Content marketing will become increasingly more crucial in 2021. The setting to get good content marketing campaigns and content strategies are shifting and also the way content is generated has become a business concern Understanding current content marketing trends today is vital. Users desire interactive articles and brands using a genuine and likeable content foster a better user experience.
With more and more people spending time at home, and/or working from home in the COVID-19 world, people’s exposure to the internet, and consequently your content, is only increasing. This means that people are exposed to an increasing number of webpages that are all looking to grab their attention and their business.
Podcasts and videos may enable users to experience brands in a different manner in 2021, as well as in a number of organizations chat-bots will soon take over the vast majority of consumer care. It will likely be a thrilling year for content. Within the following article, we list the most important 10 content marketing trends for 2021.
1.) Long-Form Content
One of the key content marketing trends is that both search engines and readers like to possess long content. 2021 is going to soon be the year of so-called long-form content – i.e. articles with greater than 2000 words. Longer texts tend to be somewhat more inclined to give your users well-structured, comprehensive, and well-researched texts in a subject, including added value from trusted sources. They have been more inclined to obtain these in long-form content, which could only be created using much more time and research.
Structure, paragraphs, headings not to mention the actual text itself must always be created together along with your audience in mind: what potential questions would an individual have about a topic? You ought to have the ability to answer all these questions within the writing prior to the consumer has to inquire.
As a content marketer or article creator, your goal must be ”How do I help an individual in the most useful way?” If you have this question in your mind, you may automatically create perfect search engine optimization content. Search engines are getting better at understanding the search intent of an individual and are therefore very likely to position longer articles highly. Studies also demonstrate that longer articles are shared with greater regularity on social networking websites.
In 2020, the internet was bombarded with blog articles, social networking articles and short articles which can possibly be discovered in a comparable form on several pages. In 2021, a content plan should concentrate on fewer, however regular and longer articles with well-researched details.
Most importantly, in 2021, we’ll observe content marketing moving away from texts, and much more towards podcasts, video and chat-bots.
2.) Video Marketing
Video marketing is another one of the vital content marketing trends of 2021. A 2017 report from Animoto indicates that 64% of clients made a buy after seeing branded videos on Facebook. According to the poll, three out of four users have been influenced by videos on social networking when making a purchase choice. Videos are also the most convenient means to get acquainted with an organization online.
Why are branded videos, webinars and influencer channels so popular on YouTube? Basically, users appreciate transparency and credibility in a brand. Videos tend to be more tangible than text, and also their participation is significantly higher. Individuals who speak straight with their own audiences facing the camera sets a relationship and appears more real compared to advertisements messages in pictures and words.
Cisco predicts that by 2022, videos are predicted to account for 82% of worldwide IP traffic.
In video advertisements, short informative videos are able to deal with an entirely new target audience on YouTube and Google Search. Needless to say, it is vital that you guarantee the very best video quality, and demonstration before the camera needs to be accurate, sizable and sympathetic!
3.) Podcasts
2021 could also be the year of podcasts. Together with approximately ten million young, wealthy listeners using purchasing power and also an affinity for the brand, there’s definite potential for podcast advertising. Brands may attract more users with audio content, so bringing the brand name clearly into the awareness of their prospective audience via advertisements in popular podcast series.
Podcast marketing isn’t entirely plain sailing – hearing a podcast demands time, whereas anybody can quickly look at a video and see the subtitles. Most Podcasts are parallel to some other activity – often driving a vehicle, therefore can’t be classified as readily comprehensible, easy to digest information. The Podcast-Hype will probably get off to a slow start, however, shouldn’t be underestimated.
4.) Social Media Marketing
Social networking is one of the quickest moving, and continually growing channels. In 2021 will need to pay close attention to where users really are. There’s a powerful trend away from Facebook towards short-lived audiovisual media such as Snapchat and TikTok. This is particularly valid for the younger viewers (16 to 30-year-olds), as well as for influencers.
For content to do well on Instagram, it needs to become private and authentic. Interacting and communicating together with different accounts is equally as essential as personal contact with your users – quite simply, active devotion. Stories need to be told with fast, routine posts. Continuity, playfulness and credibility are the essential elements.
5.) Mobile Responsiveness
Mobility is “the” trend of our time. Many users use a mobile device to see videos online, shop, inform themselves and also stay in touch with other people. According to studies, in 3 years, the smartphone will probably substitute the PC as the most important means of accessing the web. Consequently, all content ought to really be implemented on the basis of their ”mobile-first” idea. Notably, in video marketing, all signs indicate mobility, because nearly all people today see videos on a tablet or smartphone.
Mobile content needs to be streamlined, original and funny, in addition to being authentic enough to immediately convince users. Just then will an individual desire to have a close look at the small display. The 2nd step is the best way to spread the mobile content to additional channels.
