“Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left. “~ Seth Godin
We all know by now that content marketing is a powerful tool and more and more marketers are using it these days to connect with their users. 98% of the marketers surveyed say content marketing is core to their marketing strategies.
Content Marketing can be a cost effective way to tell your story while engaging your audience at the same time. According to the Content Marketing Institute 69% of marketers are creating more content than a year ago.
Marketers are constantly coming up with new marketing strategies to build their brands and reach new users, and content marketing is the way to go. Creating compelling content for your marketing campaigns can be very challenging, but if marketers can quickly adapt to the constantly changing and complex technologies, they can stay ahead of their competition.
Now let us look back and analyze some of the content marketing trends that gained momentum in 2015. Here are some of the biggest trends we have seen this year so far:
- More budget for content marketing: On average, content marketing is 62% less expensive than traditional marketing. Marketers now spend over 25% of their marketing budget on content marketing and this percentage is more likely to grow in the near future. According to Content Marketing Institute, 59% of the marketers interviewed say that they will increase spending on content marketing in 2016. Now is the time for marketers to take advantage of this trend and invest more in content marketing for better results next year.
- Visual storytelling is the key: Nowadays consumers can easily access images and videos on the go and are often choosing this over long form text. This has forced marketers to create more visual context that is engaging and captures the attention of their usres. The use of visual platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat has increased tremendously in 2015. There has been a 17% increase alone in Instagram usage for content marketing this year, and this number is likely to grow in the near future.
- Use of Contests and Quizzes: In this fast paced business environment, marketers have always to come up with new methods to effectively communicate with their audience. They have now turned to contests and quizzes that are cost effective, more interactive and engaging. We have seen major brands using these strategies to generate massive buzz in the market this year. For example PepsiCo partnered with Linkedin to run a video contest to generate awareness about their marketing jobs to college students. RadioTimes partnered with Bracketeers to run a bracket-voting contest about their 2015 TV Champion and created massive engagement for their users. These new methods have been effectively used this year for content marketing, and moving forward we believe markets should and will continue to invest more time and budget into these methods to reach their target audience.
- Analytics become even more essential: We all know that analytics is critical and has become table stakes for today’s campaigns. Marketers have used dozens of analytical tools to know how their customers are interacting with their content, and are gaining valuable insights on their strategies. According to AdAge, marketing analytics currently is 6.7% of the total marketing budget but it is expected to increase to 11.1% in the next three years. For marketers, investing in analytics is always a smart choice to get the best out of their campaigns.
- Mobile usage has increased: As more and more users are on their mobile devices now than before, it’s no surprise that marketers are now creating more content for mobile audiences. In Q1 2015 mobile video views increased 100% year-over-year. If you are creating video and image based content, expect a major and growing portion of your users coming from mobile.
Conclusion
Content marketing is on the rise and marketers will continue to move away from more traditional marketing tactics in favor of creating more relevant and engaging content in campaigns for their users. We have seen this year that more companies are using visual content than text to capture the attention of their users. The use of Instagram and Snapchat has increased this year and this will gain more usage over the next few years. Marketers need to keep up with new trends in the content marketing industry in order to create highly engaging content, and to stay ahead of their competitors. Learn from these trends in 2015 to make necessary changes to your content marketing strategies as you move into a productive 2016. Learn more on how Votion products can help you create valuable content for your campaign.