Content Marketing: Predictions for 2017

2016 has been a terribly exciting year for content marketers. New technologies and tools have surfaced, newer publishing platforms have emerged, more interactive forms of storytelling have mainstreamed and effective frameworks have been established to link content investments to marketing returns. What I find most exciting though - and promising - is the emergence of the daring marketer; risk takers who will take bold - if contrarian - calls that will help content marketing evolve and mature as a craft, and content marketers earn a seat in the boardroom. 

In the coming year, much will change, and for the better. It also means that only the nimble-footed will survive. How? Consume content voraciously online, share and absorb ideas from your network, and keep an eye out for the trends that are likely to shake up the industry. 

Recently, the Content Marketing Council published its Content Marketing Predictions Report for 2017, a handy guide to what is new and promising in the content marketing ecosystem. 

While collaborating with the LinkedIn India and DMAi teams on this handy little flipbook, I put together some of my thoughts, learnings and expectations - essentially, trends that I will watch out for in 2017, and (possibly) invest in.

The Native Advertising relationship between brands and audiences will become symbiotic

Content without visibility is dead content. I had said this early in 2015, but this has not been truer than it is today. Two simple reasons: users are increasingly demanding natural content-experiences, and marketers have already crowded out social platforms like Facebook & Twitter. Native placement is a great way to distribute branded content. It enables content discovery (organic traffic through search, while stable, takes time to build) and allows brands to break through the digital noise.

You can’t of course push mediocre, thinly veiled advertorials. This is where the risk takers - the daring content marketers - will merge the art of good storytelling with the science of targeting to enable smooth integration of branded content into the host environment.

You may rightly argue that paying extra to promote already high-quality content is unreasonable. I agree, but I also think native ads are a good way to get the ball rolling and to expose your content to a super-targeted audience.

My prediction is that brands will invest in and strengthen their native publishing ecosystems, and actually improve the quality of their content as a way to increase engagement and close the trust gap around branded content.

Creative visualisation of content will be key.

In traditional marketing, the bulwark of a brand was a great brand story. Today consumers are inundated with information and content from all corners by brands and publishers. To rise above this digital noise, your marketing strategy needs more than just a compelling story. It needs a highly engaging, dynamic and creative format for that story.

Much has been said and enough data exists to stress the importance of video and visual content in brand marketing. While written content will never lose its effectiveness (SEO value), videos are undeniably easier to consume on mobile screens, they also get better engagement, and often lead to higher conversion. Videos can also feel more personal, and authentic.

Given the popularity and effectiveness of video as a medium, most social media channels have developed stream capabilities - some by integrating niche stream apps like Periscope or Twitch, others by making it the focal point of their platforms like YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Snapchat. Live streaming of video is a great technology for brands. It is interactive and sticky, allows people to comment, like and share brand videos.

I expect both live as well as pre-produced visual content to be used liberally - and innovatively - by brands in the coming year.

VR and AR will become a must, not a choice.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are still a bleeding edge field, but starting 2017 I expect to see a lot more innovation in, and adoption of VR and AR technology.

VR presents a huge opportunity for delivering differentiated content, and experiences.

Giving an experiential aspect to your content through VR automatically positions the brand as fresh and forward looking. It also allows brands to put audiences inside the brand story, something particularly relevant when marketing to millennials.

While virtual or augmented reality are no longer technologies that are 'too new to invest in', they will continue to be expensive for some more time. But because VR and AR will allow higher engagement and retention than traditional campaigns, brands will slowly see the cost for leads drop and brand recall spike. Of course, before you embark on your VR journey, you need to find a team that knows how to use VR to tell your story well. After all, it really boils down to the story you tell. 

Micro-targeting and hyper-personalisation will go mainstream.

Brand websites will increasingly optimise themselves and personalise the content they serve to visitors for better conversion and usability. HCL Technologies, for example, serves personalised content - real-time - to specific audience sets. The before-after data around visitor engagement, increased clicks on CTAs and impact on conversion rates more than justify the time, talent & technology employed for real-time content personalisation.

I expect brands to personalise customer experience based on geography, age, gender, browsing and keyword search history, traffic referral source and a whole host of other publicly identifiable information.

Differentiated content and relevant messaging is key to increasing customer interactions with a brand's digital content.

In conclusion, new technologies and processes will make content marketing a lot more efficient and effective in 2017. The arguments I read about, and discussions I get into with fellow practitioners around adaptive content, data-backed content creation, AI-based audience recommendations or content marketing operations automation systems are all very encouraging and a sign of things to come.

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Thank you for reading my article. I look forward to your comments, with new ideas, a different perspective or even disagreements!