Top 7 Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014

Whether you realize it or not, chances are your business is already using content marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy.

With content marketing being arguably the most critical piece of an inbound marketing strategy, and with an estimated 60% of businesses employing some form of inbound in their marketing, we’re poised to see explosive growth in the way businesses ‘do’ marketing.

While consumers continue to tune out traditional, intrusive marketing communications, they increasingly crave the type of genuine, customer-focused information that content marketing delivers.

What is Content Marketing?

Before we get into my predictions for content marketing in 2014, let’s define content marketing. Content marketing is really about providing valuable information or content to current and potential customers for the purpose of building trust, branding, awareness, and positive sentiment. A successful content marketing campaign establishes you as an expert in your field, and that sets the groundwork for a long-term business relationship.

Simply put, its primary focus is on building the relationship, not the hard sell.

Types of content that typically form a content marketing strategy include:

• Blog posts
• Guest blog posts
• E-books
• Email newsletters
• PowerPoint presentations
• Podcasts
• Standard videos
• Micro-videos (ie, Vine)
• Social media posts
• Live presentations
• Webinars
• White papers

If you’re looking for more tips on building a content strategy, here are a few articles I’ve written that may help:

So, where is content marketing headed? What challenges and trends can we expect to see in 2014?  Here are my predictions.

1. Businesses Will Finally be Able to Define Content Marketing

As mentioned previously, almost 60% of businesses are already using some form of content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

However, I bet few of them would actually be able to define content marketing if asked to do so. Throughout 2014, I believe businesses will increasingly be able to explain what content marketing is, how it aligns with their larger business goals, and why it’s important. ‘Content marketing’ won’t just be a catch-all phrase used interchangeably with ‘marketing collateral’, but will have distinct importance within organizations.

2. The Top New Marketing Job Title Recruited and Hired will be “Director of Content”

With this increased awareness of what content marketing is and its importance, CEOs will be inclined to make investments in documented content strategies.

Greater departmental and company-wide support will mean more of the budget being designated for content creation and dissemination, and companies being willing to invest in dedicated content marketing managers.

Companies that don’t assign content creation and dissemination to specific people or departments will lose out.

According to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, companies that clearly define marketing and sales roles in relation to content marketing experience significantly lower customer acquisition costs than those without marketing/sales agreements.

Companies that continue to distribute responsibility haphazardly and diffusely will find their content marketing less effective and more costly than those who have a solid plan for content creation and distribution.