contentmarketingWhat matters in content marketing this year is the optimization of relevant content for the smartphone and an increased presence on social media channels and voice assistants. This enables entrepreneurs to maintain personal contact with users and promote fast interactions, according to  Fionn Kientzler, Managing Partner of the content marketing agency suxeedo.

Potential customers can expect a more pleasant user experience in the future, since the customer journey will be more focused on building trust. For companies, this means on the other hand adapting to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

1. Messenger marketing for personal communication

If you have not yet recognized the advantages of messenger marketing as a content marketing strategy, you should start soon, since communication via mobile apps will increase in relevance this year, simply because the direct interaction not only enables you to generate leads, but also to better understand customer behavior. Companies often use chatbots for communication via messenger apps to ensure a constant and immediate exchange with users. And as you can imagine, automation is very important in this context, achieving a high interaction rate due to three fundamental advantages:

  • Relevant content that meets individual needs can be conveyed to a target group
  • Natural, fast and direct communication is made possible
  • Higher interaction and click rates are achieved

 

Artificial intelligence is also increasingly being used in automated communication with the target group: e.g., IBM offers the AI Watson, which not only grasps the semantic meaning, but also recognizes and classifies keywords, and can understand emotions and concepts. What’s holding marketers back to use this cognitive performance for their strategies in the social media channels, too?

2. Facebook's relevance is decreasing

Presence on digital communication channels is an undisputed trend for 2020. However, entrepreneurs should think carefully about which platform is suitable for implementing content marketing strategies this year: e.g., posting a link on Facebook is the most used type of post to bring multivalued content to the target group, but what many manufacturers ignore is the fact that Facebook is irrelevant for increasing the interaction rate; hence, they should consider using other communication platforms. WhatsApp is becoming increasingly important and became, in fact, already the No.1 medium for the young target group. LinkedIn and Xing, which are suitable for positioning brands, are also relevant for a greater reach and more traffic.

3. Voice apps for more presence in the customer journey

Voice control is the fastest development via mobile devices, which is why companies should quickly mobilize their resources on product-accompanying voice apps. In the future, purchases and orders will be conveniently made using voice assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant. Here too, however, care should be taken to ensure that content created with added value is adapted to the text-to-speech technologies and that it meets customer expectations. From a marketing perspective, there are different purposes, such as:

  • Positive positioning of the brand and products as well as image effects;
  • Traffic and lead generation;
  • Presence at the verbal communication level;
  • Individual and improved user and customer experience.

 

4. Use micro moments for content marketing

Micro-moments from Google are moments when a person turns to the digital medium to satisfy his/her needs, to find out about something, to go to a place, to do or buy something. Valuable information about user intentions can be extracted at such moments.

In the future, it will be important for companies to be present even on the short customer journey via smartphone and to make optimal use of the possibilities. What’s important is the prediction of these micro-moments in order to immediately offer the potential customer the content that’s needs. This includes understanding the needs of the target group in advance and adapting to them.

5. Micro-influencer marketing

Brand trust and personal communication are related, and it has been found out that the most effective results can be achieved through micro-influencers. Marketers can mainly use the proximity to the subscribers and the existing relationship of trust between the two units to present their products and brands. However, due to the high level of interaction and expert knowledge in a specific area, influencers with fewer followers gain higher credibility and appear more authentic. This in turn has a positive effect on the brand by addressing the target group optimally and paves the way for micro-influencer marketing in 2020.

It's all about optimizing mobile content

All 5 content marketing trends 2020 can be traced back to one development: mobile presence on all communication channels through direct personal interaction with users, individual content adapted to user needs and by keeping up with the pace of users – hence, 2020 will definitely be a successful content marketing year.

By Daniela La Marca