6.) User Experience (UX) is King
2021 is all about fulfilling the requirements of users with various formats, winning their trust and giving the brand a good image. Most importantly, content marketing needs to make one thing: a fantastic user-experience. In the future, tangible content will certainly catch up with quality and price as essential aspects of a product.
Google, Instagram and also Facebook optimize their search engine along with news feed algorithms every minute to react to the further evolution of an individual experience and draw users. The benefit: each time a user interacts with the material, it automatically remains visible and present on social media marketing for longer. How people make use of the web is shifting. An increasing number of people are utilizing voice search rather than text input. As content marketing managers, you’ve got to adjust to the trend and devote more to suitable audio content as a way to satisfy the corresponding user requirements. That is particularly true for both search engine optimisation and web search.
7.) Micro-Moments
- People spend an average of just under 4 hours on their smartphones every day.
- People generally make instant decisions on what to eat, which restaurant to choose, what to purchase, or where to go. This is changing the way brands must work to capture buyers’ attention.
- To take advantage of micro-moments in 2021, be where consumers search for information in the moment – such as Google, Google Maps, Amazon, YouTube, and anywhere else people search for information at a moment’s notice.
Consumers in the Age of Assistance
A new breed of consumers has arrived. Empowered by mobile, today’s consumers can get exactly what they want, instantly and effortlessly. As a result, they are more curious, demanding, and impatient than ever before. Explore these three emerging consumer behaviours and dig into data and insights that will help you rethink your content marketing strategies.
The Curious Consumer
People have become research-obsessed, even about the small stuff. Today, people are researching more than ever, preparing for every aspect of any experience, so each decision — be it big or small — is an informed one. We’re increasingly turning to search for ideas and inspiration. If you can play to the research-obsessed person’s needs, you can be assistive in a way that gets them excited, relieves their anxiety, and pulls them into your experience so they don’t choose another.
Why people need to know before they go
- Spark excitement about an upcoming experience
- 55% growth in “menus” mobile searches in the past 2 years.
- Build confidence before purchasing
- 150% growth in “___ to avoid” searches in the past 2 years.
- Make the most of a budget
- Over 80% growth in “is ___ worth it” in the past 2 years
How shoppers find ideas and inspiration:
- Looking for ideas – Kickstart their shopping journey by searching for ideas.
- 55% growth in “___ ideas” searches in the past 2 years.
- Making a list – Tapping into others’ ideas provides pre-vetted inspiration.
- 150% growth in “___ shopping list” searches in the past 2 years
- Finding a brand – Ideas on what brand to buy.
- 80% growth in “best” mobile searches in the past 2 years
- Consulting reviews – We look to those who have used the product for answers.
- 35% growth in “product reviews” searches in the past 2 years.
The era of video – People are drawn to the richness of video to help them experience a product in ways that words can’t convey.
- In the past year, 40% of Youtube users turned to the platform to learn more
about a product before they bought it. - If you added up the time people have spent watching “First Ride” car videos on
YouTube, it’s equivalent to driving from New York to San Francisco over 45,000
times. - 1,000% growth in “shop with me” videos on YouTube in 2 years.
Tips:
- Understanding search behaviour – By understanding how people are searching for ideas, brands have an opportunity to get into their consideration set. Brands can think of all the open-ended discovery moments where someone is totally open to what is out there and make themselves visible and differentiated. At this ideas and inspiration stage of discovery, people are looking for help—and savvy marketers can put their brands at the centre of this opportunity.
- Honesty is the best policy – If you’re making videos, do a gut check to make sure you’re using everyday language and everyday people. People want to see something they can relate to. Also, show what your product is really like. Show it in real-world conditions. For social, brands have realized that they shouldn’t make things too polished or too produced. The same applies here. To get a full view of a product, people are actively seeking out frank reviews.
- Monitor search reviews – Monitoring search behavior reviews can give you another window into the mind of your customers. Don’t be afraid of exploring what comes up if you monitor your brand and the phrase “to avoid.” How people are searching for your brand or category can help catch potential issues, identify areas for improvement, and uncover new ways to talk to your consumers and address their concerns. And if you see that people are questioning whether your brand or category is worth it, consider creating and promoting content that tells people why it is. There’s a whole community of creators testing and evaluating products, including yours. That means users will be validating any claims you make, so make sure your product can live up to them.
- Understand intent signals – Whether it’s to get excited, build confidence, or manage their money, people are using search to shape and validate the decisions they make. To ensure you’re part of their consideration set, pay attention to the intent behind people’s searches and adapt your messaging accordingly.
