In today's marketing world, content is vital.
Not only does search engine optimization rely heavily on providing quality content. Such content also has the power to enhance your customers' journey and drive conversion rates.
Especially now, during the corona-driven expansion of online life.
But in the fast-paced world of content marketing, it is essential to know what to focus on at any given moment. Especially as a small business with limited financial and temporal marketing resources to dispense.
We got you covered.
Here are the 5 most important content marketing trends in 2020.
With the rise of platforms like TikTok, customers' preference for video content is being firmly cemented.
A whopping 72% of consumers would rather watch a video to learn about a product or a service than read about it. And with good reason - on average, viewers retain 95% of the information in a video, compared to 10% in a text.
Recent data further indicates that in 2019, 88% of marketers who use video experience a positive ROI - a 5% increase from the year before. And light years ahead of the 33% who made the same statement five years ago. If anything, these figures show that preference for video content has strongly increased. The trend is likely to continue.
Small businesses can also harness the power of video content - through instructional videos, testimonials, or clips that introduce products, as well as tips and tricks.
With the recent huge improvements in video and audio quality in personal devices and the general availability of free or cheap video editing software, video content can be produced by businesses of any size in a few simple steps.
Even though personalization in content marketing has been on the radar for a while, the trend is getting ever stronger. If you're a marketer who's not using content personalization, you are actually in the minority right now. In fact, 92% of marketers report using personalization in some way.
And consumers today expect a personalized experience, with 74% saying that they quickly become frustrated if the website content is not curated specifically for them.
Luckily, personalization has never been easier to implement. With the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the integration of these technologies into marketing suites, small businesses too can tailor content to the needs and interests of potential customers.
Engaging your audience through participation is the founding principle of interactive content marketing. It is also an exceedingly successful approach.
Interactive content is much more successful in capturing audience attention than static content, 81% of content marketers agree. And the number of interactive posts rose a steep 33% in 2019.
In practical terms, small businesses can integrate interactive content by offering calculators to help consumers figure out personal quotes, compiling quizzes to help buyer choices, or sharing information with interactive games or infographics.
While developing such resources takes some time and practice, resources like dedicated WordPress plugins can make adding them to your website a breeze.
A positive product review is worth a hundred blog posts. A video testimonial is worth a thousand. User-generated content is a brilliant way of showcasing your business' authenticity and generates social proof.
Statistics say that there is no better way to gain customer confidence than having user-generated content. 90% of users trust user-generated content and let it influence their buying decisions. The click-through rate is five times higher than for traditional content.
For small businesses, user-generated content also has the massive advantage that it is incredibly low-cost. All you need to do is to encourage customers to produce content and then curate videos, reviews, and pictures.
There is an additional advantage: by showcasing customers' experiences and encouraging them to share their stories, you are also creating a sense of community. And high engagement means a wide social reach.
“Alexa, improve my SEO rankings!”
By 2022, 55% of US households will own smart speakers. A 2019 survey revealed that 44% of US respondents already use voice searches on a daily basis.
This means that you can increase your visibility and website traffic by tailoring your content for voice search and smart devices.
For small businesses, this is a particularly attractive approach. Once strategically integrated into a content marketing strategy, adjusting content to voice search and smart devices swallow up comparatively few resources.
The content marketing landscape evolves continuously, and changes are fast-paced. But keeping on top of the most important trends will definitely provide you with an edge.
By focusing on producing interactive, user-generated, and video content, as well as tailoring it to different customer segments and voice searches, you can keep ahead of the curve in 2020.
