We've entered a fortuitous time to be involved in the digital marketing space. Almost half of the global population now has access to the internet, the way consumers consume content is rapidly evolving, and with that comes an exciting array of challenges and opportunities. This post specifically focuses on the trends that lay ahead for content marketers and the role they play within an organization. Having a concrete understanding of upcoming trends is important in laying the foundation for defining the content goals within an organization and deciding where resources should be allocated.
Trend 1: Competition to gain consumers' attention will increase
Posting new, unique content regularly on your site is NOT enough. Each day there are around 92,000 new articles posted on the internet. Digital media publishers have created systems to produce the greatest amount of content at the lowest price. For example, The Huffington Post produces at least 1,200 pieces of content a day, and Forbes produces 400 (with 1,000 contributors). It's not just from publishers; WordPress users produce about 35.8 million new posts each month.
Smaller businesses won't be able to compete based on sheer volume. So how can a site differentiate itself in this market? This is where the development of a content strategy can come into play. It's extremely helpful to understand a company's unique value proposition, and if the company doesn't have one, to understand where the opportunities are in the space to create one. For B2C companies, it can be identifying the company's existing target audience and promoting the brand as an advocate for a particular lifestyle. For B2B companies, it is often times about positioning your brand to be the ultimate authority or source of knowledge in a specific industry/niche.
When developing a content strategy, it's important to evaluate the product that the business sells. Evaluating a product doesn't mean identifying the features or solely understanding the benefits of the product. It actually means understanding the marketability of the product. For instance, is the product a "think" product or a "feel" product? Does the product require high involvement or low involvement from the consumer? Using the FCB grid developed by Richard Vaughn is a useful tactic.
A "think" product is one where a consumer heavily considers before purchasing. These type of products usually involve a high amount of research and personal effort by the consumer before purchasing.
A "feel" product is one where emotion plays a pivotal role in the buying process.
A "high involvement" product is one where the consumer is heavily involved in the buying decision. These products are generally more expensive, but not from just a fiscal perspective. It can also be something that once purchased, will require a lot more time to change, or it has significantly more impact from a long-term perspective. For instance, opening a retirement account is a "high involvement" purchase. A wallpaper purchase is also a "high involvement" purchase.
"Low involvement" products tend to err on a more impulsive or spur-of-the moment purchase. Once a consumer decides they need this product, not much time will be spent researching because it involves a low margin of error if a decision was incorrectly made. The price of the product is usually low.
If the product the company sells is a "high involvement"/"think" product, the consumer is going to spend significantly more time researching the product, including reading/watching product reviews, identifying product features, assessing if this purchase is worth the cost, etc. As a result, the content strategy for such a product should involve plenty of information on the product features, the benefits of the product, as well as growing the product and brand awareness, so that consumers will both discover and search for the product.
If the product the company sells is a "low involvement"/"feel" product, more time should be invested to connecting with consumers and appealing to their emotions. These products should also focus their efforts on building brand loyalty and retention of customers because these products tend to be repeat purchases.
Julian Cole, the Head of Comms Planning at BBH, breaks down this process in great detail in his "Working Out the Business Problems" slide deck.
Trend 2: Determining the key metrics to measure content's success will be more important
Traditionally, traffic and page views have been the longstanding metrics to gauge a piece of content's success by. Although there are clear value propositions in having increased traffic (such as increased brand awareness and increased/potential revenue for publishers and bloggers), these metrics on their own can be misleading. More importantly, solely focusing on traffic and page views as a metric of success can lead to unintentional behaviors and misguided motivations. These can include an overemphasis of click-worthy headlines, overuse of keywords in a title, and changing the focus from creating content for users (building for the long-term) to creating content for page views (short-term wins).
Ultimately, determining the right metrics for an organization's content depends on the goals for the content. Is it to maintain an engaged community/develop brand advocates, build brand awareness, and/or to convert users into paying customers? Perhaps it is a combination of all 3? These are all difficult questions to answer.
At Distilled, we're currently working with clients to help them define these metrics for their content. Sometimes, the best option is to use a combination of metrics that we want to analyze and target. For some clients, a key metric could be combining organic traffic + % returning visitors + tracking changes in bounce rate and time on site. For instance, if a user finds exactly what they're looking for and bounce, that's not necessarily bad. Perhaps, they landed on an ideal landing page and found the exact information they were looking for. That's a fantastic user experience, especially if the users have a long time on site and if they become a returning visitor. Looking at any metric in isolation can lead to tons of wrong assumptions and while there is not a perfect solution, combining metrics can be the next best alternative.
