To understand the future of content marketing, we need to understand what it is first. In layman’s terms, content marketing is a marketing approach devised with various strategies that focus on the formation and circulation of relevant and great content consistently. Keep in mind that it should appeal to and retain the target audience and drive them to take action in an effective manner.

There are many types of content marketing strategies:

let’s look at a few examples:

• Podcasts: Crossed over the threshold of being a fad and then somewhere in-between, podcasts have now become an integral part of creative content marketing. It gained momentum in terms of popularity and repeat customers during the pandemic. A whopping 100 million plus users used this medium regularly in America during the time. 
  
  
• Videos: Before the pandemic, videos were largely ignored as a form of marketing and considered only as a form of entertainment. There was a misconception that the making of videos and the subsequent marketing takes a lot of effort, time and money. But lately, that theory was disproved as all and sundry took to bite-sized videos, reels and YouTube. This happened due to the pandemic and its waterfall effect. People were home and had ample free time and the cost of equipment to make videos dropped drastically too, making it a win-win situation for all.
  
  
• Blogs: One of the most strategic and diverse forms of marketing, blogs have been around for a very long time. At the earliest, they were used as personal logs of events but have rapidly evolved into the finest way of marketing a brand. It is used for SEO, and websites and is informative in itself. An economical, straightforward way to drive traffic to your website, it also improves search engine rankings and engagement.

These are just a few ways to build credibility and gain the trust factor, which in turn means revenue for a business.

Moving on to the other aspect of Content marketing. There are two sides of the same coin and the other factors of content marketing must be looked into as well. 

Google has reiterated that only great-quality content which is relevant will get better rankings. Want to be found on the SERPs first? Make website content creation and marketing the cornerstone of the digital marketing strategy and achieve the desired results. 

That being said, here are a few more challenges marketers face with content marketing:

• Tedious and gradual process: Due to the amount of research involved, may it be keyword research or competitor analysis, this is a long-drawn process that requires precision in understanding the exact requirements of the brand in question.
  
  
• Impact and outcome take time: In a world of instant gratification, content marketing is the opposite. It can be a while before one can see discernible results, there honestly is no stopgap situation possible here because both, SEO and content marketing have a longer turnaround time. The best results are seen only after the right amount of time and effort has been spent.
  
  
• Expertise and experience needed: Creative content creation needs a certain level of expertise as it contains a lot of components. One has churned out crisp, original content weekly to see tangible results. Not only that, there is uploading it at the right day of the week, the right time of the day according to the demographics of the requirement. And the constant analysis to sift out the relevant from the other second and third-degree data. This definitely requires patience, strategy and know-how that comes from skill and knowledge.
  
  
• Critical content ideation: “Too many cooks spoil the broth’ – the opposite of this holds true for ideating and creating fresh content daily. A creative person can hit a creative block every once in a while. One has to learn to maneuver through the different types of content which can vary anywhere from blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, etc. also, bear in mind to include the relevant topics with the necessary keyword research for implementation.

Once you have all this information in place and being applied to each strategy, let’s find out if it is successful.

To hit the bull’s eye, one needs to answer a few key questions:

• Return on investment: The whole exercise of content marketing strategy is to get success which means revenue.
  
  
• Customer retention: Creative content marketing and customer retention are interdependent. There has to be constant engagement to make sure the customers keep coming back.
  
  
• User engagement: This brings us right to it, engagement. Keeping the customers of the current times is an uphill task. The content has to be conversational, and consistent with a whole splatter of entertainment in the form of social media.
  
  
• Brand awareness: In content marketing specifically, building customer loyalty translates to brand awareness which is of utmost importance to any brand. “First impressions are lasting impressions” is proving to be of outstanding value.
  
  
• Potential Leads: The quantity and quality of leads are of key indicators of how well a website content strategy is performing. These define the performance of the activities at the top of the marketing funnel.

Every field has competition with strategies to beat all strategies and content marketing is no different. So, what does it take to stand out in a crowd? Here are a few efficient and practical strategies:

• Evaluate the brand’s target audience’s pain points and find solutions.
  
  
• Specialize in creating niches for each brand and its customers and use ingenious strategies.
  
  
• Do regular competitor analysis.
  
  
• Follow the successful strategies that the competition does.
  
  
• Stay a step ahead of the competition by forecasting and strategizing according to the trends.
• Economical pricing with great value has always proven to be a sure way to entice and retain customers.
  
  
• Provide adequate and useful customer service.

Besides creating value and trust with the target audience, content marketing plays an important role in SEO. The game changer in Search Engine Optimisation is content, content and more quality content. 

SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand to fuel the success of any business, may it be small, medium, or at large scale. Seo measures and increases the footfall on a website and gets upward rankings on SERPs whereas content marketing focuses on finding and creating valuable content to drive profitable actions from the audience. Both these require effort and consistency.

SEO is established on a few essential elements:

• Researching and finding relevant keywords.
  
  
• Using keywords strategically to rank higher in SERPs.
  
  
• Embedding keywords on fresh, crisp content to get rapid indexing and higher rankings.
  
  
• Focusing on user experience by keeping the backend consistently optimized.
  
  
• Building links and affixing them with high-domain authority sites.

To sum it up…..

Competition, as we know it, is getting fierce by the day and everyone who wants a piece in the digital world pie’, needs to refresh, reboot and function in a strategic manner effectively. Because each day brings a new horizon in the digital marketing world and its subsets. Optimized content looks brilliantly on with three simple steps to keep things in place; oversee, analyze and rerun if repeat-worthy. 

“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best-promoted content that wins.”

Andy Crestodina