Content marketing

The competition in most industries nowadays have been so high over the recent years that many companies have had to shift how they were marketing their products and attracting customers. Because of this shift, content marketing became a more common way for companies to keep the attention of the customers in a way that felt useful for these customers, as they are learning about something they are interested in at the same time. According to a report conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of marketers see content strategy as a very effective strategy to increase revenue. But while many marketers understand the importance of a content marketing strategy, only 31% have documented their own.

Would you like to see a growth in traffic, leads and more revenue but have a hard time wondering why you don’t seem to get it? It might be time to look at your content marketing strategy.

1. Mobile First:

Making websites more accessible on mobile has been the focus of many companies in recent years, in order to reach the 53 percent of global users accessing the internet on mobile. However, smartphone use has increased in such a way that there has been a shift now prioritizing mobile before anything else. Mobile will account for nearly 80 percent of all internet usage in 2018, according to a report by Business2Community.

Rather than focusing your content marketing strategy on desktop to later optimize them for mobile, we would recommend you to actually do the opposite. In order to properly respond to the demands of the market, you should plan for mobile users to later add desktop functionality.Indeed, 80 percent of social media time is spent on mobile and 57% of users won't recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site.

It is therefore important for you to understand how your consumers think and behave, in order for you to provide the content they need in the best and most optimal way possible.

2. Create personal content:

Visual content is a very important factor when it comes to the success of your content marketing strategy. Pairing written content with images in order to keep visitors engaged used to be the norm. However, it is now shifting to being more about the kind of visual content you are going to be sharing.

While infographics and videographics have their benefits, going live with and directly engaging with the customers on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube could be more effective. Consumers want to purchase products and services from brands they know and love, which is why 61% of marketers plan to use Facebook live and Periscope, while 69% plan to learn want to learn more about live content and how to use it to leverage more engagement.

You could share more of the activities your company does with your followers, such as "behind the scenes" content for instance. For other types of content, like recorded videos, images and blogs, you should only post and share high quality content. 85% of marketers believe posting higher-quality and more efficient content was the major reason for success in 2017. You should therefore focus on original and personalized content to users that connects with them on an emotional level.

3. Embrace new platforms:

Many businesses have been using chatbots for content marketing purposes and if you haven’t, it’s something you should definitely look into. Chatbots have been proven to be more successful in customer service, but the same can be witnessed in content marketing as well. According to a 2015 report by BI Intelligence, messaging platforms have caught up to social media in terms of usage. Indeed, more than 2.4 billion people combined are active on Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp every month.

Using bots can therefore be used to communicate with your target audience. Indeed, they are a great way to increase brand loyalty, engagement, as well as your understanding of consumer behavior, all of which are very important for successful content marketing.

Using machine learning in order to deliver customized content as well as optimizing your content for voice search should also be options to consider as well.

4. Enhance your email marketing:

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 66% of marketers have issues with sending successful emails. Additionally, 79% of marketers stated that email was the most successful distribution channel they had last year compared to blogs or social media platforms. Email as a successful marketing method is therefore still important if you want to get as many prospects as possible.

We recommend you to think about increasing the amount of targeted emails you send, especially when it comes to a subscriber's history. If you understand properly the specific products and services any given subscriber will be interested in, you will be able to restructure the type of content they receive. Big data as well as AI technologies could be used as leverage that will allow you to achieve this and increase your email marketing strategy and ultimately your revenue.

Things such as interactive visual content, chatbots, storytelling as well as increased personalization will dominate the content marketing scene this year and will continue to do so in the future. Implementing a carefully thought out and planned strategy while using these trends will allow you to have a stronger content marketing strategy, which will lead to more engagement and more successes for your business.

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