For other businesses, social metrics can be a great conversion metric for content pieces. A Facebook like or a Twitter retweet signals some engagement, whereas a share, a comment, or becoming a "fan" of a Facebook page signals a potential brand advocate. Although a share or a new "fan" on a Facebook page may be worthy more, all these activities demonstrate the ability of a piece to gain a user's attention and that awareness is worth something.
Content Marketing Institute has a great list of key metrics that B2B and B2C companies use to measure the effectiveness of their content.
Trend 3: Increased interest in content integration (content will be produced for multiple channels)
Some of the biggest challenges involved in content often times have nothing to do with content. For many of my clients, the biggest struggles usually involve decisions regarding proper resource allocation - lack of time to implement all of the goals, lack of budget to implement these strategies in an ideal way, and the constant battle with readjusting priorities. These hard constraints make marketing especially challenging, especially as more and more channels develop and digital innovation advances so quickly. While there is no perfect solution to this problem, the next best alternative to balancing out hard resource constraints with the constant need for innovation is to develop better integration methodologies. A poll of CMOs have put integrated marketing communications ahead of effective advertising when it comes the most important thing they want from an agency.
Why is this so important? It's because there is a change in the way consumers shop. Accenture conducted global market research on the behaviors of 6,000 consumers in eight countries. One of the top recommendations was the important of providing consumers with a "seamless retail experience." This means providing an on-brand, personalized, and consistent experience regardless of channel. That seamless experience will require content to be heavily involved in a multitude of channels from online to in-person in order to provide potential and current customers with one consistent conversation.
The chart below shows statistics about the way Millennials shop. Although Millennials tend to be exceptionally digitally-savvy (especially when it comes to social media), studies show they still like to shop in retail/brick-and-more stores. Millennials use the internet to research and review price, products, value, and service and have shown to have an impact on how their parents shop.
The integration of content does not apply to just consumer retail stores. For instance, British Airways has a billboard in London that is programmed to show a kid pointing to a flying British Airways plane every time one passes over the billboard. Here is the video that shows how the billboard works.
Last year, AT&T launched a 10,000 foot digitally enhanced store to showcase an apps wall, as well content dedicated to lifestyle areas, like fitness, family, and art. Start-up food blog, Food52 (who is starting to go into ecommerce) is launching a holiday market pop-up store in NYC.
Content Marketing Institute's 2014 Report for B2B content marketers indicates that B2B content marketers still view in-person events as their most effective tactic. The seamless transition of content from online marketing channels (via social media conversations, PPC and display ads, and content on the site via case studies and videos) to in-person conversations and consumer experience will only grow in importance.
Trend 4: Experimentation with content in new mediums
Technology and digital innovation are experiencing rapid increases in growth. PCs are now a small percentage of connected devices, wearables, and smart TVs are about to go mainstream. As competition for attention increases, companies will be increasingly willing to experiment with content in new mediums to reach their intended audiences.
This graph is just one depiction of how quickly technology evolves. As marketers, having the ability to quickly adapt and scale to new trends/opportunities is critical. This past year, marketing agency, SapientNitro, released a 156-page free guide entitled Insights 2013 that talks in detail about some of these trends, such as in-store digital retail experiences, the future of television, sensors and experience design, and customer experience on the move to name a few.
One of their case studies talks about Sephora. Sephora has developed great content in retail stores, such as several interactive kiosks that allow users to explore different fragrances or gain understanding about skincare. IPads surround the store that provide how to makeup tips and items can be scanned to reveal product information. Sephora's mobile app has content that speaks to their core customer base and is in line with their other online and social media content. All of the content can be easily shared via email or through social networks.
Other brands, such as Nivea mixed print advertising with mobile innovation. In this case, Nivea's print ad also doubled as a solar ad charger for phones.
Finally, PopTopia is a mobile game that has a mobile phone attachment, called Pop Dangle that will emit the smell of popcorn as you play the game. The game works because the attachment plugs into the audio jack and at a certain frequency, it will signal to spread the smell of popcorn. These examples all show brands who have embraced new mediums for content.
2014 will be an exciting time for the future of content. As technology evolves and competition for user attention increases, marketers need to be agile and adapt to the growing needs and expectations of their customers. The future of businesses will absolutely be critical upon businesses having a very clear unique value proposition. Why is this so crucial? This is the pivotal foundation from which marketing strategies and execution will grow. Our job as marketers is to use that information to pinpoint the metrics we need to measure and prioritize all future marketing strategies. This task is very difficult, but our role is to continue to embrace these challenges in order to seek solutions. Now is the ideal time to begin.
