Thursday, 18 February 2016 01:30

Marketing Thought: Content Marketing & Marketing Automation in 2016

We discussed content marketing and marketing automation two years ago. With 42%-46% of marketing budgets expected to go into content development this year, we thought it made sense to revisit how digital best practices will impact your business in 2016.

Content Marketing: The Job Focus

Content marketing requires thoughtful strategy, planning, process and timely execution across multiple platforms. While we emphasize strategy and planning as the most important step to managing brand awareness, scalability tends to be the biggest pain among marketing teams to accomplish this.

Marketers simply do not have the capacity to follow best practices. In fact, only 44% of B2B marketers can benchmark and define the success of their content marketing efforts. Due to the overwhelming responsibilities that go into content marketing, many companies now hire a dedicated person internally or look to hire a full-service marketing agency to manage their content strategy.

Marketing Automation: Tracking Your Digital Footprint

Marketing automation tools like Marketo and Pardot are the disruptive technology worth learning. Automation is key to managing content, tracking process, executing tasks, and measuring the success of marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Marketing teams who maximize the full potential of marketing automation software are better equipped to leverage the data that is collected. Marketers are able to analyze results from each campaign to gain broader insights into their target audience's buying behavior. Furthermore, marketers can then apply their insights to the next level of their strategy and planning.

Content Marketing & Marketing Automation Trends in 2016

Content marketing and marketing automation is no easy task. But here are some trends to look forward to:

  • Algorithm updates will reward quality of content versus quantity of keywords. Spam tactics will be rewarded less and audiences will get more relevant content.

  • Small businesses will adopt marketing automation. We will see an increase in marketing automation tools that are more accessible to small businesses and not just the big and mighty.

  • Once your foundation is established, it’s easier to adapt and refresh your strategy as the market changes.



Contact us to learn more about how FiG can help with your content marketing strategy.