How do you make sure that your business marketing strategy is most effective? While it may not always be possible to stay ahead of the curve, keeping your marketing strategy current can be done.

Your business has to be on the cutting edge so as to stay relevant, efficient and successful. In today’s digital marketing world that simply means content marketing, which revolves around the creation, publication, and distribution of content to attract a targeted audience.

Year after year, content marketing only gains in popularity because it delivers results. While the objective remains simple – create genuinely interesting/useful content for your targeted audience that will build rapport and brand equity. This is probably the most effective way to influence prospective customers with authority, relevancy, and reciprocity.

2018 was a great year for content marketing – here are some facts and statistics on content marketing to prove that:

  • Blog content creating is the top inbound marketing priority for 55% of marketers
  • 1 out of 10 blog posts is compounding for marketers, meaning organic search hikes their traffic with time.
  • 45% of B2C marketers’ visual content is the most important type of content.
  • 84% of people expect brands to offer then content that entertains, tell stories, create experiences and provide solutions for their issues.
  • 70% of Internet users desire to learn about products through content than compared to traditional advertisements methods.
  • Content marketing brings in 3 times more leads than paid search advertising.

The above facts only prove that content marketing should be at the core of your digital marketing efforts. In the coming years, content marketing will become increasingly important, but distribution and creation will evolve dramatically.

To keep pace with the evolving content marketing trends you should follow these 5 crucial content marketing trends for 2019:

Personalized Content Marketing

By definition, personalized content marketing means – “Content personalization is a strategy that exploits visitors or prospects data to deliver relevant content based on the interests and preferences of the target audience.” Creating personalized content and distributing has been done by brands and marketers for a while now. However, the catch under the personalized content marketing trend will be the technology involved in it. In the coming years, we will see brands offering uniquely created branded content for audiences related to their interest.

45% of customers prefer buying from a company that offers personalization and 53% of them are likely to return. Further, brands will become cautious about investing in personalization tools and software. They will first figure out if they need one-to-one personalization tools, action-based targeting tools or tools that help in creating relevant content. Personalization is the key to happy, engaged, and returning customers, so practice the trick into your content marketing plan.

Original and Targeted Content Creation

2019 will be a year of brands using original, targeted and relevant content for their audiences. No more clickbait is going to work. Marketers that will use simple, creative and original ideas will win the trust of their audiences. Because customers these are getting smarter in avoiding clickbait and are interested in real content to solve their query. Targeted content creating is also the most effective SEO tactic.

Google recognizes original content and its algorithms always work towards displaying best results under the search engine. As long as you create new content consistently and keep it updated, and relevant nothing can stop you from achieving the success. Also, note that taking a long-term approach to building organic traffic will certainly lead to success sooner or later.

Influencer Marketing with Micro-influencer

Influencer marketing has proven itself powerful in reaching the targeted audience. But not all brands can break their banks on influencer marketing campaign; hence the concept of micro-influencers has emerged. Though the idea behind remains the same, here influencer marketing is done at a smaller scale through individuals, small groups and company’s own employees.

This year brands and marketers will focus on partnering with individuals with smaller followings on social networks to promote their products/services with authentic posts instead of investing in sponsored ads. More and more employees, existing customers and individuals with a set of audience in particular verticals will be the brand’s advocates and evangelists in 2019.

AI for Content Marketing

The power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way marketing functions at large. AI is already playing a significant role in the field of content marketing by taking over the streamlined process. AI has made it possible to automate routine operational tasks and tapping your digital channels to create highly-engaged customers.

2019 will be a year of AI bringing innovative content marketing strategies such as nurturing your audience and building brand advocates. Most important strategies will involve content tagging using classification models, faceted images search, and auto-tag digital content and chatbots-enabled CMS workflow. Organizations will invest millions of dollars in AI and machine learning to automate content distribution process. AI and ML are bound to revolutionize content marketing operations. It would be smart to invest in these powerful technologies and save some time to focus on more strategic work.

Content Optimization for Voice Search

It’s a no brainer; voice search is the talk of the town when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). According to stats, last year there were 1 billion voice searches occurred every month. So, voice search is certainly here to stay, but have content marketers embraced the power of voice-technology? If not, then it’s time to focus on content optimization for voice search.

Voice search is going to be a major digital marketing trend for 2019 and all brands must produce content that is relevant to voice searches. Your content marketing strategies should go hand in hand with what your possible buyer is looking for. So if you want your content to show up on search engine then produce quick and apt answers that serve a voice search. Marketers need to think about what people say, than what they could possibly just type!

About the Author: Sorav Jain is a well-known digital marketing professional in India. His passion for sharing his digital marketing knowledge with young professionals for free has gained a lot of admiration. He has written many well-researched articles on a host of topics like Facebook advertisement, social media tools, SEO, social media marketing and so on.