A content marketing ´campaign´ implies a start and end point, doesn´t it? Surely content marketing should be seen more as a philosophy, whereby the notion that a brand´s relationship with their customers should be confined within parameters doesn´t exist?
More and more brands are coming around to this way of thinking as they gain a greater understanding of how content marketing can be a lucrative opportunity to drive revenue.
Even those firms that were a little late in acknowledging content as a means of fostering interaction and engagement have begun to appreciate that you can´t expect to start a conversation with customers, hit pause for a few months, then recommence from where you left off – people simply don´t work like that.
So, what does this mean for content marketing in 2015 and beyond? Marketing Land predicts it will go from strength to strength – listing five ways progress is set to be made:
Increased strategic adoption
Content marketing will demand more in the way of resources, which only reflects the value and opportunities it is presenting brands. You can expect to see more “Chief Content Officer” jobs appearing on your LinkedIn timelines, then, with the increasing amount and scope of content requiring an overarching content curator.
Consistently hit the mark
“One size fits all” is an approach that rarely works whatever you´re applying it to, and content marketing is no exception. Therefore, brands will need to ensure they are matching content with the platform that will allow it to flourish, rather than rolling out it out across all the different social networks.
Content for all seasons
Content marketing isn´t a one-and-done endeavour and firms need to adopt an “always on” methodology if they wish to make the gains they set out in their strategy at the start of the year. Some predict that 2015 will be the year that many brands no longer just see content marketing as something that gets rolled out at Christmas.
Content as a product
What´s the difference between content brands and branded content? As Andrew Davis, marketing speaker and author of Brandscaping, puts it: “Branded content is created for a company. Content brands are created for a valuable audience.” In 2015, more firms will create a content brand, which will see companies enable users to have a positive encounter with the first product they come in contact with: content.
More tools & more data
Insights should come about more easily, but marketers will soon find out that it still takes work to act on the data available to them. It will be interesting to see how many brands can make sense of the streams of data coming their way in the next 12 months.
Have you noticed a change in philosophy towards content marketing in the last 12 months? If so, what do you think has sparked this shift in mindset?