- Build useful tools – People rely on the web to plan the best experience possible. Provide assistance with tools that cater to these experiences. Offer up ways to easily organize their experiences so people feel confident—and not overwhelmed—by the decisions they make. For example, offering a trip-planner tool or pre-built suggested packing lists can help put people at ease.
- Do your research – Understanding the different moments and mindsets of your customers as they’re planning an experience presents a great opportunity to become a part of their consideration set early on in their decision-making process.
- Make it easy – Make it simple and fast to plan their days, save time, or plan on a budget. Find ways to let people tell you what’s important to them e.g beach vs. island view, classic or modern, budget or luxury—and then suggest matches that fit those needs.
- Get creative – Since many users aren’t going to be able to physically touch a product before they buy it, brands need to come up with creative ways to help people “experience” it online. Think of ways to bring your product to life online so it stands out—like using virtual reality or augmented reality—such as L’Oréal’s Makeup Genius app that lets users virtually try on makeup
The Demanding Consumer
Today, people expect every digital experience to be personalized just for them, even when they include few details and don’t explicitly spell out their request. For marketers, this means meeting these demanding consumers with the right information at the right moment.
Search can be a Personal Advisor
As technology becomes more intuitive, people are changing the way they interact with it. In search, we are seeing that people are beginning to use more conversational search queries, which allow them to ask more pointed, specific, and personally relevant questions about the products and services they’re interested in. This not only enables people to cut through the clutter, getting them answers quickly and efficiently, but it also gives them the confidence that they’re getting exactly what they need.
Personal – Expectations have never been higher. We’ve seen that people increasingly use personal language — such as “me” and “I” — in their searches. Whether they are problem-solving or learning about the world around them, people want the most relevant and personal results in any situation. Google is seeing this search data across categories. People are looking for advice about a range of things from personal hygiene (“How often should I wash my hair”) to fairly substantial health and financial decisions like “should I go vegan” and “what kind of credit card should I get.”
- 85% growth in mobile searches starting with “can I” in 2 years.
- 65% growth in mobile searches for “___ for me” in 2 years
Location – “Near me” is no longer just about finding a specific place. It’s now about finding a specific thing, in a specific area, and in a specific period of time.
- 3 times increase in mobile searches for “near me” over the past 2 years
- 500% growth in “near me” mobile searches that contain a variant of “can I buy” or “or buy” over the past 2 years
Relevant – People have realized that by being more specific in how they search, they can more quickly get to the relevant information they’re looking for.
- Mobile searches relating to “___ shoes for ___” have grown 120% in the past 2 years (e.g., “comfortable shoes for travelling”).
Tips:
- Be Savvy – Consumers want answers as well as ideas and inspiration. And they want these things fast. Those who can deliver answers to people’s personal needs will have an advantage. This goes for searches like “best shampoo for me” and “what kind of dog should I get?” Redken offers a hair diagnostic tool. The American Kennel Club and Pedigree are among those suggesting quizzes to help people select the right dog breed.
- Consider Conversational – In search, after locking down the keywords and phrases typically associated with your business, think beyond those to consider more conversational phrases that customers might be using to find you. Because consumers are growing more and more at ease with technology, consider using more natural language and creating intuitive experiences across all of your digital touchpoints.
- Be useful. People respond to brands that understand their needs. So, it’s important to optimize your media for both the relevance to the consumer and lifetime value for the brand. Some customers spend more — a lot more — and many customers spend less. Understanding that can mean the difference between paying to acquire profitable customers and paying to acquire the customers your competition didn’t want.
The Impatient Consumer
Customers today are impatient, and their standards are unforgiving. People are making decisions faster than ever—and they expect to act on those decisions in the moment. The always-there nature of mobile enables us to act right in the moment that an idea pops into our heads. People want help in these decision-making moments. For marketers, this means shifting their strategies to keep pace with these impatient consumers and make it even easier for people to get things done.
Why Expectations for “Right Now” Are On the Rise
We have all been empowered and emboldened by information, with our phones acting as supercomputers in our pockets, we can find, learn, do, and buy whenever the need arises—or the whim strikes. This ability to get things done in the moment—paired with the fact that brands are getting better at delivering speedy, frictionless mobile experiences—is driving expectations higher than ever.
- People are making on-the-spot decisions – In other words, when making these on-the-spot decisions, they are more loyal to their need than to any particular place.
- 150% growth in mobile searches for “___near me now”
- 300% growth in search interest for “___open now” in 3 years
- People expect to get products and services immediately – In some ways, we have all come to expect instant information. But expecting the actual product or service right away? That’s the new normal. Smartphone users are 50% more likely to expect to purchase something immediately while using their smartphone compared to a year ago
- 120% growth in “wait times” searches in the past 2 years.
- Mobile searches related to “same-day shipping” have grown over 120% since 2015. Google trends show that searches for “same-day shipping” peak first thing in the morning.
