“Content Marketing has lower up-front costs & deeper long-term benefits than paid search“, said JuliaEMcCoy, Founder of the content agency called Express Writers.

Content Marketing is the new trend that has added a new dimension to the marketing sector. People do not rely on advertisements anymore, in fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, approximately 600 million users use ad blockers on their devices. Actually, their preference is shifting from one-way communication to two-way communication, which can be achieved through content marketing resources such as blogs, videos, podcasts, articles, etc. where the users can present their own opinion and ideas as well. The scope of Content Marketing is gigantic and is expected to replace the traditional advertising methods in the coming years.

Trends in Content Marketing

Content Marketing generates six-folds greater lead conversions than the other advertisement and promotion alternatives. It is estimated that the future of Content Marketing will reach up to 400 billion Dollars till 2020-21. Hence, breaking out the latest content marketing trends that you can follow in 2020, to make your as well as your customer experience even better.

Here are the Top Content Marketing Trends that you can follow in 2020:

1. Filterable Content Format
2. Voice-enabled Searching
3. Audio Content
4. Video Content
5. User-Generated Content (UGC)
6. Chatbots
7. Blogging

1. Filterable Content Format

A new strategy in Content Marketing is filtered searching. Readers prefer a more refined version of a document and want to quickly hop on that part which is of their interest. To address this need of the users, you can list down the main elements of the article at the beginning and link it with the part which describes it, just like an anchor in the program. To create this type of content you can use Content Distribution Platform and Tools, which comes in both free and paid versions. Filterable Content makes the user feel like taken care of, which is a great thing for a company for generating leads and hence converting them into loyal customers.

2. Voice-enabled Searching

Companies have been optimizing their content through SEO for quite some time. However, in this era of voice assistants, like Siri, Echo, and Alexa, there has been a stretch in the Content Marketing Strategy as well. According to quora creative, 50% of the web searches will be voice-based by the year 2020. Considering the popularity of voice-based search, you need to optimize the voice search to increase web traffic and enhance customer engagement. Voice search optimization can be done by tracing the queries raised by the users and optimizing them with the SEO tools. This gives you an idea about the most used keyword and topics on the internet, that are related to your field, following which you can decide your content strategy.

3. Audio Content

Audio Content is not a new concept, rather it was discovered in the year 2000 by Tristan Louis, an American Author, and Entrepreneur. The demand for Audio Content such as Podcasts has been increasing ever since. In fact, according to Forbes, more than 50% of the U.S. population listens to audio content, and if we backtrack the five years stats, the demand for podcasts has increased to 73% since 2013. The podcast is a good choice for both the company as well as the customer, as with the help of Podcasts, content creation, and access both become a lot easier irrespective of the place and time.

4. Video Content

Users prefer watching videos over reading content. If you are given the option to choose between written content and a video made over it, you will always prefer a video as Video contents are more relatable and easy to understand. You can also convert your blog into a video using text to video converter. Many companies are already following this trend and releasing their advertisement videos, videos for brand awareness, informative content-based videos, etc. as the Video Contents engage the customer more than any other type of content available on the internet. With the improved tools and platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. demand for Video Content is expected to increase even more in the year 2020. As per the market analysis done by Hubspot, 99% of the companies will continue to produce the video content and 56% are going to start video marketing in 2020.

5. UGC

User-generated content can be a blog, a video, few lines of the product review, an image, etc, which is created by the user/customer in the context of the product that they have used. In fact, 79% of customers find this piece of information quite useful for making a choice between various companies/brands available in the market. Not only this, but your company can also receive benefits from the UGC as you can use your customer’s reviews for the improvement of your product as well as the promotion of your company/brand. The customers can be your best advocates. Hence if you make one of your customers, the face of your company and ask them to share their experience through video, blog, or feedback, just like CocaCola, it creates a greater impact on the customers and higher brand awareness.

6. Chatbots

A Chatbot is a revolutionary technology and a powerful tool for Content Marketing. Chatbots help the companies to establish a realistic conversation with customers and get an insight into their intentions and interests, rather than asking them to fill out any form. Generally, the users become a bit conscious in filling up a form and sharing their personal details due to fear of getting spammed or misuse of data. The chatbots help you here. It not only establishes a conversation with the customers and answers their queries with intelligent content but also softly introduces them to the services offered by your company. This process is very useful in serving customers adequately and meeting their expectations. Around 1.9 billion people are already using Chatbots, and according to a Forbes report, about 80% of companies are expected to use chatbots by 2020. If you also want to reap the benefits of Chatbots, so get your website chatbot-enabled.

7. Blogging

Blogging has been an evergreen way of Content Marketing and is going to rule 2020 as well. Blogging is considered the most effective inbound marketing strategy by more than 50% of marketers. However, just Blogging is not sufficient for customer engagement, rather, you need to do smart blogging. By smart blogging, we mean that while creating your content, you should take care of the KPIs and SEO parameters along with the subject of the blog. Blogging can prove to be a great tool for Content Marketing for your company as reports suggest that effective blogging can itself result in approximately 70% of Lead generation, which eventually results in an increase in sales.

Conclusion

These were some amazing Content Marketing trends that you can follow in 2020 as well as in the years to come. Being acquainted with emerging trends gives you an idea to design your roadmap and when it comes to marketing, this becomes even more important in order to reach out to your customers and build a better relationship with them. Many companies are already using these Content Marketing methods. So, if you also own a business and want to promote the services catered by your company, this article must have guided you to the most effective and in-demand Content Marketing strategies, by now. For any queries related to this article or assistance in deploying these strategies into your business, please contact our Ace Experts.

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