Content continues to be king in today’s marketing. Research has found that 73% of companies that spend at least 10% to 70% of their total marketing budget on content marketing gained a competitive advantage over their competitors and were successful in their marketing efforts. Additionally, 97% of marketers view content creation as an essential part of their overall marketing strategy.
Your business can draw in more potential customers and increase brand loyalty and engagement by simply sharing content that your target audience finds valuable. This article will look at what content marketing can do for your brand. Then, we’ll tackle the latest digital content strategies and trends shaping the current marketing landscape!
What Content Marketing Can Do for Your Brand
In today’s competitive business environment, investing in content marketing strategies has become a must for all brands that want to fuel company growth and success. Consistent and high-quality digital content marketing is one of the most effective ways to develop a company’s brand presence, generate leads, fuel audience engagement, and loyalty, and increase sales by improving conversions.
Greater Brand Awareness
For customers to engage with your brand, they must first become aware of its existence. Through proper content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), you can make your brand more visible and significantly easier to find for any potential customers in need of your products or services.Â
Effective Lead Generation
Informative, engaging, and relevant SEO content can drive audiences to your website and social media pages, helping you generate more and better leads. The more satisfied a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action, make purchases, or interact with your brand in the future.
Increased Sales and Revenue
In addition to helping introduce more people to your brand, content marketing can also help your company increase sales. The right content can give your target audience the information to make educated purchases, leading to better conversions. Research has found that companies with a clear content strategy have a 55% sales win rate, compared to a 43% win rate for businesses that don’t utilize them.
Enhanced Customer Engagement and Loyalty
Content creation allows your brand to connect and relate with your target market. When your content shows up at the right place, at the right time, and with the right audience, you can vastly improve your business’s reputation, fostering customer engagement and loyalty. Excellent original content can help establish your brand as an authority in your industry, making your audience more likely to trust you.
Read More: What Role Does Content Writing Play in Your E-Commerce Sales Funnel?
Top 8 Fascinating Content Marketing Trends To Watch Out for in 2022
Now that we’ve discussed what content marketing can do for your business, let’s look at some of the must-know digital content strategies of 2022. Depending on your goals, there are content marketing trends that you can utilize to help shape and refine your company’s marketing efforts. Here are a few to consider:
1. Video Marketing and Vlogs
According to SEMRush, the most successful content type by format is video (37%), followed closely by blog posts (36%) and success stories (22%). These numbers reflect why more companies plan to make video content a crucial part of their content marketing approach for the year.
Many people are visual learners and prefer watching videos to reading articles. HubSpot’s research found that including videos on a brand’s landing page can increase conversion rates by over 80%, with many customers saying that videos help them make buying decisions.
Appeal to your target audience by creating relevant educational videos that feature information your customers want to know. Examples of content you can make could be video FAQs, testimonials, interviews with subject matter experts, or influencer ads.
You can take advantage of free video editors that are available today and maximize their features to create video content that you can share with them. Additionally, other tools come with advanced features such as an AI voice generator that you can use for social media content, pitch maker for your business, background remover when polishing your videos, and file converter to maximize the use of your content.
Additionally, a study by Microsoft found that today’s viewers have a much shorter attention span due to our increasingly digitized lifestyles, with people now generally losing concentration after only eight seconds. Tailor your content marketing strategy to your viewers by embracing short-form video content, such as the ones on Tik-Tok and Instagram. Highlight the messages you want to convey quickly and engagingly.Â
2. Content Marketing in the Metaverse
In 2021 alone, 85 million people worldwide have used augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR), with usage growing steadily as technological developments progress.  These advancements have also given rise to “The Metaverse,” a virtual shared space that combines AR, VR, and social media to create an overlap between our physical and digital worlds.
Industry experts have predicted that “The Metaverse” will soon shape the future of work, including how we market and sell products and services. To stay competitive, businesses must prepare to enter “The Metaverse” and start developing innovative ways to incorporate VR and AR into their content marketing approach.
One example of a company tailoring its digital content strategy toward the Metaverse is Louis Vuitton. This luxury brand has created a video game enabling players to collect digital assets backed by blockchain, one of many innovative strategies meant to establish the brand’s presence in the virtual landscape.
