Content is an indispensable part of any marketing collateral for businesses across industry verticals. This is further reinforced by the fact that as much as 95% of consumers feel that content is a vital marker of trust and brand authenticity. Although content has been an integral part of the ever-evolving B2B Marketing strategy, its relevance caught the limelight only during the pandemic when users turned towards digital channels for brand information and interaction.
Marketing Profs cites that about 66% of businesses expect their 2022 content marketing budget to increase over the 2021 budget. On that very note let us see what are the 5 key pieces that would make your content marketing jigsaw complete.
Customer Retention
It is essential for brands to regularly drive high-quality content marketing which helps them to significantly attract new customers, boost online rankings and convert leads. However, maintaining customers is often overlooked when it must be of utmost importance. In fact, after brands have closed deals, the following content-focused approaches will help them improve customer relationships:
- An up-to-date website that encourages visitors to keep coming back for more.
- Examining how consumers interact with brand products and services and following it up with their honest reviews and brand experience.
- Bringing disengaged customers back into the fold through personalised content about promotional information, compelling product features, news about upcoming changes, or discounts via emailers.
Go Omnichannel!
It’s time for brands to activate their omnichannel content strategies. Did you know that events are likely to be a key area of focus in the year ahead?
In fact, more than half (52%) of companies across industries are all set to increase their investment in in-person events post-vaccine, 39% in hybrid events, and 33% in digital events.
- Emphasise owned and earned activities with valuable content that encourages inbound engagement and organic traffic.
- Activate content that caters to sales, support, partners and the extended employee base.
- Omnichannel has transgressed into multilingual and versatile content formats that include external, internal, global or local audiences.
Brands can strategise and deploy their omnichannel marketing successfully by regularly churning the above content forms. Sensing behavioural signals and responding accordingly with the right content, at the right place, and at the right time can do wonders for brands.
Strengthen content intelligence
Many businesses are deploying modern tools and content intelligence that take care of content creation to distribution, amplification and measurement. And why not?! In this digital era, it only makes sense to culminate human intelligence and data-driven insights, which, when combined with high-performing content engines can help businesses increase brand engagement. Technology helps marketers create, manage, deliver and scale content more efficiently and effectively. The key is to keep buyers, existing consumers as well as prospects in mind. Moreover, insights that could lead to competitive advantage or missed opportunities in content strategy need to be closely monitored. It is equally important to be up to date with customer success teams to generate engaging content on new features or improvements.
Join forces with Data and Search
While data suggests brands to focus more on what’s on customers minds, the way they search for products and services, their shopping preferences and so on, a generic and holistic search on the other hand gives an idea about the most common keywords being used by end-users to interact with brands -what they are looking for, what they need clarity on, etc.
- Google is redefining the relationship between search, discovery and shopping, which will have a significant impact on content marketing for 2022 and beyond.
- Shopify suggests data and search will only become more closely intertwined in 2022 with data becoming a key differentiator for content.
Brands must also have been observing a sudden spike in multi-format search content in response to keywords. These multi-format types of content can be witnessesd as text, but also videos, podcasts, images and shopping recommendations. This should be a guiding light for content marketers to spin engaging value-added content.
Leverage social media
Social media’s expanding role is hard to ignore, especially at a time when internet knowledge and awareness is at their highest. Social channels have gradually evolved into 100% paid promotions from organic. Brands will do well to leverage the superior targeting and conversion tracking it affords, to boost reach on their various campaigns. Companies must ensure that their brand content has built-in agility to be responsive to fast-changing audience demographics and preferences.
- Integrate net-new content creation and promotion through these channels.
- A well-planned CX strategy can aid in churning valuable and engaging content complementing the expanding scope of social media.
- Experimentation is key to balancing brand relevance while not missing out on the latest content trends.
Take advantage of these insights to drive the desired brand engagement, and quality lead generation. Adding value to the lifestyle of the target consumer through interactive content helps brands to remain relevant. A well-planned content strategy is important for brands to scale growth and make their presence felt online in 2022.
