2016 Content Marketing Trends
2016, officially halfway through the 2nd decade of the century, will be highlighted by content marketing trends that will unsettle the most dedicated practitioner. If you are one of those practitioners be prepared to handle more push back on your content marketing and inbound marketing strategies than you have ever experienced. The good news is that there are simple steps to take that will not only improve your approach to your content marketing efforts but build a stronger relationship between sales and marketing.
2016 Content Marketing Trends
Sales Demands Speed and Support
Sales teams don’t trust content marketing, especially business to business sales teams. 2016 will be the year that sales will voice their concerns more loudly. What they want is content that aligns to the natural ebb and flow of their sales process. They want to accelerate their deals and retire more of their quota in less time. If your content marketing plan or inbound marketing efforts are not well aligned to the sales team’s process the criticism will be slow to recede.
Deal Only Content
In response to the demands of the sales team, 2016 will likely be a year in which content is created not only for driving leads into the marketing funnel but to push actual deals closer to close. This content development will manifest itself in content that connects the company’s narrative to the practical and tangible application of the company’s solution. Think more story based demos for SaaS companies, and detailed customer success stories that illustrate how their value was realized.
Content Directors
Companies will realize in 2016 that they can no longer get by placing a junior resource in charge of directing the development of content. The role of a Senior Content Director will be more broadly adopted. The responsibilities of this position will be to orchestrate the editorial calendar against the key themes for the year, the demand generation goals, and the sales support objectives. The director will be a strategic senior position that manages and directs creative, production, distribution and public relations, cares for the marketing automation system, monitors the quality of the lead generation, and reconciles the content against the demands of the sales team.
The Best Get Serious About Smart Content
SaaS companies, especially in the business to business space, can no longer invest in the broad sales support infrastructure relied upon during the on-premise software heydays. Content can be used to address the demands of prospects early in the deal cycle, and content markeing professionals will respond by paying closer attention to how content is served up to these potential prospects as they do their own discovery. This functionality exists in most marketing automation systems but is exploited mostly on retail sights. 2016 will be the year that business to business inbound marketing and content marketing plans include focused efforts on serving up the right content at the right time.
More Agency Work Will be Brought In-house
There is a marketing agency services gap that frustrates many business leaders. The desire is to have more embedded partners that internalize the strategy and operate beyond mere creative or technical delivery specialists. 2016 will see many of the functions that have been traditionally outsourced brought in-house. Public relations and creative are key components of a well-executed content marketing and inbound marketing plan, and leaders will seriously consider hiring the talent needed to deliver against the plan rather than to seek a 3rd party provider.
Content Will Bleed Into Customer Service
The demand for SaaS companies to decrease their churn rates, or professional services companies to protect their margin, will drive an effort to better leverage content that is solely focused on improving the customer experience. Companies that are successful in doing so will find a way to connect the improved customer experience to more sales-focused contents development efforts.