The beauty of the Internet is that anyone with access can become a publisher. But that low-barrier to entry is also a burden because junk content can overwhelm the great information just based on volume. Bigger websites are going to be able to pump out content at a rate small brands could never hope to reach, so those smaller sites have to focus on quality and consistency no matter what. It's a long term game but you just have to keep pushing.
I think junk content and not thinking through one's content marketing strategy backfires in that if you do an a well-thought out & clear UVP, you can bury your critical message under a lot of krud. I say let'em publish junk, a lot of it, and instead focus on consistently drawing attention to different aspects of your UVP
Gianluca Fiorelli - "create content able to follow and engage users in every device"
Well said !!! - This is exactly what is going to come in 2014 in sense of content. Content is King - King needs to conquer new fields ( new areas ) and not - Classifieds, PR, Articles, On page - Content, images, PPT, Docs, info graphics, advertising content , Blog and question - answer. We always "ask Now what ??" Success Stories, controversy - disputes... What will make visitor's more interested - engaged ?
Such numerous questions are in mind with some ideas ;). Hope soon i will found something more intersting and valuable strategy to Share with you people.
Hi Deep,
Exactly it's going to happen in 2014 with SEO industry and we all know still 'Content is King'. So what will be the strategy for optimize websites, if the SEO experts are not going through article, PR, Blog etc as you said?
I am Concentrating on Question & Answer and "Customers Pols and reviews ". This is nearest plan of mine and and the others i will like to reveal after implementation.
Stephanie,
Couldn't agree more that for SMB's (service oriented) to be competitive in the future, good content will be the result of strategy rather than chance. Not only should this content be integrated into your branded website, it should also be shared socially to have maximum reach.
We tell clients to Focus on Answering Your Users Needs and Quality Content will result.
Prospective service customers look for a local SMB when a problem arises. That’s when they turn to search engines.
How Do You Provide The Answers to Problems?
The best way to describe the new take on keywords is to be conversational in nature with anything you’re writing. Describe what you’re doing; capture what your customers think about what you’re doing. Talk like you would in a face-to-face conversation.
1. Customer Reviews, otherwise known as testimonials:
They can be embedded within your website, captured on external sites or obtained in the form of videos.
2. Staff activity summaries
These summaries from your team describe what they do to solve your customer’s problems.
These two types of user generated content allow you to engage in a “conversation” with a searcher about what your company is doing—and what your customers feel about it.
Where should this content end up?
User-generated, dynamic content is extremely valuable if it is published in the right places. There are two destinations every service SMB should focus on getting their content to:
1. SMB company branded website:
After basic SEO, every local SMB needs to maximize their potential exposure to prospects by integrating their real-time, dynamic user-generated content directly into their branded website. This is the best way to marry structured data to keyword relevance. We recommend all content be embedded in the site using proper schema and other markup conventions. For even more impact, consider segmenting the structured data by location, staff member or other variable the users may find useful.
2. Social sharing
As appropriate, user-generated content should also be shared through the social media destinations most relevant to the company vertical.
Recap:
Instead of asking how you can rank better on search engines, think about how you can better answer your prospects’ questions.
Simply put, tell a story about what problems you solve and how well you solve them. “Talk” to those in need in your local area.
Here is a checklist:
(We recommend reviews be embedded in your site using proper schema markup convention)
With the right user-generated content placed properly onto your website, Google, Bing and Yahoo will take notice.
Respectfully,
Bob
Where can i pick up one of Nivea's solar ad charger? What a great idea!
Hi Stephanie! It's always a pleasure reading a post of yours here or in the Distilled blog.
The future you portrait about Content Marketing in 2014 is a very realistic one, but I'd like to remark two points:
1) The necessity of a strong, deep and objective audience analysis. I think this is an extremely important point, being it the foundation not only of just the content strategy, but also of how all the marketing facets (from Content to Social, from SEO to Paid Search, but also Offline Marketing). More over, it's just after a deep audience analysis that a business company can understand the kind of investment, also in human resource (or in contracting external people/agencies), the same business company must commit, and hopefully considering it an investment and not a necessity constrained by budget. This is especially true for small to medium business companies.
2) The increasing multi-channel nature of a content, it's liquid nature. A concept that is not that new anymore (CocaCola Liquid Content theory has few years now, for instance). That means that stand alone content products obviously will still be present, but more and more will be necessary to create content able to follow and engage users in every device (also Offline channel devices, as TV, Radio, Magazines...). In this sense, what I see is that also small to medium businesses' content strategy will need to include Crossmedia (if not Transmedia).
