Content marketing consists of the creation and sharing of material online with the purpose of driving consumer interest in a brand and their products or services. Content marketing helps drive sales, and as such significantly influences a customer’s journey–including the buying cycle.

  1. Awareness.  The acknowledgement that the consumer has a need, even if they aren’t aware of the solution.
  2. Research. A consumer’s search for information with the purpose to educate themselves.
  3. Consideration. The process in which a consumer compares various products and brands to determine which one is best for their needs.
  4. Buy. After the decision is made, a consumer moves toward completing a transaction and becoming a customer.

Videos, blogs, social media posts are the main tools used most frequently in any content marketer’s toolkit strategically designed with the purpose of driving a profitable consumer action. But to turn a consumer to your customer, the content distributed online should be consistent, relevant, provide value and be clearly articulated for your target audience.

Content marketing contributes from everything to brand awareness to customer acquisition, which makes it one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal.  It’s effective and economical. The Content Marketing Institute reported that content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.

Since it’s a good rule of thumb for a company to set aside approximately 25% to 30% of your marketing budget to content marketing and we are entering the middle of the third quarter of 2021, it may be good to review what 2021 marketing trends to watch for.

Repurpose Your Content

Content standing alone won’t cut it anymore. And why would it? Content marketing is meant to create high-quality, engaging content, why wouldn’t you want to get the most mileage out of the content as you possibly can. For the rest of 2021 marketers will place an emphasis on how to use content most effectively. Good content can be transformed into webinars, round tables, podcasts and conference, as well as multiple social media posts, a blog post, a downloadable white paper and a newsletter. The only limit is your creativity.

Emphasize Products and Services

For the rest of 2021 marketers will want to continue to keep a tight focus on bottom-of-funnel content related to core offerings. Remain focused on consumers key buyer personas and core topics to the brand, which will help to better understand content ROI.

Continue to Prioritize SEO

SEO is a marketing tool that is essential to digital marketing. As marketers create content that can be used on multiple platforms in multiple ways, remember to create a solid SEO strategy and complete keyword research to find those long-tail keywords to ensure your content will be relevant next year.

Go Live with Videos and Webinars

The pandemic has illustrated the importance of video and webinar content. And newsflash…it’s not going away. Why? Because video is a quick and effective medium to communicate your brand’s message. Video enables consumers to get information quickly and return to it again and again. Webinars and live videos also enable consumers to interact, engage and ask questions, which can be more interesting than reviewing blogs or a plethora of slides.

Podcasts

Like videos and webinars, podcasts have also increased during the pandemic. Podcasts are easy to create, operate across several media channels and quickly bring in new audiences. They can also help boost your SEO. Podcasts are another great way to unleash your creativity and provide an added value to your brand by showcasing industry experts or sharing useful information.

Online Communities

Sales Hacker and American Society of Association Executives are two highly functioning online communities. So is Facebook and LinkedIn. At its essence, an online community is a group of people with a shared interest or purpose who use the internet to communicate with each other. A branded online community is a professional network to bring people together around a centralized, shared organization-based experience or purpose for expansive online collaboration and growth.  Users in an online community can share their experiences, seek advice and receive answers. This can enable your brand to get actively involved and share your content with those who are looking for it.

Increase LinkedIn Engagement

One of the great things about LinkedIn is that they provide great opportunities for brands to increase their reach, and can also help improve organic reach better than other social media platforms. On LinkedIn, you can repost your website’s blog content as an article instead of just sharing the link. Make sure that you are updating profile information. Another crucial component in LinkedIn is testimonials. Ask the clients you’ve collaborated with to write testimonials for your brand and share company news and updates you provide on your LinkedIn profile. 

One important thing to remember about content marketing is creativity is evergreen. Continue to push the creative limits of your brand by creating and sharing unique content and consider using one or more of these trends when devising your content marketing strategy.

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