Unfold the Future of Content Marketing – A Future for the Early Birds
Learn The Past to Map The Future: The Evolution of Content Marketing
To foresee the future of content marketing, we first need to understand its past. But don’t worry, we won’t start from the first recording of content marketing, because that was a long time ago and not so relevant anymore. We only look back 10 years, when content marketing had already been digitalized and went through several big leaps.
In the last decade, there were 3 big changes that form how content marketing works today.
- Google’s ZMOT study emphasized the important of content marketing for businesses.
In 2011, Google released a study about Zero Moment of Truth (ZEMO), in other words, the online decision-making moment. Another way to understand ZMOT is to match it with the buyer’s journey: it is the awareness and consideration stages.
With nearly 90% of consumers engage in ZMOT before making their purchases, ZMOT sources such as site ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are considered of high influence.
- That brings us to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the leverage of content to boost a site’s SEO to the top of search pages.
This is also when businesses truly started to understand and believe in the power of high quality content to their digital business results. Investment and research in digital content trends to serve the consumers better began to soar.
Today’s update: SEO still reigns, despite several rumors about its irrelevancy and even incoming death. SEO just evolves in the way of bringing more relevant search results to the right audience and making their online experience all better.
- The “invasion” of social networks gave rise to a different need of content consumption.
When an online user inputs keywords in a search engine, they are actively looking for content they want. It changes with the rise of social media. Now people don’t need to do the search anymore, relevant content will be fed to them automatically on their social media pages, based on their past behaviors and preferences.
This change encourages content which is easy to share and quick to impress, since long-form content don’t work as well on social media platforms as short, snack-able content.
Today’s update: Social media has become more than just a means to socialize, but to look for information, reviews and opinions about things that catch a user’s interests, be it a product, a service, a person or just a topic. A strong and healthy presence on social media platforms will indeed boost a company’s reputation and influence, especially if their products or services have a “social” factor. - Video beat text-based content in the battle of attraction-grabbing.
In 2015, YouTube rose. In a 2017 global consumers trend survey of Hubspot, video became the main content to attract online users to a brand or business (more than 50%), while other passive text-based content such as blog articles and e-books to download paled in comparison (18% and 17% respectively).
- At this time, making video stopped being an expert-only job, and platforms such as YouTube made it even easier to share interesting content with a growing community.
Today’s update: Easy to produce and consume, video continues to be on the list of top favorite content types. However, the battle of attention grabbing doesn’t end here easily, as many other content forms have their own strengths and playgrounds. The right mix of content will likely yield the best results.
SEO, social media and video content are three big turns for content marketing in the last decade and will continue to be main pillars of content marketing trends in 2021 and beyond, together with other new challenges.
Listen to The Voices: How Experts Think about The Future of Content Marketing
A quick search on Google with keywords like “content marketing future” will drown you in a sea of predictions and future-telling. Many of them make sense and appear consistently in numerous sources, making us think “this must be true”. But don’t be swayed by the noises, let’s look at several reputable sources first to see what they have to say:
- Forbes listed 3 content marketing trends in 2021 for businesses to focus on: repurposing content on various channels, podcasts and webinars. The first is to ensure seamless and consistent experience for users on all online channels of a brand, while the other two satisfy the need of continuous and convenient learning of today’s online users.
- After learning that “Google has been suppressing organic reach” in recent years, Medium advocated changing the traditional way of blogging and leverage emails to create a better funnel, as emails don’t fall under the “control” of Google’s search engines.
- Business2Community suggested the use of AI (artificial intelligence) in content marketing. Some applications include content distribution, content generation, chatbots, and personalization. Also, content strategy research and development is one convincing strength of AI, thanks to their powerful analyzing capability.
- Content Marketing Institute took a different stance, focusing on explaining how future digital content should change to adapt with the trends of consumers. The recommendations revolve around the validity, purpose and inclusion (e.g. featuring diversity) for high-quality content.
Of course these are just some digital content marketing trends among numerous predictions about the future and challenges of 2021. However, the same with the last decade, this decade’s content marketing will take on the trends of social, economic and technological moves.
There seems to be expectations for a “new” content marketing which is more impactful, personalized and immersive to adapt to the new normal where people digest content any time, at any place and on any device.
Gather The Insights to Embrace the Future of Content Marketing
Let’s explore several important questions to pave the way through future content marketing challenges.
What are some digital content marketing trends in 2021?
Depending on your industry, some digital content trends are more relevant than others. If you don’t know where to start, try addressing these content marketing challenges first, because businesses that can solve them will gain an edge in the competition of 2021:
- Improve content experience
This is not only about the “content’s content”, but how visitors feel when they interact with your content. Disruptive pop-ups and banner ads won’t save your great content from the fate of being shunned by site visitors.
