Top five content marketing trends for 2021

Staying on top of these content trends can help put you ahead of your competitors and cater to the needs of your audience.

One major trend that is increasingly important is developing consumer-personalised content. Utilising emerging and innovative techniques will only aid in fostering positive relationships between you and your audiences.

Not to mention – a memorable content marketing campaign for years to come.

Change is an inevitable process in all schemes of life. It’s therefore essential to try and account for said changes where possible and readily prepare yourself. And the same applies to marketing in that we should monitor consumer behaviours.

Hence, we attempt to understand which content resonates with our prospective audiences.

Consumers traditionally shift their routes and methods to discovering, consuming and sharing preferences regarding content. A deeper insight into these aspects assists in curating the relevant, higher quality, and innovative content they seek.

Here are five perfect content marketing trends to equip you to connect and engage your target audiences for 2021.

1. Data-driven creativity

In an increasingly data-driven world, it’s no surprise to see the prevalence of data as it takes the lead as a key consideration when making business decisions.

Data can assist in forming the foundations for exceptional storytelling by providing valuable insight into consumer behaviours. And ultimately, crack the code for the type of content which will resonate with your target audience.

This can be explored by executing a marketing campaign incorporating data-founded, personalised content or offers. Combined with creative ideas – it can act as a catalyst for exceptional content that hits home with target markets through personalisation and relevancy.

2. Conversational content marketing - using AI

As content marketing continues to evolve, marketers and audiences continually mould ‘content’ into something that is not meant for consumption – but also to be experienced.

To deliver a genuinely user-bespoke user experience, embracing emergent marketing technologies, like AI-driven ones, is a promising step when preparing marketers for future trends. AI is a mutually beneficial field for both consumers and businesses alike.

Customers can get personalised, real-time support, and businesses benefit by saving time, money and valuable resources.

AI paves the way for customer service to thrive in the new age, as exemplified by the emerging utilisation of highly intelligent Chatbots.

Chatbots are the modern-day answer to customer support assistance, with an efficient ability to answer and resolve customer enquiries in a matter of seconds.

With increased usage, they will continue learning more about consumers by acquiring users' information. By analysing user actions, search patterns, and pulling data from social media information, their assistance capabilities are bound to stretch beyond mere customer personalisation.

3. Omni-channel strategy

The consumer’s online journey is almost characteristically omnipresent as it exists everywhere and spans all channels, platforms and devices. And so must our content and campaigning reach.

Regardless of where it is accessed and how customers engage with said content, they should always expect a seamless experience.

Have you ever encountered content collateral (a blog post’s feature image, perhaps?) that instantly drew you to the company?

The appeal where the tonality, colours, and holistic display of the brand all culminated in quenching precisely what you sought.

But once you left this blog section to check out the app, you were only disappointed…

This initial appeal that the blog imprinted on you – was only an impression that the company wasn’t consistent in throughout all its platforms and material. Naturally, you’re just left frustrated. This is an exact causality of neglecting the implementation of an omnichannel strategy.

Omni-channel strategies simply refer to providing customers with a unified brand experience.

One consistent across any and all customer touch-points with a clear-cut content strategy focus.

By integrating an omnichannel strategy into your 2021 content marketing plan, you can ensure relaying consistently branded marketing messaging for customers browsing on different platforms, devices and channels. The messaging will ultimately all exist under the same ecosystem.

4. Live video will dominate

Traditionally, content marketing has always existed in the form of writing, whether that be blog content, newspapers or case studies.

However, there is a notable shift in preferred content mediums as we head into 2021.

And that is ‘video content’ – specifically live video.

Live video is already among the leading content forms, but a lack of participation brings about the slow growth. There is a perceived value in live video due to its untouched nature of providing real-time insights. This is valuable information that is also genuine, transparent and entertaining.

And stemming from the previously emphasised importance of enhancing user experience and brand relatability, live video can effectively deliver on these targeted attributes and provide a memorable and impactful experience.

Brands have the capability to creatively execute live videos and retrieve shared opinions from viewing audiences in real time.

This ability to entice measurable engagement is an attractive insight for digital marketers, as it opens up multiple avenues for taking the campaign and strategy to the next.

5. Micro-moment marketing

When looking at user experience in content marketing, a great deal of value is emphasised on every moment a visitor spends browsing your site. The faster the consumer can understand what you’re trying to convey with your campaign, the better.

Micro-content is easy to interpret, highly informative and traditionally relevant to the consumer. The convenience of quickly locating the information you need in the right format and time is of high value for consumers and a trending 2021 need.

Micro-moments occur when people turn to a device, most commonly a smartphone – to act on a need to learn, do, discover, watch, or buy something. They are intent-rich moments where the consumers expect to locate the relevant information immediately.

Contextualised for content marketing – this can be explored with micro-video and micro-blogs. Micro-video content can be seen in YouTube advertisements in which marketers aim to create advertisements that draw audiences to the brand/product/service in 6 seconds.

This tactic can aptly capture a large audience when carried out successfully.

Micro-blogging is effective and rather prevalent within Twitter’s social media platform. With a text threshold of 280 characters, the information is short, concise, and hence attractive to consumers' eyes if pitted against a 1000-word blog post.