Content is more than a necessary expense for fast-growing brands. Content is like a form of currency.
When brands tell stories and distribute them to the right audience through their preferred channels, customers often provide a lot of value back. This can include greater insight into their pain points and aspirations, as well as direct purchases of a brand’s products and services.
Content is also like a currency in that it can be exchanged. Customers generate and “publish” a lot of content they can offer brands, from comments on blog posts to reviews and even their questions during a brand’s public events. This is all ripe material to inform and enhance the stories a brand tells by itself.
You can’t do much with currency without an economic model for sharing and transacting with it, of course. That’s where the concept of content marketing comes in: it’s the strategy brands use to attract customers, engage with them, help them take action, and earn their trust and loyalty.
Although it is hardly a new discipline, content marketing is an area where many brands recognize the need for ongoing professional development. This message came through loud and clear in the eighth edition of Salesforce’s State of Marketing, which found content marketing is the most important skill for marketers to improve on over the next two years.
Content marketing can be a complex skill to master in part because the nature of how we tell stories is constantly evolving. Over the past few years there have been social media platforms like TikTok that have emphasized the value of short-form video, for instance. The rise of augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR), meanwhile, could open further avenues for creative approaches to storytelling.
Brands are also upskilling in content marketing because technology is creating more opportunities to embrace automation for greater productivity, efficiency, and cost savings. With tools like Marketing Cloud, brands can quickly scale their ability to get their content in front of the right audience, personalizing it and timing it to the right steps in the customer journey that lead to increased revenue. In other words, getting the right content to the right audience at the right time.
Get a jump start on improving your content marketing capabilities by exploring some of the most promising areas that can innovate and enhance the customer experience your brand is delivering.
1. Video and interactive content
Brands with a strong YouTube channel or videos directly embedded on their site can accomplish a lot. They can showcase their value proposition and culture as a brand. They can provide easy-to-digest answers to complicated questions about their products and services. They can also celebrate the stories of their biggest customers, creating a sense of community with the rest of their target market.
This could explain why a recent survey of marketers found 91% of businesses are using video as part of their strategy in 2023. Rather than look at video as one broad content category, however, experiment with multiple approaches to the form, including:
Live video: It’s not always possible or cost-effective to host in-person events, but a real-time video gives people a specific time and place to tune in and learn about new products and services or how to get more out of their purchases. You can host live videos on your own site, but they’re a common feature in social platforms like Instagram and Facebook as well.
Animated explainers: There are some markets, such as financial services, where there doesn’t always seem like a lot you can “show” on screen. Animation provides a way to illustrate ideas and help deepen customers’ understanding of how your brand stands out from competitors. Many tools have emerged to make creating animation inexpensive and turnkey.
Screen recordings: There are times when it would be so much easier to sit down next to a customer and walk them through your site, mobile app or other digital experience using your laptop. A screen recording does this but allows you to share the results with many customers at once.
2. Long-form blog posts, white papers, and eBooks
The conventional wisdom used to be that people have short attention spans and plenty of distraction, so content marketing assets should be as brief as possible. Depending on what they’re trying to learn or accomplish, however, a more comprehensive guide can drive greater engagement and overall results.
Brands in the business-to-business (B2B) space should be particularly mindful of offering content that offers a deep dive into the common challenges they’re trying to overcome and the best practices to reach their goals. This could require content that weave in primary market research, case studies featuring organizations like their own, and detailed breakdowns of strategic frameworks.
No wonder a study of more than 900 million blog posts found those with a word count of 3,000 words or more get 77% more backlinks to their site. This can help boost your company in search results, create more credibility with target customers and, most critically, lead to more downloads and sales leads from your content.
3. AI and human collaboration
If the first two trends seem to have been brewing for some time, the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to supercharge marketing is relatively more recent. With generative AI, for example, marketers can get a head start with everything from copywriting for digital ads to the first paragraphs of their next blog post.
Generative AI is not only a way to scale up content marketing efforts but to enhance brands’ ability to A/B test more options before they are distributed to their target audiences. Humans are still a vital part of editing this kind of content and determining the best way to optimize it for maximum impact.
The AI opportunities don’t end there, though. Integrating data from a CRM like Sales Cloud means it will be easier for marketers to personalize the content assets they create and build an even stronger relationship with customers.
Content marketing trends may come and go, but one principle remains: this is an area where the more time you put in to learn and develop your skills, the bigger the payoff – for your brand, and your own career as a marketer.