"Did you mean Stephanie?"
Obviously :D
I agree, multi channel/liquid approach is important to align with the ways users consume content and with the sheer volume of content it is really difficult to stand out. We have clients who think a blog is enough to attract links so we are trying to encourage fewer, but bigger content pieces instead.
My question to you, Gianluca, is, 'How do you (a client) carry out deep and objective audience analysis when you have no clue where to start or no budget to pay someone?".
Are there any useful audience analysis "how to" guides you would recommend?
Marketers should adopt the changes happening in online world.Knowing that you have so many competitors trying to get the attention of the people, having a unique strategy will make you stand out from the crowd. But don't forget that content will always be the king :)
I find that great content is not what just gets to the customer but can benefit them instantly. Mumbai(India) is a city which always tends to get flooded in rainy season due to drainage issues. A telecom company called Aircel did something similar. Check out their advertisement case study and how the people drew benefit from the campaign.
That will be the future of content. Bringing instant value to people. NIVEA hit the nail right on the head.
Great article. Thanks Stephanie
Good stuff Stephanie. For me, having a unified metric, or set of metrics will be key. There's been a bit of a backlash towards Content Marketing recently, which I can only assume has been driven by companies looking at it more critically as a marketing technique. Without a comprehensive or robust analysis companies may feel investment is totally unjustified - despite there being metrics out there to use. I think it's important for Content Marketing to be more robust with its analysis, and therefore its ability to show its sustainable over an extended period. Great post.
It is always a constant challenge to come up with great content and unique style. Thanks for the info in this article to show where things are headed for 2014
Great read! It's very exciting looking ahead, you only need to look at where we've came from to understand just how quickly technology can change the world. Also, I'd never seen that BA billboard, what an amazing idea!
PK Group
Very good stats! I am going to dive into this deeper
The two videos in this article are absolutely amazing in terms of drawing attention to a brand. They are both clever, cutting edge, and different than what everyone else is doing. I mean, providing a solar charger for your cell phone is great on so many levels: technologically advanced, environmentally friendly, and promotes a healthy lifestyle.
I get so excited when I start thinking about the possiblities of what is next...
Totally agree with Nick Stamoulis,
It's a long term game.
As everybody says "Content is King" and everybody knows google shows only 10 website on each page. I want to know if there are top 20 websites of clothing in google and every webmaster is doing same work. How would google filter any 10 out of them which are deserve to move in first 10 ?.
Great piece, encouraged me to sign to newsletter. Deserved.
Ya it's true and thanks for giving this much detailed information about upcoming trends in 2014
well article from starting talks about upcoming trends ..i really appreciate the article but what my question to writer is can he gives 5 very simple points to elaborate the article ?i would love to have those points..thou i have taken few points from article..
Is it all about content in 2014 ?
Actually, no matter what methods you are using, the ultimate goal for using content marketing is to generate web traffic, and turn the click into purchase.
Great piece! There are a lot of digital trends to be on the lookout for this upcoming year. The analytics part I think will always be debated on what metrics are important, which are legit and what platforms are measuring them correctly. I think another key digital trend in 2014 will be the increase in visual content for your content marketing strategy.
https://www.brafton.com/blog/2013-social-media-marketing-trends
Let me thank you for an outstanding article. At first glance it seems that all the changes your are convincingly laying out for us make life more difficult, especially for small-scale companies and individuals. But after thinking about it more I concluded that the high speed of these changes is of some advantage for small companies and individuals as these can adopt more quickly.
I think with content strategy we also have to focus on social media sharing and engaging.
Unique Articles + Social Media = Good Ranking.
Google love those content which is not only unique content but also a deep research with references.
If content marketing's success is measured by form conversions that never convert to revenue, is that campaign successful? I couldn't help but notice that B2B and B2C Marketers do not consider revenue a measurement for content's success. To me, this says that Marketing is only looking at a small portion of the buyer's journey.
In 2014 Marketing will discover it's biggest blind spot: Knowing what content Sales is sharing with leads and customers and how well it's converting to revenue.
I'm not surprised by seeing that in-person events still dominate b2b marketing. With CPCs near $20-$30 a pop, it still makes more sense to invest in traditional marketing and use SEM to support it.
Interesting stuff Stephanie-I did have one small question, what niches were small business able to compete on quantity alone? I just ask because in mine (wine clubs, gift baskets etc) there's always been a number of larger players, usually owned by major media companies able to squash the rest of us with content at any point. Just wondering!
