Content marketing has been on a trajectory of becoming a household item in every marketer’s toolbox. As the effectiveness, channels, strategies, and tactics continue to evolve, content marketing will certainly see continued progress in 2020.
More Targeting, More Personalization
The convergence of two trends will result in more highly personalized and more tightly targeted content. As industries and platforms become saturated with content, a higher consequence will be placed on relevancy. As users are inundated with content, both blatantly promotional and more organic in nature, it will be more important than ever to be relevant. Not in only in subject matter, but in timing and placement as well. As big data becomes more accessible, the ability and impetus for marketers to target the right audience with the right message will rise. Integrating third party data with social and programmatic platforms will evolve the value that simple impressions holds within both brand awareness and lower funnel campaigns.
Better Content, Always
The sheer volume of content creators continues to increase year over year, along with it comes a growing mass of content across every platform in every form of medium imaginable. A study by the Content Marketing Institute on B2B Content Marketing in 2019 found that 90% of successful B2B content marketers prioritized their audience’s informational needs over the sales message. While understanding the underlying sales messaging for all your organizations assets, this represents a significant sea change in how marketers view content creation. The key to creating more purposeful content for your audience will start with understanding your audience. Marketers that are looking to stay ahead of the content curve will either conduct buyer persona exercises or reanalyze their existing personas.
Search Intent Driving Ideation
As SEO and content marketing continue to intertwine, we’ll start to see a rise in keyword research combined with an understanding of search intent drive the content ideation process. Mapping the types of content you’re creating with the intent behind the terms you’re targeting will not only create a stronger link for search engines, but also delight the users that land there. A great exercise in connecting search intent with your content ideation process is to simply search the phrases (in an incognito browser) you are targeting and analyze the content that Google serves. This will give you great insight to how Google interprets the query and the types of content it places higher value on.
Building Topical Authority to Rank Better
Simply said, the more related content you can create, the more search engines will view you as an authority within that overall subject. This is where pillar content comes in. The key to this strategy is building a full-funnel strategy for each topical area within a specific subject and utilizing all your channels to drive relevant traffic. Search engine algorithms have evolved past the point of judging singular pages and are considering the context of your entire website. Use classic tactics like interlinking to drive home related content within your content clusters now more than ever.
Video Content Distributed Across All Channels
Over the last few years we’ve witnessed video grow to the top in online media consumption. With smart devices streaming more video than ever, networks advancing to handle higher fidelity video, and platforms continue to show preference to video content in their algorithms, it’s no surprise that 2020 will yet again be the year where video prevails. While consistent messaging across all mediums and covering multiple touchpoints along the buyers journey is always important, video is an essential medium when it comes to the overall stickiness of your message. According to a HubSpot Content Trends survey, video had the highest likelihood of thorough consumption compared to a light skimming when compared to other content such as social media posts and long form articles. The same tenets of good content, however, remain true for video. Creating meaningful and engaging video content and leveraging your understanding of your audience with advanced targeting capabilities is the key to differentiating your video content in a saturated landscape.