3. Data-Driven Content Planning and Documentation
Content marketing is both an art and a science. To be successful in your marketing efforts, your content creation process will need data-driven analysis and planning but without forgetting to add a human touch.Â
An effective digital marketing campaign combines SEO and quality writing, striking a balance between keyword integration and flawless grammar, good narrative, logical structure, and complex research. Marketers must establish a clear content marketing strategy and goal, using data and research to set their priorities and utilize KPIs and tools to measure success.
4. Audio Content and Podcasts
The popularity of video content has been discussed endlessly since the rise of platforms like YouTube. However, another content format has been flying under the radar and deserves to be included in more content marketing strategies: audio content and podcasts.Â
In 2021, American consumers listened to nearly 15 billion hours of podcasts, rising 25% from the previous year. Given how many people enjoy listening to audio content while going about their day, companies should take this opportunity to tap into this underrated format and use it as a way to introduce their brand to more casual listeners.
Research has found that 75% of podcast listeners check audio content that helps them learn new things and provides valuable information, and 20% of people purchase products or services after hearing about these in a podcast. If you incorporate audio into your content marketing campaign, focus on providing value to listeners and gaining their trust first instead of creating overtly sales-y content from the get-go.
5. Personalized and Humanized Content
In the age of digital innovation, people now more than ever crave human connection, and your content strategy should reflect this demand for more personalized and humanized customer experiences. Marketing is all about creating a connection between your brand and your audience. Readers know the difference between authentic, unique content and mediocre, imitative works meant to drive traffic and clicks but not engagement.
To create personalized content, start by creating a “buyer persona” so that you know exactly who your audience is and what their needs and wants are. Sharing human interest articles, real-life stories, or case studies can also help audiences feel more connected with your brand since they see the humans driving the organizational culture.
The key to creating thoughtful, inspiring content that caters to your target market is through original research. Thought leadership blogs are a primary example of this content type because they use unique insights and deep analysis to establish authority, credibility, and a distinctive voice that can draw audiences to become loyal to the brand.
Read More: Compassion as a Compass: How SuperStaff Navigates the Challenges of Leading in the New Normal
6. Content Audits
It’s not enough to create and share content regularly. Marketers must also review published content to ensure that the information provided is high-quality, accurate, and successful at conveying the message. According to SEMRush’s research, 75% of companies perform full content audits every year, and 65% of companies that succeed at content marketing run them twice a year.
Look back at all of your brand’s previously published content and check for outdated information or messaging. Then, make sure to replace and refine any obsolete content. The same SEMRush study found that 45% of brands experienced increased customer engagement after a content audit, while 43% saw their traffic and rankings increasing.
7. Voice Search Optimization
You’ve probably utilized search engine optimization in your previous marketing campaigns. However, have you considered optimizing your content for voice search as well?
The rise of smartphones brought about the ability to search for topics using smart speakers and voice assistants. Unlike text, which is the traditional query searching method, voice search is much faster and more convenient, so more and more people are beginning to prefer it.Â
In fact, 65% of people aged 25 to 49 talk to voice-enabled devices daily. Analysts also predict that smart speakers will become more common, popping up in at least 55% of American households.Â
To ensure your SEO content is primed for voice search, focus on improving your domain authority through link-building and boosting your backlink profile. Also, since 40% of voice search results come from Google’s featured snippets, you must carefully consider your content’s formatting and structure to make it easier for your content to appear in the top search results.
8. Interactive Content
In the past, brands’ content marketing strategies consisted of primarily static materials such as blogs and e-books. However, nowadays, content marketers are seeing the advantages of using interactive content to grab the attention of their target audiences and stimulate organic user and community engagement.
Interactive content encourages user participation, turning passive reading into active engagement. Examples include quizzes, games, polls, interactive videos and live streams, questionnaires, resource libraries, landing pages with responsive layouts, and animated infographics.
Level Up Your Digital Content Strategy by Partnering With an Experienced BPO Provider
Expertly crafted and professionally executed content can do wonders for the growth and success of your brand. Whether you’re hoping to boost your social media presence or optimize your website’s search engine ranking, tap into the power of words with help from SuperStaff, a reliable provider of SEO and content marketing services.Â
With our team of content professionals working by your side, you can boost customer engagement, maintain a solid online presence, and stand apart from the crowded digital marketing landscape. Reach out to us today, and let’s talk about how our SEO content can help you capture the attention and loyalty of your target market!
