Sales Driven Marketing Hub

We’ve seen content marketing evolve a lot over a few short years. Now a major player in the digital marketing world, content marketing initiatives are only expected to increase in the coming years.

According to a recent study by Smart Insights, content marketing is the most commercially important digital marketing trend for 2015 by a large margin.

What’s more, Uberflip reports that 55% of B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget.

So what can we expect from content marketing in the years to come? Here are some important things to look out for and start implementing today. 

A Focus on Visual Marketing

If you’re only producing written content, it’s time to start investing in a visual marketing strategy. According to Ethos3, content with visuals receives 94% more total views and is 40 times more likely to be shared on social networks.

Still not convinced? The average person only reads 20% of text on a regular webpage and visuals are processed 600,000 times faster than text. More importantly, while people only retain 10% of what they hear and 20% of what they read, they retain a whopping 80% of what they see. 

You can start incorporating visual content into your content marketing strategy by creating:

• Infographics: Infographics can improve website traffic by 12%. What’s more, Google searches for infographics have increased 25-fold in the past five years.
• Videos: It’s 50 times easier to get a video to rank on the first page of Google.
• Presentations and Slide Decks: Take advantage of the SlideShare audience, which boasts 60 million unique visitors a month.
• Social Media Graphics: Guy Kawasaki recommends that you include an image in every tweet.

Don’t feel like you have to create all of these from scratch. Start by looking at older blog posts and breathe new life into them by repurposing the content.

An Emphasis on Customer Experience

It’s important to remember that great customer experiences start with great content. It’s the primary tool companies have for building relationships with their customers and is incredibly important even after the sale is made.

According to acrolinx, while 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, only 1% of buyers consistently have them. 

Leveraging content throughout the buyer’s journey can enhance the customer experience by: 

• Attracting Customers: Use your content to build relationships with prospects. Create content that focuses on all aspects of your business, from product development and customer service to sales and marketing.
• Keeping Existing Customers Happy: 72% of buyers prefer using content to troubleshoot problems rather than calling for help. Therefore, it’s important to create content about problems your customers might run into and how they can solve them on their own.

Conclusion

Like it or not, content marketing is here to stay. Once you understand the basic tenets of content writing and social media marketing, start implementing some of these up-and-coming (and already well-performing) strategies into the mix.