Mobile, video, and other marketing tactics that have been on the rise for years aren't really "trends" anymore. So, how many more trend articles do marketers have to read through that really just tell us what we already know?
Now, just because they're not current trends doesn't make them unimportant. Optimizing for mobile and including high-quality visual content and video in your strategy are still good practices. But to keep yourself and your company ahead of the competition, you need to analyze what's happening now, review your strategy from different perspectives, and prepare for what's to come.
1. Writing skills and experience will be critical.
When the industry started shifting from print to digital, there was fear among English and journalism students that their craft was dying and no one with a degree in those fields would have jobs. And now with the rise in content, these research, writing, and editing skills are becoming increasingly important, especially when high-quality content is becoming the new SEO.
To keep up with other top content creators and publishers in your industry, encourage your HR team to recruit employees with these game-changing skills or start investing in education to help your existing team strengthen its writing.
2. Use of Infographics
Since internet has become a tool to convey information to millions of people worldwide, it also becomes a challenge on how you can effectively communicate to the people with your contents. Making one’s content eye-catching and easy to understand is not an easy task. You need to dig deeper into a topic and look for ways to present it in a manner that you could outshine your competitors.
Often times, making a business decision needs to be fast. Hence, tons of reports that are all words and no key data obvious to the eye simply don’t work. With effective information design, your reports can make key data apparent.
Visual data that shows the growth or a new product, or the number of unique visits after a marketing campaign, or
the population of your target audience in various social network channels,
provide you an instantaneous key information that are easy to interpret and enable you to make decisions fast and accurately.
To learn more about Infographics and how to create one, Click here
3. Content marketing will enhance other areas of business.
Many people view marketing as the department that works solely to promote your company to your external audience, and while this is one of its key functions, it's not the only one. Content the marketing team produces will become an increasingly necessary asset to many other departments at modern companies, because those resources the team creates for external audiences are just as helpful for internal audiences.
As content marketing grows in practice, with 88 percent of B2B marketers using it, we'll start seeing increased convergence of these content efforts with other company strategies.
4. Personalization will prevail.
One of my favorite keynote speakers at this year's BOLO digital marketing conference was a marketing trend expert Rohit B. During his speech, he talked about the growing importance of personalization and providing opportunities for clients and customers to feel like VIPs, and he used Disney's MagicBands as an example.
Instead of every visitor receiving the same band, each Disney MagicBand is personalized to that visitor's vacation experience.
These simple gestures of personalization show that your brand cares about individual customers, and they're effective. Avoid generic templates and find ways-from simply targeting your messaging to sending personalized emails and gifts-to make each individual customer feel that special.
5. Industry authority positioning will become a must.
Companies without thought leaders who provide voices and contribute to industry conversations are taking harder hits to their credibility than ever before. Executive branding and leadership positioning are no longer just nice to execute-they're becoming increasingly necessary. People want a connection to your brand, and they want to trust your leadership. The best way to establish this connection and trust is to create content that showcases your authority.
To effectively position your company, start taking advantage of your team's unique insights and expertise, and craft your messages into thought leadership content that establishes your company as the industry leader.
6. Add value for your audience and stop selling to them all the time.
Stop focusing only on making the sale, and start focusing also on delivering true value to your customers and potential clients. Whether this value is found in the quality of your content or in the experiences you provide, it's becoming more and more important for marketers to ensure that value is delivered to those who interact with their brands.
For example, on a recent call with Mura Experience Platform, a member of its team mentioned that a custom Cards Against Human deck designed for attendees of the Content Marketing World event with the Mura Experience Platform brand was one of their most successful marketing campaigns. This campaign was successful because it was original and delivered direct value to Mura Experience Platform's target audience. To keep up with competition, it will be important for marketers to take advantage of the rise in content to create and deliver value to customers.
7. Thought leadership is a new SEO driver.
Traditional SEO-using link building and keyword optimization to increase your pages' search results-is no longer your ticket to high rankings on Google. After Google's continued algorithm updates throughout the year, the search giant has begun rewarding higher-quality content with higher search rankings. Despite efforts by some companies and content creators to cheat their ways to the top of results pages, high-quality content prevails over the old keyword-stuffing tactics of the past.
For example, in my own writing during the past year or so, I've seen a dramatic difference in traffic to my own articles because my team and I have continued to perfect our content-creation processes to align with exactly what our target audience is searching for.
Contributors: Mr. Tochukwu D. M.
John Hall.
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