Use these content marketing trends to create a strong brand identity in today’s competitive market
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, staying ahead in the content marketing game is paramount for elevating your brand’s online presence. From immersive storytelling to interactive experiences, the realm of content marketing is ever-evolving, and it’s crucial to stay abreast of the latest trends to captivate and engage your audience.
In this article, we delve into 11 dynamic content marketing trends that are set to redefine how brands connect with their target audience. As consumer behaviors shift and technology continues to advance, it’s essential for brands to adapt their strategies to resonate with their online community effectively. Whether it’s harnessing the power of video content or leveraging the potential of AI-driven personalization, these trends offer unparalleled opportunities to amplify your brand’s reach and impact.
If you’re ready to take your brand’s online presence to new heights, join us as we explore the cutting-edge content marketing trends that are set to make waves in the digital sphere.
How Pressfarm can help with your content marketing strategy
Do you need help producing outstanding content for your brand? The PR experts at Pressfarm are skilled at creating content that helps brands stand out. The Pressfarm team is skilled at not only crafting press releases and writing memorable feature stories but also optimizing this content for SEO. In addition to getting quality content for your brand, you can use the Pressfarm media database to find media contacts who you can share this content with. These are media professionals who can help you put this content in front of your target audience and inspire these people to reach out to you directly.
If you want to stand out from your competitors in 2023, there are many unique content marketing trends that you can leverage. Before we discuss these trends in detail, let’s talk about what content marketing is.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the process of producing quality content that engages, educates, and entertains your target audience with the goal of boosting sales of your core product or service. In order to do content marketing right, it’s important to produce valuable content that your target audience appreciates. It’s also important to leverage the right content marketing trends to help your brand stand out.
How will content marketing help you meet your PR goals?
The main goal of content marketing is to consistently produce valuable content that your target audience appreciates. If you can produce content that appeals to your audience, then they will start to come back again and again. Once these people start relying on you to educate and entertain them, they are more likely to convert into paying clients. Moreover, when you become a reliable source of information, you will establish a reputation as a thought leader in the industry.
A thought leader doesn’t just attract their target audience’s attention. Media outlets also rely on thought leaders to provide expertise and quotes for news stories that they’re in the process of writing.
Ultimately, developing a good content marketing strategy will benefit your relationship with your clients as well as your relationship with journalists.
Top 10 content marketing trends for PR Pros in 2023
Plugging into the right content marketing trends will help you create a winning PR strategy that increases your brand’s visibility in 2023. Here are some come unique content marketing trends which you can leverage:
1) Live videos and webinars
As people emerge from two years of social distancing, brands that have hosted live events are getting a lot of positive attention.
From concerts to conferences, workshops, seminars, networking events, and everything in between, companies host lots of live events all the time. If you want to build connections with audiences that have a fear of missing out, then it can be useful to host some offline and online events and invite your target audience to join.
Live-streaming these events is an effective way to build positive, long-term relationships with potential and actual clients. By giving people who are far away the option to attend your event virtually, you can also create a positive, memorable brand image.
Since 84% of people report that they were convinced to make a purchase after watching a branded video, you can’t really go wrong with live-streaming events.
2) Personalized content
It’s true that content marketing is more effective than traditional PR. This is because content marketers have a knack for producing content that actually matters to the target audience. Even so, in order to produce content that people value, you need to personalize this content.
You can tailor your content for your audience in the following ways:
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Experimentation
Trial and error is an effective way to find out which content marketing trends your audience actually enjoys. All you need to do is experiment with a few different content types and take note of which ones generate more engagement. Does your target audience interact more with your videos? If so, you should create more video content. Likewise, if they seem to love your infographics, then you should design more of these.
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Asking for feedback
Sometimes figuring out the right content marketing trends to use for your audience is as simple as asking them. You can publish a post on your social media channels asking your followers what they want to see more of. Alternatively, you can send your audience a survey asking the same question. Figuring out what works for your audience doesn’t always have to be complicated. Let them tell you what they enjoy and produce more of that content.
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Using user-driven personalization
You can also personalize the content you show your website visitors by paying attention to how they interact with your website before they leave. Once you have an idea of what kind of content they enjoyed the last time they were on your website, you can show them more of that content when they come back.
You don’t necessarily have to wait for someone to come back to your website to do user-driven personalization right. If you have their email address, you can remind them about what they left behind the last time they paid your site a visit.
Have you ever been on an online shopping website, put something in your cart, and moved on to something else, only to receive an email reminding you about the item you “forgot” to buy? That’s user-driven personalization at its finest.
You don’t need to be an online retailer to mimic this strategy properly. User-driven personalization can be adapted to any brand. For example, you can remind someone about a blog post that they didn’t finish writing. You can also send them recommendations for other blog posts you’ve written in the “if you enjoyed this, you’ll enjoy this too” format.
User-driven personalization can seem a little stalker-y, but don’t let that scare you. Provided that you don’t bombard someone with a lot of content, you can use this strategy effectively. Usually reminding someone about something they were already thinking of can be just the nudge they need to visit your website again or complete a purchase.
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Tracking the buyer journey
Another way to optimize your content marketing is by keeping track of what stage of the sales funnel the members of your target audience are in. You can then use this information to show potential customers the right kind of content to guide them further down the sales funnel until they eventually make a purchase.
Let’s assume your company sells lawnmowers. People who are still exploring their options will appreciate content that educates them on how your lawnmower can solve their problems efficiently, On the other hand, people who have already made a purchase will benefit from tutorials showing them how to use your lawnmower the right way.
