The State of Content Marketing in 2021 [Stats & Trends to Watch]

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Content marketing  is the procedure for planning, creating, plus sharing content with your own target audience. It helps a person generate brand awareness, convince customers to take action, and drive income.

There are various types of content marketing, like social media and weblogs, but new developments and techniques arise every year that replace the ways businesses achieve their audiences.

As a marketer, it’s essential to know what your competitors are focusing on, so you can create a strategy plus stand out from the masses. In this post, discover important stats to know about the state of content marketing and advertising in 2021 and trends to look out for throughout every season.

Download Now: State of Marketing in 2021 Report

Content Marketing Statistics to Know

  • 47% of buyers see three to five pieces of content  before engaging using a sales rep.
  • 82%  of marketers statement actively using articles marketing in 2021, up 70% through last year.
  • Marketers’ primary goals  just for running marketing campaigns are brand consciousness, increasing sales, plus increasing engagement.
  • Video is the most popular form of content advertising, overtaking blogs and infographics.
  • Google’s search algorithms  are trying to transcend text to images, voice/podcasts, and videos.
  • The top technologies used by B2B organizations to supplement content marketing are analytics tools, social media marketing publishing, and e-mail marketing software.
  • The top three  organic content material distribution channels just for B2B marketers are social media channels, email, and website.

Content Marketing Styles to Watch in 2021

1 . Movie takes center stage.

Media uploads increased by 80%  YoY in 2020, since consumers spent most of their time in your own home passing time simply by watching content. Consumers watched 12. 2 billion minutes  associated with video in 2020 (as shown in the image below), equal to 23, 211 years of content.

graphic displaying how consumer video consumption has increased from 2016 to 2020

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As a result of this modifying consumer behavior, movie is now the primary type of media used inside any content strategy, taking center stage for your second year in a row.

graph displaying that video is the primary form of media used in content strategies in 2021

Image Source

As video consumption is now this kind of integral part of a consumer’s journey, HubSpot Senior Copywriter plus Brand Campaigns Manager  Alicia Collins  plus Senior Motion Designer Megan Conley  state,   “This [consumer behavior] furthermore indicates that video clip can be used throughout most of parts of the flywheel… businesses have historically used it as a means associated with introducing their brand and product or service products. But that’s false anymore. ”

The videos you decide to create and the locations you choose to share it could depend entirely on your own individual business requirements. Some businesses are choosing shorter form movies on TikTok to boost brand awareness, because National Geographic has been doing in the video beneath.

@natgeo

“How to photograph the night time sky” with the expert himself! 📸🌌 #NatGeoTikTok #Photography #LearnOnTikTok

♬ unique sound – Nationwide Geographic

 

Wistia  found that will long-form video is becoming more popular, making way for extended video length, as Patagonia has done in the video below.

 

second . Leveraging multimedia whenever possible.

In addition to video, it’s an increasingly popular strategy to incorporate media into content whenever you can. Jason Lapp, Leader and COO associated with Beautiful. ai,   says, “Video plus photo-heavy social systems have narrowed attention spans globally, making marketers to come up with brand new ways to break up text and increase content comprehension. ”

Lapp adds, “Inserting multimedia — for example video clips and interactive slides — into text-heavy content will end up a more popular way of engaging audiences and allowing readers in order to process material easier. ”

The particular gif below is definitely an example of a post that has used an interactive video to further explain instructions given in the text.

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3. Proper SEO tactics.

In 2020, HubSpot VP of Marketing Matthew Howells-Barby said he wanted to view the number of marketers positively investing in SEO go up. His wish came true — 69% of marketers within 2021 report purchasing SEO, up 5%  just from 2020.

Marketers are making these investments to create tailored experiences meant for website users. However , the shift within 2021 is less about SEO marketing in general but instead focused on “Capturing niche plus long-tail keywords and creating content that is more engaging compared to all the ‘Ultimate Guides, ’ and ‘Top 55, ’ lists, ” says  Brooklin Nash, head associated with content at Sales Hacker.

Businesses are looking for a way to just appear in SERPs and   create in-depth content that is distinctive, valuable, and different from what competitors provide on those exact same result pages. 71% of marketers assistance Nash’s assertion, confirming that their business’ 2021 tactic to get SEO is  recording strategic keywords.

4. Podcasting may grow immensely.

A content marketing trend to watch within 2021 is the increase of podcasts. Think about the following statistics:

  • In October 2020, there were 34 mil podcast episodes and over 1 . 5 million active displays.
  • In under three years, podcast listening in the usa has increased by over 60%.
  • Big-name companies like Apple company and Spotify are usually increasing their investments  in podcasts and audio platforms.
  • The podcast market is expected to reach more than 2 billion  by 2023, which means that marketers are getting ready to devote significant money and time to the channel.

So , why are podcasts so popular with customers? Firstly, there is something for everyone. With seventy two, 000  new shows per day (as proven in the graph below), the likelihood of finding a good episode that appeals to their interests is certainly incredibly high, regardless of whether it’s a secret tale or a real-life story about how a common business was constructed.