- Our planning behaviour is changing, increasingly making last-minute plans, 150% growth in mobile search for “tonight” and “today” in 2 years
Your consumers are going to be everyone from Plan-Ahead Pete to Impromptu Ilana and Last-Minute Larry. But regardless of their personal organizational habits, their expectations are all the same—they want to get what they want when they want it. Consumers have higher expectations than ever for right here, right now experiences.
In fact, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load.… We’ve actually seen that for every one-second delay in site load time, conversions fall by 12%.
Tips:
- Be there. People now expect to be assisted everywhere. And that means it’s critical that you’re measuring and understanding the impact of your media touchpoints on the consumer journey.
- Be quick. To succeed, brands must commit to the creation of incredible mobile experiences that are fast and frictionless. Fast and frictionless is now table stakes, and the basics—like load time—can make or break you. But we aren’t there yet—the average mobile site takes 22 seconds to fully load. To test your own mobile site speed, give Test My Site a spin. It even provides instant recommendations to make your mobile site more instant.
- It’s time to invest in mobile experiences as well as a machine learning and automation strategy. Machine learning can help you understand and predict intent in ways that simply aren’t possible manually. It can also help you find missed or unexpected connections between business goals and the habits of your key customer segments.
8.) Cross Team Content Marketing
In 2019, content production should no longer function as the pure job of a business’s marketing department. From the CEO for the intern, every employee ought to at the very least allow some input to stream into the content production procedure. Why?
Each department and each employee needs to take care of the customer in various ways and in different parts of the buyer journey. Various departments, therefore, know the clients’ requirements and needs best at this specific moment. A possible way for content generation for a cross-team could look like this:
The advertising team receives a brand new purpose of the content moderator and handles the input it receives from the rest of the departments in the corporation.
In collaboration with HR, IT, Sales, Account Management, relevant content could be created from those who handle the prospective audience within their field on a daily basis.
Potential ideas: “Meet with the team” – Blog articles, videos or even regular company podcasts make the people behind a brand tangible, promote direct interaction with clients and also make a substantial contribution to a business’s trust and transparency.
9.) Content Collaboration with Other Brands and Influencers
Brands like Uber and Spotify, who’ve teamed up to offer clients a playlist of their favourite tunes while on the move, are showing the way. The cooperation of two brands or even the collaboration with one particular influencer creates new articles that can be played out on several channels to both target groups, leading to a far wider audience. Focus: accomplish it’s important that you pick businesses which suit you without having to be in direct competition with one another. Ideally, both parties complement one another within their marketing expertise.
Best-case example: RedBull, a genuine {marketing| and |advertising} giant, and GoPro, who provided the suitable technical equipment for its combined “Stratos” Project.
Possible types of collaboration:
- Podcast interviews with experts
- Collaborative Case Studies
- Social media ”Take Overs”, by which celebrities take control of the social networking channel of a business. A fantastic case in point is Emma Watson, who became the very first guest editor of National Geographics Instagram Channels as a women’s and human rights activist on International Women’s World Day.
10.) Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
They share advice, answer questions and also are getting to be increasingly more intelligent as virtual assistants. They’re particularly useful in the areas of customer support and content marketing.
They truly are cost-effective, never annoyed or impatient in contact with clients, plus they feature service round the clock. A fantastic chatbot will answer open questions at which ”yes” or ”no more” is inadequate, and also uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to obtain the most useful answers to frequently asked questions. Some organizations already use it in customer communication on social networking channels, like Facebook. Even a chatbot could be incorporated into all common messengers such as Facebook, Whatsapp or Skype. Implementing it on your own website can be a fantastic means for clients to quickly get in contact with a corporation.
Using chatbots isn’t brand new – but is also gaining popularity as a result of accelerated development within the area of AI. In regular customer care, chatbots will provide customer service more time to get more elaborate questions and pressing problems. Furthermore, chatbots can gather and analyze customer data dependent on user input. This way, questions, wishes or trends can be recognized and evaluated.
A poll has proven that clients prefer chat to other means of communicating. They have been extremely positive about chatbots in order to discover the capability to communicate using an ”employee” via chat to be especially convenient and quick.
Conclusion
Content Marketing will be taking a major step forward concerning technology and UX from 2019. Businesses must adjust to the expectations of these clients, be it customer communication, content creation or supply on all channels. Video and sound formats are all on the increase and so they have to be real, fresh and consumable in the ideal format, whether on the tablet computer in your home or on the smartphone.
For text articles, the more the writing, the more probable it’s to become shared. And content marketing is a team game. Employees individual departments understand precisely what moves their clients and what expectations they will have. Bring them on board! Cooperation with other businesses or influencers usually leads to innovative advertising and marketing ideas, a wider audience and additional channels for user communication.