Therefore, a wise move is investing in interactive content or better UX of your site, be it your e-commerce website, official website or blog. - “Go live”
Real-time interaction is the key, especially when it’s harder to meet directly and easier to lose focus to many distractions. Live events to promote products and services are out of the questions in many places now, so livestreaming video to introduce products or services and address real concerns of potential customers is a great alternative.
- Try out AI-powered content
It’s not yet the time to ask a robot to write a great piece of content for you. But you can leverage the power of AI in many other supportive tasks, including research, segmentation and planning.
AI can give you answers to questions such as, “What is the right mix of content for this segment?” or “How would this content marketing strategy work out in reality?” AI can also stimulate various scenario to give you an idea of how things will likely work out in the future.
- Double down on SEO
Good content without readers is just a waste of time and effort. Let’s dispel SEO myths, get your SEO strategies straight and update it to feeding your best content to the right audience when they want to look for it.
Search engines algorithms evolve, so does your way to do SEO. - Build content communities
Smart brands put effort in building content communities even before the pandemic outbreak. It is because most consumers look for reviews, opinions and comments in their communities before making the final decision, be it B2B or B2C.
Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Slack… you can build your content communities on these platforms and many other, depending on your audience’s online behaviors and your products/services.
What types of content will rule in 2021?
- Video content
With its entertaining element, it’s not hard to understand why video will continue to be one of the favorite content types for many online users. But that’s not all to it; since branded video can provide reliable information about a product or service, hence stimulate the impulse to purchase.
According to Wyzowl’s report about The State of Video Marketing 2021, “the number of businesses using video as a marketing tool has increased by 41% since 2016”.
Also, video marketing does provide lucrative ROI for businesses, including a boost in the average time spent on a site, leads and traffic, users’ understanding of a brand’s products or services, and even a decline in the number of support calls.
In the success story of 2020, webinars claimed the throne as the most effective video content type for digital marketers.
The pandemic outbreak since the beginning of 2020 also contributed to an increase in video content consumption over the world. The resulting downside is more noise and competition.
- Mobile-friendly content
Many people use mobile devices to look for information and make purchases on the go. If your site doesn’t appear friendly on their smartphones, you may lose your hard-earned traffic from an effective SEO strategy.
Not only eye-catching, an effective site must also be responsive and optimized for both desktop and mobile version. A dedicated web designing team knows how to incorporate those factors into the site to bring about optimal mobile user experience.
Mobile technology development sees no end yet, and it will certainly impact how content will change to attract, engage and convert new traffic. - Customer-centric and empathetic content
“Begin with the end in mind”. Great content must begin with the audience’s needs, wants and preferences. No matter which era we are in, focusing on the end-users never disappoints.
When there are more digital content to consume than the “consumers”, it’s harder and harder to retain the audience’s attention with just-over-average content produced to fill the site and keep it active.
The good news is you don’t need to do research manually to understand your audience’s taste for digital content anymore, as technology has gone a long way to provide you with convenient tools for gathering, categorizing and analyzing data to identify potential trends.
Bonus: Don’t hastily remove long-form content from your basket of digital content, because despite the current trends of consuming short, funny, easy-to-digest content, audiences still prefer comprehensive and detailed content for an informed decision, especially for B2B purchases.
Which content distribution channels will yield best results in 2021?
The short answer for this question may seem apparent to many: YouTube for video content; LinkedIn for B2B content; and Facebook for snack-able, social content. But it doesn’t mean you can’t post video on Facebook or LinkedIn. In fact, online users are really hooked by videos on social media.
Another traditional channel you shouldn’t ignore is email marketing. With advanced technology, customized and personalized emails are easier to produce. One great advantage of email marketing is low cost – even more of a plus in the ongoing pandemic-fighting landscape. Therefore, investment in email marketing is expected to increase in 2021.
In B2B sector, livestream content and podcasts are also on the rise. In 2020, B2B’s use of livestreaming content increased to 29% as opposed to 10% in 2019. According to Nielsen’s August 2020 Total Audiences Report, “53% of respondents listen to spoken-word audio content” either every day or every week, especially when people spend more time at home now.
Conclusion
Online businesses have long used content marketing as one of their main weapons to cut through the noises and boost organic traffic to their site, with the ultimate goal of increasing conversion and sales. Then the digital age comes with disruptions, making the real-virtual line blurrier and the online competition fiercer than ever.
It’s no longer the age of “just keep doing what we’re doing well” anymore. Businesses have to predict future content marketing trends to move before making moved, and to prepare for the upcoming challenges. With social, economic and technological changes, content marketing will adapt to evolve and bring more value to online users.