Content Marketing Trends for 2020

Posted on January 13, 2020

Content marketing isn’t a new concept for companies and marketers. In fact, storytelling and content marketing have been around for hundreds of years. As you finalize your 2020 marketing plans, it’s important to develop a content marketing strategy that will improve your brand and reputation, increase awareness, and generate leads and ROI.

In the coming year, content marketing will become even more important. Methods of distributing content on various channels will continue to evolve. Content marketing will remain critical to brands’ marketing strategies as social media use increases, technology offers new opportunities, and channels and tactics optimize and adjust.

Remember, content isn’t just a blog article. Content is video, photos, infographics, social media posts, press releases, your website, blog articles, traditional media, marketing materials, and more.

Read on to learn trends you should include in your plan, some you should avoid, and others you should look out for and consider as your marketing evolves.

Content Marketing Trends in 2019
Top 10 Topics Discussed Around Content Marketing
Top Google Searches Related to Content Marketing
What Will Work in 2020
What Won’t Work in 2020
What’s Coming in 2020 and Beyond
6 Tips for Developing a Content Marketing Strategy

Before we jump into 2020, let’s take a look at what content marketing looked like in 2019.

Content Marketing Trends in 2019

Top 20 #contentmarketing Hashtags

Marketers often use hashtags (#) to tag a relevant keyword or phrase in their social media posts (primarily Twitter and Instagram). This categorizes posts and presents them more easily on the platform. Clicking on a hashtag will show you other posts that include that hashtag.

If you’re posting or writing about content marketing, here are some keywords you may want to include or focus on. These were hashtags most often used with #contentmarketing throughout 2019.

#contentmarketingtips
#contentmarketingstrategy
#digitalmarketing
#marketing
#socialmediamarketing
#socialmedia
#SEO
#branding
#business
#onlinemarketing
#marketingtips
#content
#internetmarketing
#smm
#blogging
#emailmarketing
#ai
#influencermarketing
#analytics
#digital

What Will Work in 2020

Much of what is listed above will continue to trend and be popular in 2020. If you’re working on your content marketing strategy for next year, consider including some of the listed topics.

As content marketing continues to evolve, it’s important that you and your strategy do as well. Read on to learn what will work for your strategy in 2020.

Setting Goals and Understanding Metrics Needed to Prove ROI
Video
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Personalized, Conversational and Engaging Content
Omnichannel and Multimedia Distribution
User-Generated Content

Setting Goals and Understanding Metrics Needed to Prove ROI

Whether you’re a marketer or an agency, you likely understand the importance of setting goals and measuring your tactics. No matter how much money you spend or how many tactics you execute, it will be all for naught if you aren’t measuring the proper metrics and proving the return on investment (ROI) of your strategy.

With hundreds of millions of pieces of content created every single day online, it’s not enough to simply produce and post it. Chances are, it will be swallowed up and ignored. Setting goals helps you focus on executing your strategy. They should align with your company’s overall goals, and should ultimately drive everything you do.

When setting goals, make sure they are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Here’s a couple good examples of SMART marketing goals:

● Drive 20,000 visitors, 500 leads, and 100 customers, within the next 12 months from our content marketing efforts through our blog to help achieve $500,000 in revenue.

● Generate 1,000 leads and 350 customers from our client list using email marketing within the next six months.

To set your goals, identify how much revenue, number of sales, or leads you need to generate from your content marketing efforts. Then, understand your close rate and how many opportunities you need to develop or people you need to reach to hit those goals. You can then estimate how much traffic you will need to drive to your conversion source to accomplish the goals.

Once you have set your goals, the next step is to understand what metrics you need to measure to know if you’re on track. Here are a few examples of key metrics you may want to consider:

● Email
○ Open rate
○ Click through rate
○ Click to open rate
○ Unsubscribe rate
○ Unique clicks

● Website
○ Bounce rate
○ Time on site
○ Traffic sources
○ Number of sessions or visits per person
○ Conversion rate
○ Cost per conversion

● Social media
○ Click rate
○ Engagement rate
○ Reach
○ Impressions
○ Cost per click
○ CPM
○ Frequency
○ Conversion rate

By setting goals and knowing what successful metrics are for your company, you can optimize your marketing strategies and maximize ROI.

