As the new year (and decade) approaches, it is time to step up your content marketing strategy. 2019 demonstrated that content marketing is only growing, and is certainly here to stay.

But each year brings new technology, new ways people engage with it, and therefore new content marketing trends. Bring these upcoming content marketing trends to the drawing board for your 2020 content marketing strategy in order to build customer relationships and ultimately increase sales this year.

Extreme Personalization

It is no longer good enough to create generic content. Individual, targeted content is highly effective. Studies show that effective use of personalization can lead to a 500% in consumer spending.

Most brands have already caught on to the importance of personalization, but slightly personal is not enough. Consumers want extremely tailored content. In 2020, it is time to get very very personal with content marketing. Don’t believe us? Content marketing expert Shafqat Islam predicts:

“Consumers are smart and they expect their world to be personalized. Netflix and Amazon set the bar high, and consumers expect that from brands and publishers. Yet, almost every marketer’s website is generic and one-size-fits-all…Personalization will move from a buzzword to a fundamental part of the marketer’s toolkit, across the web, social email, and every other channel in the customer experience.”

The key to personalization is technology. Use technological solutions to gather data about customers, segment them, and automate the process of personalization. Some ideas to get started:

• Include the customer’s name in the email subject line.
• Send emails or create popups based on what the person was looking at on your site.
• Send an email or coupon for their birthday.
• Create a personalized banner to welcome them back to your site.

Interactive Content Marketing

One of the easiest ways to make the content personal is to make it engaging. Customers are now used to a gamified world, and your content should match. Create content that is interactive and gets customers to participate. Some ideas include:

• Quizzes (hair quiz, skin type quiz, etc). Create a quiz and then recommend products based on the customer’s responses.
• Polls. Easily post a poll sticker to your social media stores to drive engagement.
• CTA asking customers to leave a comment about their favorite product or provide their opinion on something.

Social Media Will Continue to Dominate

In 2019, social media was a big player in the marketing space, and this will remain true in 2020 as well. According to SocialTimes, social media marketing budgets are set to within the next five years.

A huge part of the prevalence of social media is the abundance of mobile devices. How to master this trend? Make sure your content is very mobile-friendly and make your social media content a priority. Use social media to bring people to your website.

Get crafty with your content, and try using as many features of the main platforms as you can. To keep up with the top brands, you will need stunning Instagram stories and IGTV videos.

Video Technology

Speaking of videos, those are something that will be incredibly important this upcoming year. We already know that customers love video content.

According to Business 2 Community, more than 50% say that online video helped them determine which specific brand or item to buy, and over 55% say they watch online videos while shopping.

People like watching videos more than reading text (duh!). Videos are an engaging, visually appealing way to tell the story of your brand or specific products. The key to successful video content is quality storytelling and production.

Videos certainly take substantial time and effort to create but provide an amazing ROI for converting your audience to customers. Some ideas for how to best use video include:

• On your “about us” page. Tell the story of your brand and put some faces to your company.
• On product pages. Show the product in use and in enticing lifestyle shots.
• Social media feed. Videos receive 38% more engagement than photo posts. Incorporate short videos on your page to drive engagement and reach more customers.
• Social media stories.
• Newsletters

Voice Search

Alexa, Siri, and Google are taking over. More and more people are bringing these AI bots into their lives for a myriad of reasons (home security, convenience, etc).

As voice-controlled devices become more popular, your business must react. Optimize your content for voice search, and incorporate the function on your interfaces in order to stay current in 2020.

Data-Driven Content Marketing

Content marketing is about much more than slapping together a few posts. Content marketing is now a data-driven strategy that aligns business outcomes with customers. In order to master content marketing this year, you must listen to the data.

If you are not already, you should measure important KPIs for all of your content marketing pieces. Measuring data is only the first step, next you must analyze it on a consistent basis and adjust accordingly. Effective content marketing is smart marketing, it is about knowing what is working and what needs fixing.

Higher-Quality Content

As content marketing continues to grow in popularity, the competition also grows. In order to stand out, you need high-quality content, and this is crucial for content marketing in 2020.

High-quality content is created with the consumer in mind and is interesting, helpful, and well-written. 90% of the most successful content marketers put their audience’s information needs first over their promotional message, according to Content Marketing Institute’s B2B report. To create high-quality content, you should focus on developing a piece that helps customers, not just a sale’s pitch.

Originally published at https://contentcucumber.com on December 30, 2019.

Also published at https://medium.com/@rashidabeal79/the-top-content-trends-to-watch-for-2020-ad9e20ee268e