 

Second, podcasts feel like a discussion between the hosts and the listener. Rather than getting talked at, listeners feel they’re becoming talked to   and walked through the content in a more natural, human manner.

Businesses are investing in pod-casts because they bring substantial benefits: “Podcasts have the ability to drive real outcomes and pay off when it comes to leads and income, ” says  Zachary Bellinger, CRO in Casted. In fact , 53%  of podcast audience actually enjoy hearing ads during their hearing experience, and 61%  of consumers who listen to these ads on the podcast were more likely to purchase a featured item, helping drive company revenue.

Holly Shannon, Producer and Host of the Tradition Factor 2 . 0, says that podcasting is also a great way to use content to establish your company as a source of sector authority: “It can highlight you and your group as thought leaders. This allows you to talk authentically and provide your value towards the table for all to hear globally. ”

Featured Useful resource:   How to Start a Podcast for Your Business

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how to start a podcast guide cover photo

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5. Content personalization.

Craig Davis, Former Chief Creative Officer at J. Walter Thompson, says, “We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested within. ”

The focus for marketing experts in 2021 is definitely sharing content with consumers that is contextually highly relevant to their interests plus shown to them in the right time. This means that you study your own audience’s likes, needs, and desires and share content that you know will speak to them. In turn, you’ll build brand loyalty, drive conversions, and generate income.

An example of using this trend will be studying user behavior on your website. If you notice that a browser lingers on specific product pages and areas an item in their trolley, lead them to those pages or products the next time they visit your site.

6. Valuable content trumps the amount of content.

Since businesses pivoted to thoroughly digital experiences in 2020, it became more important than ever to deliver valuable content to consumers. This trend arises because, as consumers spent more and more period online, they see everything. If you publish three Instagram stories per day and your competitors only posted one, what does it issue if your content didn’t provide your target audience with any sort of worth?

“Never before has ensuring your audience obtains correct value from your brand meant so much, ”  says  Kelly Hendrickson, Social Media Marketing Manager on HubSpot. For example , suppose your content marketing strategy focuses on your social media channels. In that case, you worry less about posting multiple times per day but rather about ensuring that the content you do share offers genuine value for your customers.

Lab Muffin Beauty Technology, Michelle Wong’s  Youtube . com channel, follows this strategy. She only content once per week, and when she does, the videos are long-form, useful pieces of content that will teach her market about something highly relevant to their interests.

Lab Muffin Beauty Science youtube channel video list screen

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7. Hosting virtual events plus webinars.

The webinar is a video presentation, seminar, lecture, or workshop sent to an audience digitally. Despite once getting declared outdated, webinars have become extremely popular over the past year, again credited to COVID-19 health and safety regulations:

  • Web conferencing platform BrightTalk reported a 76%  increase in virtual events between March and June of 2020
  • ON24 saw the 167% YoY increase  in usage of their webinar tool.

Attending events digitally allowed consumers to carry on to interact with their favorite businesses and continue to keep derive value through presenters and industry leaders. As security restrictions are raised, webinars and virtual events are still here to stay — the global webinar market is anticipated to reach 800 million by 2023, up 253 million  through 2015.

The newest ‘work from home’ model makes this probable because of the convenience of attending an event from wherever a consumer is located. In addition, the added bonus of being able to entry content on-demand if they are recorded and shared.

HubSpot’s annual INBOUND  conference is usually an in-person occasion, but it has been virtual for the past two years. Although health and safety restrictions in the usa are being rolled back again, this event will still be the fulfilling, three-day virtual immersive experience.

HubSpot inbound 2021 conference website homepage featuring event attendees sitting in the audience

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8. Repurposing existing high-value content material.

As mentioned over, COVID-19 has pressed marketers towards prioritizing providing valuable articles over anything, plus repurposing content is really a way to do so.

Nash says, “I’m most excited to see how content teams repurpose content instead of starting from scratch. In 2021, content teams will start figuring out how to many effectively use content material from webinars, round tables, podcasts and conferences to stoke the content bonfire… We all don’t have to reinvent the wheel, bad it turning quicker. ”

Repurposing content is re-using your existing content and presenting it in a new structure. Essentially, since you’ve already created top quality, valuable content that you know your audience loves, you expand the reach.

You can repurpose content in a variety of ways, like developing a slide presentation  from the top-performing blog post, sharing screenshots of reviews from product webpages on your Instagram profile, or creating text transcripts of your podcasting episodes.

Holly Shannon is a fan  of repurposing podcasts because transcripts can be utilized as SEO-optimized blogs, and audio clips can be used as following social media posts. Glowing Up Podcast  has been doing something similar to Shannon’s recommendation, and they’ve repurposed their podcast if you take video of their documenting session and writing the clip on their Instagram page.

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A post shared simply by glowing up (@glowinguppodcast)

Stay Up-to-date On Your Sector

It’s essential to stay up-to-date on which is happening in your sector, and being aware of these trends is a way to do so. Should you choose in order to leverage one of these trends in your marketing strategy, ensure that it’s relevant to your company needs and will help you achieve your objectives.

If you want to learn more about the marketing industry, read this post about general marketing trends in 2021.

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