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the amount of content being created related to the industry it serves.
Stephanie, great post on where content marketing is going. Loved your breakdown of messaging strategy depending on whether it's B2B or B2C and what type of product your company is selling.
Your points about deciphering which metrics are best to evaluate the effectiveness of your content is huge. I've often found myself explaining why certain metrics aren't good ways to evaluate a particular piece of content a client has created (bounce rate for a information-based/research page [person finds answer then leaves], conversion rate for a "fun" blog post, etc.).
Hopefully in 2014, that conversation will become easier to have rather than get more difficult. Love the piece!
I think this will be very great for understanding the trends of 2014. But i am not sure about it that Google more focus on author credibility what i am look at search engine results all authors have good circles and their articles are more viral have shares, +1 and comments getting ranking in search engine. I think new few next updates Google will have focus on authors rather then website credibility that's why in past Google separate the page calculation. I think future will look like this maybe.
Its interesting to know of the trends that are likely to shape 2014. While some of these are familiar, others are not that popular. Content marketing and social media marketing and their related concepts are somewhat going to trend in the coming year.
I think this methodology should not be affected by Hummingbird in future. Good Guide!
Hi Stephanie,
Very strong points. With 92,000 new articles posted on the Web daily, the competition is only going to become more intense. I agree that it's going to take so much more than simply generating good content in order for it to be effective for your target audience. It's going to need to stand out in truly original ways like the Nivea ad you shared with us.
Testing those new mediums as well as relatively new social platforms like Snapchat will be key in 2014.
Thanks for sharing your categorization chart, too! Thinking of our content in terms of "think" and "feel" products is going to do more good for us in executing the campaign than creating the content itself in the New Year.
Since the Google Panda update, content is the most important aspect in SEO. Marketing professionals started engaging in creating a whole level of contents without focusing on their target audience. I am very delighted at your study since you opined actually how one should be strategic about for getting the required juice out of it. Very true that a large amount of article won't pose much benefit until you know what your goals are actually. Visibility can be varied for an SEO and site. What does one focuses in terms of conversion is what needs to be focused while developing a content. Facebook also followed Google pathway recently by updating its guidelines on contents being posted. I really liked to see how this issue has been gaining importance on social media sites as well. Maybe you can find this info here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-algorithm-meme-nj?utm_campaign=blog-rss-emails&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=11343301&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_F59MvEjXYZZXSZdhk2TfZTKyoGu711Uzx0ZNlnk1gAcPMzI6ZQc4xZzDz1g2ncYK_dU6VrXeWvusHeAvHO0GqUlXW_A&_hsmi=11343301. Hope its useful . Thanks for such analysis Stephanie!
Awesome post! The think/feel, lower vs. higher involvement graphic was awesome. Oh and SOLAR AD CHARGER?! Great Scott!
Good article Stephanie. Nice and timely too. I was just drawing up my content plan for next year today!!
What an interesting post on where marketing is going.
Good Guide Stephanie !
Great artcile! 92k articles seems to be low (no factual source though). I looked at the attributed sources and it said:
"Across our network, a whopping average of 92,000+ articles are posted to the web with a total of 1,194,902,462 engaged minutes each and every day..."
What does slideshare mean by their network? Am I missing something?
I wonder if more companies are going to start putting their content out like they put out their products: think and feel.
I mean, with so much competition you'll have to be daring, creative, out there, and perhaps even a little off the wall. The majority of sites out there are thinking about as far as the wallpaper to the wall when it comes to their content, and many of their users think about that far as well. After all, we encourage our content writers and marketers to talk down to them like they're 10 years old. How can we not expect them to have that mindset?
So to reach that mindset sites will just have to become more crude. It's not surprise that the most anticipated movie of the holiday season isn't some weepy period drama but a raunchy film directed at young people, people who won't be shocked and offended by the content many sites will be putting out this year.
I hope more sites feel and don't put out the same old same old. I'm getting rather bored reading things on the internet these days, and am thankful that there's just a few more weeks of this 2013 rubbish.
Hi Stephanie, very nicely constructed post giving a lot of food for thought.
I found your musings on content integration particularly interesting. Working for an SME, I have to rely on content which is created with a view for use across our entire mix - not just digital but for offline and PR as well. This will surely have to be the way going forward when the lines between online and offline blur.
As a millennial myself, I completely agree with the findings that we prefer brick and mortar retail. The key is going to be how digital is integrated into traditional offline arenas to aid the consumer.
nice