Video

Over the past year, we’ve seen a surge in the importance of video marketing.

● YouTube has more than two billion users who watch more than five billion videos per day.
● More than 80% of businesses are using video as a marketing tool.
● 6 out of 10 people would rather watch online videos than TV, and 80% say they would rather watch live video than read a blog post.
● When it comes to purchasing decisions, 50% of shoppers say online video has helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy.

In other words, video is important, and will continue to be in 2020.

Invite your audience to engage with your company or brand by developing video content. Whether it’s a professional video, shot on your iPhone, or a Facebook live-stream, be sure to share it on your social media channels, website, and even email. Here are a few video ideas to get you started:

● Webinars
● Q&A sessions about your company or brand
● Product or service demos
● Behind-the-scenes
● Interviews with employees or other experts
● Events your brand or company is involved with

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You’ve likely heard this buzzword in conversations with other marketers, or through research you’ve done on your own. In fact, SEO and content marketing go hand in hand, as SEO is one of the most popular topics mentioned by those who are talking about content marketing online.

SEO is making changes to your website design and content to make your site more search engine-friendly. Having an optimized website can help your site and content rank higher on search engines like Google. Because more than 35% of website traffic comes from organic search, it’s important to optimize your content for search engines to help increase reach, and ultimately, leads. Read more about our SEO services here.

To help make your website better optimized for search engines, be sure to include important keywords and phrases throughout your site and content. But don’t use too many or include them where it doesn’t make sense, because that can actually hurt your rank. Make sure your website is accessible, has relevant links, and is optimized for easy search. Click here for our guide to web content accessibility.

Personalized, Conversational, and Engaging Content

It’s not enough to create content for the sake of creating content.

Having personalized, conversational, and engaging content across your channels will help humanize your brand. It shows your audience you care about their time and the effort they put in to reading and interacting with your content.

Plus, the more engaging your content is on channels such as Facebook and other social media platforms, the better it is for organic reach and conversions.

Write both to a person and like a person. Don’t use too much jargon or write in a way your customers can’t understand. Talk to them like you know them personally, and make your content interesting and exciting. If you wouldn’t want to read it, your customers likely won’t either!

Omnichannel and Multimedia Distribution

When you’re developing your content strategy, it’s important to think about all channels available to you. Whether it’s social media, email, blog, or others, you should have a plan for each, as well as a plan for how they work together.

Your audience isn’t just on one platform, which means you can’t be either. The more places you strategically are, the more likely you are to reach your audience with meaningful messaging. This doesn’t mean you should be on every channel just because you can. You should also be intentional about where you share content depending on where your audience is.

For example, if you’re trying to reach women ages 40-55, Facebook might be a great place to post. Or, if your audience is younger teens or those in their early 20s, you may want to try Instagram. More than 60% of consumers age 25 and older would prefer to be contacted by brands via email, so that could be a good platform for you to distribute content or sales promotions.

Do research on your prospective customers to learn what platforms they use and how they like to communicate. Then, establish a presence on those platforms. Don’t commit yourself to all platforms available, but also don’t limit yourself to one or two. Be on the channels that make sense to your brand and customers, and have a well-thought out strategy for each.

Also, consider building a strategy that includes a range of types of content. Whether it’s blog posts, images, video, infographics, social media posts, emails, or other, you should distribute different types to remain relevant.

User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) describes any form of content that was created by consumers and is publicly available. An example would be a YouTuber doing a video review of one of your products.

By developing relationships with your existing customers, they may create content you can use for advertising and marketing, often without having to pay for it. You may be able to use social media reviews, videos, images, blog posts, or other content created by users of your product or service to help share what you have to offer with others.

