-time content deliverables and relevance.
What kind of advancements are we looking forward to in the content marketing industry?
Content is the future of marketing, especially with the penchant for social media, SEO, and a lot many evolving trendsetters. To stay ahead of the game, you don’t need to stop the hunt at current happenings, but move miles towards the future.
And when we talk about the future, everything (by all means) depends greatly on the ‘nature’ of content. That said, clarity will need to magnify, innovation will have to be quicker than a wink — and — words will need to add value, not volume.
If we are to peek into the future, SEO and audience research will continue to rule. While 88% of marketers agree to plan to maintain or increase their investment in SEO in 2023, some marketers vote for audience research as the best inspiration. A report by Semrush highlighted audience research as the topmost factor contributing to the success of 47% of businesses. While 49% of marketers admit that AI helps them produce easy-to-read content, the humanly-written content will still have dominance due to its uniqueness and subjective nature. As a result, companies will still onboard human writers to voice their brand, more and more through outsourcing. A Semrush report revealed that 11.71% of companies outsource 100% of their content writing while 37% go with both in-house and outsourcing.