“There’s a problem with the way we’ve been taught to market and sell—it no longer matches how buyers buy things.” - Drift.
Content overload, jarring pitchy sales and fake news. Feeling a bit fatigued by it all? Hopefully, you’re not one of the businesses approaching their content marketing with a gentle sweep of the hand and zero concern for impact or return.
You might not have a massive marketing budget but that doesn’t mean you can / should be publishing stuff that isn’t relevant or valuable for your audience. And as audience needs change with every year a new member of a new generation enters your market, you must adapt or risk becoming as irrelevant as the poorly-thought-out content you produce.
Here are three ways I see content marketing changing in 2020.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
1. Authenticity guides marketing
‘Authenticity’ might be the most overused word in business branding these days, and it may give you the voms on sight, but it’s also the thing consumers, employees and your community will demand of you in 2020.
Where the millennials were all about values-alignment and purpose, the Gen Zs expect transparency and authenticity when engaging with brands, and this will flow through everything.
It’s time to get real.
Here are three ways you can demonstrate authenticity:
Conversational marketing
Move away from lead forms and lengthy sales funnels that are too business-centric and not customer-centric, and revamp the way you talk to your visitors. Conversational marketing helps you engage with your customers in a more authentic and conversational way through the use of chatbots and instant messaging. When you can nail your brand voice and have this flow through your text chats – WOW – magic happens.
Own your strengths and limitations
Find out what your customers / clients / employees love about you and also why they leave. Identify the consistencies and use these in your marketing messages to attract *and* repel.
Example –
A tiny tech start-up who has a killer culture and employee-empowered L&D but CAN’T pay top salaries to compete with the global giants? Own that. Better yet, let your employees own it on their social profiles, too.
“It’s less about convincing [candidates] and more about showing.” - Workable
Embrace employee & customer advocacy lovingly
Hootsuite predicts progressive organisations will amplify their company purpose and culture through employee and customer advocacy, stemming from enhanced brand experiences. We’ve learned to distrust traditional advertising and smarmy executive types, so word of mouth and community referrals are gold. Trust and encourage employees to speak your truth.
2. Content marketing gets (more) serious
In this polluted online world where rubbish content piles up in dark corners attracting swarms of flies, the production of quality, valued content for wiser audiences will demand bigger budgets. Smarter businesses are re-visiting their content marketing strategy for ROI instead of publishing without purpose.
Results-focused
Content marketing might be one of the biggest investments your business will make because it’s a long-form game. Advertising and promotional posts lead to direct sales, but content marketing is about building relationships with quality leads over time (meaning it can be difficult to measure). I’ve heard of some businesses throwing the little money they have at content creation without starting with strategy and then question why they haven’t made a sale. Moving forward, marketers will only look at content creation for ROI; content that provides value to customers and the business so it can meet the long-term goals.
Refresh and reuse quality content
Double down on your high-performing content pieces (the stuff that’s already been published and racked up some hits), and optimise them with updated links and information.
Google will consider audience hits, engagement and quality back-linking when ranking pages, so driving more traffic to a recycled high-performing year-old post could do more for your SEO than a new lame one. Once you’ve updated the post, share it again on your socials and in emails for new players or as a reminder.
Long-form blogs over listicles?
Bigger brands are moving to a less is more approach. That is focusing on longer blog articles published with less frequency that attract higher audience views than the twice-a-week short listicle-styled blog. Depending on your content strategy, maybe you’ll benefit from a bit of both.
Which is right for you?
A new business trying to build brand awareness and followers might do better from regular short form content, initially. An established business looking to convert followers with authoritative content might benefit from longer form posts.
The beauty of strategy is in the eye of the beholder, so do what works for your business, making sure that what you’re posting aligns with business goals 😉
3. Recruiters think like marketers to create shareable candidate experiences
One for the recruiters, but candidate experience here can also be applied to consumer experience.
It’s the candidate’s market and employers must establish ways they can stand out. In 2020, candidate experience will continue driving employer branding and marketing as more employers look to create the kinds of experiences candidates willingly share on their social feeds and employer review sites, like Glassdoor.
The super bonus of a shareable candidate experience is that you’ll be building a pool of eager and engaged talent, which should make hiring easier the next time ‘round.
Here are a few ways you could use content to create shareable candidate experiences during recruitment:
AI and chatbots – conversational critters that are helpful and fun to engage with that communicate the employer brand, culture and app process at the pre-application stage. You can outsource chatbot scripting to good writers who can personalise your bot’s voice to fit your brand.
Realistic and engaging job ads - sad that this even needs to be mentioned, but the more upfront and honest you are about your roles and workplace in your job ads and recruitment marketing activities, the more likely you are to attract the right people to apply. While it might be tempting to promise the world to attract the ‘best of the best’, if they won’t enjoy working with you, then, they’re not the best for you. Take your job ads up a notch and include videos and virtual office tours for a more accurate insight.
Recruitment and/or employer blogs - make information available to potential candidates that explains your recruitment process, workplace culture and mission, and latest achievements that help them understand the kind of work that happens behind the scenes. This helps attract the right folk and repel the wrong folk, while also making you look super helpful.
Better candidate communication – ditch the hideous CMS-generated application update templates (e.g. – “Thanks for applying, you’ll hear from someone in the department shortly”, and/or “We regret to inform you’ve been unsuccessful. K, thanks, bye!”) and create personable, valuable email conversations that keep candidates informed of their application progress and that share insights into company and culture to help them make their decision at the offer stage. You can refer them to all those relevant new blog articles you’ve just written!
*** And in case I need to clarify, I am talking about positive candidate experiences, here – because you sure don’t want the alternative; your arch-enemy, the negative experience, where disgruntled, poorly treated ex-candidates jump online and say all the bad things about your brand (hard to come back from that).
What d’ya reckon? Easy peasy?
If you’re ready to power-up your content in 2020 but lack the expertise or time to make it happen, get in touch.