Keep your eye out for customers who enjoy your brand. Use social listening tools such as Hootsuite or Mention to find people who are talking about you on social media. Talk to customers who enter your store, email you, or visit your website. Use surveys or other forms of outreach to ask what customers like about what you have to offer, and use their responses in other forms of marketing.

What Won’t Work in 2020

Just as some content marketing trends will continue in 2020, there are others that will no longer work. It’s important to be aware of these “trends” and understand how you can avoid them.

Writing For You, Not Your Customer
Same Content, Different Channels
Content For the Sake of Content
Considering a Blog Your Only Content Distribution Channel
Forgetting About Your Audience
Focusing Solely on SEO
Expecting Instant Results

Writing For You, Not Your Customer

When you’re creating content, you must keep your customer at the front of your mind. If it is too promotional, full of jargon, or sales-focused, your audience is less likely to engage with your brand. While content that promotes your products, services, or brand has its place, you should generally keep it limited. Or, follow the 80:20 rule – 20% promotional, 80% non-promotional.

The average person is exposed to around 5,000 ads per day. That means they inherently tune out a lot of the conversations from brands happening around them. If your content consistently looks like an ad, or doesn’t keep the customer’s needs and wants in mind, they are more likely to ignore what you’re saying and move on to a company who is speaking to them.

Same Content, Different Channels

While developing your content marketing strategy, keep in mind that not all content should be created equal.

For example, your blog post shouldn’t be promoted the same way in your email as it is on Facebook. Or, your posts on Twitter and Instagram shouldn’t be exactly the same with the same hashtags.

When promoting content, take time to really understand the channels you are using.
● What is that channel primarily used for?
● How does your audience interact on that channel?
● How do they like to be spoken to?
● Which audience is on which channel?

Answering these questions in your strategy can help ensure you’re being intentional with your messaging. In addition, by speaking differently on different channels, you avoid overlap in messaging if a customer interacts with you in multiple ways.

Content For the Sake of Content

Just because you can create loads of content doesn’t mean you should. Creating content without a logical strategy behind it can actually hurt your marketing more than it helps.

When you’re developing content, whether it’s a blog post or email or something else, make sure there’s a purpose behind it. Ask yourself, what is the goal? What do I want a person reading it to do? Do I want them to click? Watch a video? Download something? Make a purchase? Each word and piece of content should solve for a question or support a marketing or business goal.

Here are some additional questions you can think about when determining your content topics:

● What are you selling? How can the product or service be used? Why is it important?
● What problems are your customers facing that you are solving for?
● How can you extend your product into additional solutions?
● If you weren’t an expert in your field, what would you search for?

A content marketing strategy helps you build trust and establish yourself as a subject matter expert to your customers. If you’re generating content that provides no additional information, meaning, or form of entertainment for your customers, they won’t engage with it.

Considering a Blog Your Only Content Distribution Channel

When you think “content,” your mind may automatically go to a blog or long-form article. However, as we’ve already noted, content can come in a variety of forms on a number of channels. Consider every channel in which you talk to your customers – on your website, social media, email, digital ads, print materials, etc. All of these are forms of content.

Don’t make the mistake of only focusing your content strategy efforts on developing and keeping a blog. Blogs and other forms of website content are important and should be part of your strategy. Consider all other channels, tactics, and forms of content, to ensure you’re in all the right places to reach your customers.

Forgetting About Your Audience

In the past, you may have gotten away with developing generic, promotional content. However, doing this is no longer your best option. It’s critical that you understand:

● Who your audience is
● What channels/platforms they are on
● How they like to communicate
● How they want to engage with your company
● What you can provide to them

Do an analysis on your existing customers, and create audience personas to outline who your target audience is. Then, when you develop content, write for that audience. For example, you wouldn’t talk to a 20-year-old woman the same way you’d talk to a 75-year-old man, so don’t develop content talking to them both the same.

Knowing exactly who your audience and target customers are will help you develop content that resonates with them and encourages them to purchase from your company.

