Content marketing is a tricky business, you must always be on top of your game and staying ahead of the curve. The quicker you can learn and implement what the rest of the industry is doing the better you will be. The following are some popular trends so far in 2016 that are necessary to stay in the forefront of this demanding industry.

Effectiveness and Usage: 88 percent of organizations say that they use content marketing. This statement alone should be motivation enough. Almost 90 percent of the business community says that content marketing is important, this shows that the demand for quality content is held at a high standard.

Budgets and Spending: now this may be a tricky trend to implement into your company as it is usually based on your maturity level or where your company values your skill level. On average last year, companies allocated less than 28 percent of total marketing budget towards content marketing. Again this is based on the maturity levels of each individual program, but success was shown when around 42 percent of the total marketing budget is directed towards the content team. Think about it, your ad would be nothing without content. The content is the brains of the operation and is the real meaning behind what you are trying to sell.

Goals: no matter what to be successful at content marketing you need to be able to generate leads and have consistent sales. Other things that will help your top end goals are things like brand awareness, lead nurturing and customer loyalty. Another trend that seems to be starting out slow but gaining more traction is the art of cross selling. The idea is to sell your current customers on similar products or products that may enhance the one they already have bought. Companies are creating more and more products that relay on the other products to make them better, but not completely reliant on them. I good example of this would be game apps on smart phones. The allow you to download and play the basic game for free, but offer in game purchases that will help increase your overall odds in the game. This is a small example but one that has made a lot of money in content marketing.

Spreading your content: gone are the days where you can simply advertise on related websites. Too really get ahead of the curve, being able to utilize the social media giants is a game changer. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the top three platforms that reach out to a huge amount of the general population. Another awesome feature about using social media is, if your company can create a really catchy ad or product, it will spread like a wild fire. Social media fame is usually short lived but it may be all the spark need to becoming “trending” online.

You may not implement all of these current trends this year, but making solid strides towards these will only help improve the overall direction and quality work your content marketing is putting out.

 

Many thanks for our friends at the Content Marketing Institute for their stats: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2016_B2B_Report_Final.pdf