It’s important to keep engaging people with your content long after they convert into customers. This way, you will inspire them to recommend you to their family and friends as a brand that cares.
3) Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is one of the more daunting content marketing trends but it can also be rewarding when used well. Using artificial intelligence can help you understand your audience’s needs faster and automate your content distribution based on these needs.
You can use artificial intelligence to help you streamline your content marketing in three ways:
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Chatbots
If you sell a product or service and you serve an international market, then people can visit your website with inquiries at any time of the day. Instead of paying customer care representatives to reply to inquiries late into the night, you can use a chatbot.
Some chatbots need to be programmed to give specific answers when they get specific questions. Others are self-learning and picking up on what a client means without being told. Either way, you can use your chatbot to point a website visitor in the right direction, whether it is to an informative blog post you wrote addressing their query, or to a product they are looking for.
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Automated email marketing
Another way to harness the power of artificial intelligence for your content marketing is through your email marketing campaigns. Artificial intelligence can help you to study customer behavior and engagement with previous content. With this information, you can send more customized emails to each customer on your mailing list.
By identifying an individual’s unique needs and wants, you can send them content that is tailored to each stage of their conversion process.
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Writing
One of the more recent content marketing trends is the use of artificial intelligence to produce written content. For example, some brands are using AI-powered software to write their blog posts. Artificial intelligence can help you brainstorm topics, improve the quality of your writing and even write your content for you.
In other words, by using AI, you can automate and optimize your content creation process.
4) User-generated content
User-generated content is powerful because it can help you market your brand at no additional cost to yourself. Your clients are valuable brand ambassadors because people will trust their recommendations over your traditional advertisements any day. For this reason, it’s important to share user-generated content with your target audience.
User-generated content can be reviews about your product or testimonials about your brand. Alternatively, they could be customer conversations about you on social media. When you spot this content, it’s important to find a way to use it wisely. Customer reviews and testimonials can be hosted on your website for curious website visitors to see. Likewise, let’s assume people are having a conversation about you online. You can join in and share that conversation with the rest of your followers.
Engaging with user-generated content creates a sense of community among the people who are creating this content for you. Creating content communities among people who already appreciate your brand fosters brand loyalty over time.
5) Repurposed content
In order to produce quality content, you don’t have to start from scratch all the time. Repurposing content can help you make the most of content that has performed well in the past. By repurposing content, you can also reach a wider audience.
This can be as simple as converting an old blog post into an engaging video or presenting your research findings in infographic form. Different content formats appeal to different people. For this reason, the wider the variety of content you have, the more people you can reach.
6) Multi-platform marketing
Speaking of broadening your reach, sharing your content on multiple platforms is another effective way to increase brand awareness. If you reach out to your target audience on more than one platform, then you’re more likely to come out with more customers.
Many brands make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on one digital channel. Don’t do this and expect your target audience to come to you. Instead, you should find out where your target audience spends their time and go there.
The most successful brands invest in growing all their digital channels from their websites to their social media. In order to do this successfully, you should maintain a consistent brand image across all platforms. At the same time, you should take advantage of the strengths each platform has for showcasing a specific type of content.
7) Guest posting
If you want to increase the visibility of your brand, then guest posting is just the thing you need. You can do this by partnering with other thought leaders to publish blog posts on their platforms. Guest posting can help you reach a bigger audience organically. In addition, publishing your content on quality sites allows you to build backlinks back to your site. Backlinks will not only increase traffic to your website but also increase your domain authority.
8) Influencer marketing
People trust recommendations from influencers more than they trust your impersonal advertisements. Better still, when making purchase decisions, people trust influencer recommendations 94% more than recommendations from friends and family.
As you can see, building positive relationships with influencers is good news for your brand. These experts can help you promote your brand in a more authentic way and attract more clients in the long run. Collaborating with influencers can provide valuable opportunities to reach a wider portion of your target audience.
9) Interactive content
With so many brands churning out new content every day, interactive content is one of the content marketing trends that will help your content to stand out. Interactive content gets your audience excited because they can engage with it in real time and be part of the storytelling process for your brand.
Live streaming actually counts as interactive content, because your target audience can engage with you as you stream. Alternatively, you could use quizzes, polls, or branded games to engage your target audience.
10) Localized content
We’ve already talked about how personalizing your content is an effective way to build long-lasting connections with your audience. Adding some local flavor to your content accomplishes the same goal, as it will make your content more relevant to the people you’re showing it to.
This is especially important if your brand serves an international audience. If you don’t adapt your content to the language and the culture of the people you’re showing it to, then it will fall flat in some places. Don’t let this happen. Take time to do your research and create content that people can relate to.
11) Fewer ads, more value
As more brands experiment with content marketing and get positive feedback from their target audiences, the prevalence of traditional advertising is going down. This is not to say that traditional advertising doesn’t work, it certainly still has its place. Even so, brands that rely more on content marketing build more genuine and long-lasting relationships with their target audiences.
As you can see, there are many content marketing trends that you can plug into to boost your brand and connect with your audience. If you need help creating quality content that will excite and inspire your audience, check out our packages and let us help.
With a professional press release, some engaging guest posts, and an eye-catching media kit, you can make an unforgettable impression with your brand. In addition to helping you create this quality content, we can help you distribute it widely.
By submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories, we can boost your online visibility. This distribution ensures that you rank high in relevant search results across different search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing!
Finally, as a client, you get custom media lists. Together with our media database of 1 million+ journalists, bloggers, and influencers, these lists are designed to help you connect with the best journalists in your niche.
With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can earn positive media coverage and draw more people to your brand.