Focusing Solely on SEO

While we talked about how important SEO is to your website and content, it shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of your strategy.

Don’t get too focused on or caught up in “SEO” buzzwords. In fact, if the search engine thinks your content is too over-saturated with keywords in a way that doesn’t make sense, they will actually lower the rank of your site.

When you’re creating content, use keywords and phrases sparingly and strategically. Place them in headlines or subheaders and strategically throughout the article. Use them when tagging images or blog posts, and include one or two in the URL of a post.

While SEO is important, it’s also important that you create well-written, engaging content. Otherwise, having a search engine optimized article isn’t as effective as it could be.

Expecting Instant Results

People are becoming increasingly unengaged with email. Social media organic reach is drastically declining. People are spending less time reading articles and blogs. Technology and the ways people consume content is changing. The way you should measure content is changing, too.

Keep in mind that just because you publish content doesn’t mean it will be seen. Or, even if its seen, it may not generate engagement or leads/sales. Perhaps it will over time, but it likely won’t immediately. Content marketing is a long-term strategy. It’s about developing a relationship with a customer and convincing them they can trust your brand, company, and what you have to offer.

If you take time to inform and entertain them through engaging, relevant, and helpful content, they are more likely to purchase from you when they are in need of your product or service.

What’s Coming in 2020 and Beyond

We now know what will and won’t work in your 2020 content marketing strategy. But as technology and marketing strategy continues to evolve, there are even more trends we should keep our eye out for and prepare to engage with in the coming months and years.

Tailoring to Voice Search and Smart Devices
Intentional, Data-Driven Content
Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
Changes to Distribution

Tailoring to Voice Search and Smart Devices

More than 100 million Alexa devices have been sold by Amazon, and Google Home is following closely behind with similar sales numbers. Alexa has more than 150 products built in, more than 70,000 skills, and more than 28,000 smart home devices that work with it. As millions of customers turn to these devices to help make life simpler, think about how your company can be in that space as well.

Perhaps consider developing a podcast that can play through an Alexa. Or, overhaul your content to be able to be voice searched (nearly 30% of customers use voice search on mobile devices). Or, consider using Alexa Skills, which allows brands to provide customers with the ability to interact with their products or services in a conversational way.

Your organization may not be ready for this type of content, and that’s okay! But as millions of consumers turn to these devices each day, it’s important to consider a smart device marketing plan.

Intentional, Data-Driven Content

As shared above, developing content for the sake of content is a trend that will no longer work in 2020 and beyond. As the number of distribution channels increases, and the way people interact with content and companies evolves, it’s important to stay relevant and engaging, but also trustworthy.

Virtually anyone can produce content via blogs and social media. That’s why it’s especially important to position yourself as an expert and a company consumers should want to do business with. Intentional, data-driven content will continue to be important. Make sure you can back up your claims with data and facts. While storytelling is important, it’s also key to prove your expertise.

Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence

Similar to developing a strategy for smart devices, you don’t necessarily have to develop a 2020 strategy that includes chatbot and artificial intelligence. However, the Digital Marketing Institute reports that chatbots are a huge part of the automation revolution and the future of customer service, and that nearly 80% of companies will be using chatbots by 2020.

Chatbots and other forms of AI offer a range of services that can make marketing, sales, and customer service much easier for your company. Developing chatbots doesn’t need to be difficult, so consider how you can execute this tactic in 2020. Click here to read more about using chatbots as part of your marketing strategy.

Changes to Distribution

Consumers are being more selective about people they follow and how they interact with others outside their circle. While this isn’t news, it’s important to be aware of adjustments to distribution channels so you can optimize as necessary with your content strategy. After all, you don’t want to end up in the spam filter or hidden from Facebook.

6 Tips for Developing a Content Marketing Strategy

This article will help you build your content marketing strategy by helping you understand what will and won’t work in 2020. However, if you don’t have an existing content strategy, you might be wondering how to best take what you’ve learned and implement it in your own company.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 72% of B2B marketers attribute the success of their content to the development of a formal content strategy. Don’t worry – here are six tips for developing one.

