By Varun Sharma
Content being the king and Marketing its queen, together hand in hand they rule the entire kingdom. With passing time, they keep on changing their rules to maintain their authority. It becomes important for us to understand and adopt those changes so as to survive in this competitive world where Darwinian’s theory perfectly fits in: “Survival of the fittest”.
With the rise of technology and emerging new marketing platforms, building relationships by playing with words and uniquely representing the content has become a need of an hour. It can be easily incurred from the Google trends, as shown below, that unique content is of the upmost priority for everyone to market their business instead of just building the links. ‘It’s time to earn the links and not build the links’.
Let’s not beat around the bush and instead ponder on some new content marketing trends that will rule in 2018.
1. Customers: A rich source of your content and platform to market
Confused with two products of same genre, whose opinion will matter more for you: a fellow consumer who uses the product or a brand? Definitely you will go ahead with opinion of your friends and family members because you ‘trust’ them.
With ‘content’ as a soldier, it’s important to land it on the battlefield of ‘marketing’ with weapon of ‘trust’.
Let your consumers generate the content for you. Content from them can be in any form, such as ratings, reviews, blog posts, and comments. To celebrate Valentine, Cadbury came up with the contest named #SayItWithSilk, which was all about sharing a love story with Cadbury using #SayItWithSilk. This approach of Cadbury flooded social media with people’s #SayItWithSilk.
See the image here.
The trust among the customers is being built up through a social media by bringing content in the most creative ways ever.
2. Content through Video: Evergreen and Ever-growing platform
John Medina says, “Vision outclasses all other senses.” Nowadays, the main indicators depicting your brand success is ‘Being Viral’. Every minute, more than 700 videos of YouTube are being shared on Twitter. They attract the viewer’s attention easily and it can easily track your effectiveness.
Videos are being used as an asset by 74% of social media marketers in their social media marketing. It is estimated that videos will attract 79% of all the online traffic in 2018.
See the image here.
How videos surpass the simple text in generating revenue can be explained by taking an example of Harry Potter series. The Harry Potter series was appreciated both in books and movies. But at the end what matters is the income. The Harry Potter movie series in USA and UK earned total of £366.91 million, compared to the Harry Potter book series earning of £147.92 million.
This is the power of videos, which has come into the forefront and will rise in 2018 through social media.
3. Mobile Marketing: The future is in mobile
With the number of American mobile users reaching 265.9 million in 2017, the era of mobile has reached the shore of the world. The art of marketing the business appealing mobile device users is the trend one cannot ignore.
A study says that an estimated 40% of the internet time is spent on mobile devices and 80% of it is spent on apps. So it will be hard to underestimate apps other than Facebook to recognize your business amongst people. It’s important to strategize the content and smartly market it on other social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn.
Starbucks, for instance, launches #RedCupContest annually to promote its holiday-themed seasonal beverages. It entices their customers to share their coffee drink shot on social media and they stand a chance to win a pricey Starbuck’s gift card.
Amazingly, there are 40,000 posts of red cups floating on social media. Starbucks not only increased their sales but also earned the trust of people.
See the image here.
4. Interactive Storytelling will increase your selling
Susan Gunelius in 2013 said, “The opportunities to tell stories as part of direct and indirect brand marketing initiatives have become a strategic priority.” There is a need to water the seeds of her vision in 2018.
You sell your product to a customer, so the most important thing to understand is what a customer wants. And nowadays, people want to get engaged in story. A meaningful relationship is built between a brand and users. Story conveys your personality and brings your brand in front as a leader.
See the infographic here.
The perfect example of a well-executed story lies in the following creative advertisement of Mercedes. More than highlighting their product, the main focus of the ad was on helping a child when he was in need. But the reason why he was in need highlighted the class of the Mercedes. So Mercedes delightfully assorted an emotional touch with a marketing point of view.
The content will always sit on the throne proudly and will keep on modifying itself with changing world. But the base of content marketing will always reside in the same principle: ‘EAGER’.
- E- Expand their customer base;
- A- Attract attention and generate leads;
- G- Generate or increase sales;
- E- Engage an online community of users, and
- R- Rise in brand awareness.
Content Marketing has grown mature, and creating unique, quality content with an effective market strategy is the key to success for all the businesses.
Varun Sharma is a Co-Founder at KVR WebTech Pvt. Ltd., one of the fastest growing digital marketing company in Chandigarh, India. He analyses digital marketing strategies, trends, and practices emphasizing mobile, SEO, social media, and content marketing.
