Is content still king in 2022? With the marketing and communication landscape ever changing, should we be focusing on other communications strategies or will an adherence to a solid content first approach to digital marketing continue to pay dividends in the long run?
The answer is of course a resounding yes. Even as we face new challenges as marketers, an adherence to providing value to our target customers via informative and engaging content, be that text, audio or video, will continue to be a significant sales driver.
It remains a fact that at least 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep, and the majority of them expect brands to create content to gain their interest. That’s why in 2022, content creators, content marketing managers, and content strategists roles are going to be in great demand.
But let’s go into the details. Here are the main trends you will see in content marketing in 2022.
A more cohesive content strategy
Brand identity is becoming increasingly important. As a result, creating a unique narrative around your brand and adapting it to your identified sales channels is the way to be recognisable and engaging.
The cohesive structure of the communication strategy means that each part should be tied with the overall whole.
How to do that? Becoming a part of your customer’s world and planning and organising your content around that is the right thing to do.
Video will remain the top marketing content format
According to a survey run by Hubspot, 76% of marketers who invest in the video say it’s effective.
“Video creates a deeper connection with your potential customer base, and it is easy for brands to repurpose video content into podcasts and text-based content,” Neil Patel, CMO and Co-Founder of NP Digital, says. “But if you create text or audio content first, it is harder to turn it into video. So in 2022, look for brands to create more video content. It will be done in the form of just straight video, short clips like reels and even live to stream.”
In the past, video creation was costly; now, it’s much more accessible, even for small companies.
Blogs will be still relevant
One day blogs may become out of date and a waste of time. But not today or even this year. Blogging continues to be a tried and trusted way of connecting with your target audience.
Hubspot shows that 56% of marketers who have a blog say it’s effective, and 10% say it’s the content type that generates the most significant ROI.
In addition to providing consumer engagement and potentially conversion, blogs also provide a primary key benefit to your website or online pages: search discoverability.
Having strong blogs gives you the chance to have more search potential and implement your SEO strategies and provide people with a sense of trust in what you are doing. As Barilla teaches, if you sell pasta, what better practice than speaking about recipes in your blog?
Case studies and data infographics will continue to be ideal for increasing brand credibility
Gaining trustworthiness through long-form case studies will still be a thing in 2022. Creating a PDF downloadable is a way to get a conversion lead showing, at the same time, the main features of your products without sounding too much didascalic.
With people’s expectations higher and higher about the brand they choose to trust, data infographics are also a helpful tool to offer precise information and provide reliability.
Empathetic Content Marketing is growing
Putting customers at the centre of content marketing strategies and then working outward is an approach that we will see increasingly in 2022. Empathetic marketing is the approach of first conceptualizing the world through the eyes of your customers and using what you find to create a content strategy to meet their needs and wants. It’s a way of speaking to your targeted audiences as humans and not just potential buyers.
This hyper-personalization goes deeper than just calling a customer by name. It taps into individual preferences, wants, and needs.
The result is building durable trust.
A Hybrid of Virtual and Live Events
After living in a virtual world due to the pandemic, consumers are looking for a better balance of interaction between online and in-person. The result? Companies are creating a hybrid of virtual and live events to meet their customers’ needs.
Covid willing, 2022 will see the return of some live events, such as workshops and conferences. At the same time, innovations in online event hosting, such as webinars and live-streaming social media, will continue to evolve. How content is placed within this matrix of hybrid events will be key to marketing success.