Set Mission and Goals

We’ve already talked about setting goals for your content marketing strategy. But what about a mission? Think about the purpose of your brand or company. Does it have a mission statement? What are you ultimately trying to accomplish? Why should people buy what you are selling or support your business?

Here are some great mission statements from existing companies:

● Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
● Ikea: To create a better everyday life for the many people.
● JetBlue: To inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.
● Ted: Spread ideas.

Your content should focus around a mission statement. For example, if you’re Patagonia, you’d perhaps write blog articles about sustainable living and what everyday people can do to help the environment. JetBlue would benefit from a social media campaign telling inspirational human interest stories.

By developing a content marketing strategy around a mission statement and with clear goals in mind, you are paving the way for success.

Establish KPIs

We also talked earlier about the importance of establishing KPIs. Whether you’re developing a blog, email marketing strategy, social media campaigns, or another form of content distribution, make sure you know what you are measuring and set goals to reach them.

Without establishing KPIs, you don’t have anything for your content strategy to work towards, and you won’t be able to report whether the tactics were successful or not. It also makes future campaign optimizations difficult.

Decide the Best Content Distribution Channels

You don’t have to be on all channels at all times. Take time to understand the goals and mission of your business, who your target customers and audience are, and what you want to accomplish with your content.

Then, look at your own team – what are their strengths and weaknesses? Do you have the ability to hire an agency or outside talent to fill any gaps?

Once you know where you should be to best speak to your audience, stick to those channels. If you’re just starting to develop a content strategy, start small. Begin with blog content and launching one social media page. Then, as you build your content library and credibility with your customers, you can expand to other platforms.

Your audience won’t be everywhere, and you don’t have to be either. Do what makes the most sense for them and your company.

Create a Content Calendar

Once you’ve determined what platforms you should distribute content on, it’s time to start planning through a content calendar. You can download free templates or create your own. A content calendar will help you stay organized and avoid scrambling at the last minute.

You can plan your social network, blog, email, and other content distribution channels. We recommend working for at least one month in advance to begin with. Develop a quarterly distribution plan. A content calendar will help your channels work together with content distribution, and can also help you track performance and plan for future posts.

By looking at a content calendar, you can easily see what is going out on which platforms and when, and plan accordingly.

Distribute and Market the Content

This is the fun part! Post the blog post and share it on social media. Send the new video in your next customer email. Share photos of your employees on Facebook and Instagram. Publish that podcast. All of the work you’ve been doing to plan and create content comes down to this point – sharing your content with the world.

However, like we mentioned earlier, simply publishing content doesn’t mean you’ll see immediate results. You must market on different channels, cross-promote, and even consider adding a budget to give it an extra push beyond organic reach. Share your content on all of the platforms in your plan, and encourage others to like, share, comment, and interact with it.

Measure Results and Optimize

Keep careful track of the KPIs you set to learn if your content is performing well or not. Make optimizations to your existing or future campaigns as necessary for better results.

For example, say you publish an infographic with information about exercise. You post it on Facebook and it doesn’t perform well, with minimal reach and engagement. Two weeks later, you post the same information in a video format and the engagement skyrockets. This means your audience on Facebook will respond better to video content. If you weren’t keeping track of your results, you wouldn’t know to develop more video content and less infographics in the future.

Measuring results will also help you set benchmarks for future campaigns so you know when you are or aren’t successful.

Click here to read more about the value of a content marketing strategy for your business.

Now what?

Now, get started! Start creating a new or optimizing an existing content marketing strategy. Work with your internal marketing team, or consider hiring a digital marketing agency who specializes in content marketing. Follow all of the steps listed above, and take time to understand the trends for 2020 – both what will work, and what no longer will. Have patience with the plan and your audience, generate good content, and you will see results.

To learn more about Dragonfly Digital Marketing’s content marketing services, click here.

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