How Will Recovery and Reopening Impact Content Marketing?

The global content marketing market is expected to grow by $269.24 billion USD by 2024, according to new data by Technavio.

As the desire for great, useful content continues to expand, it’s important to question how the reopening of the world and recovery of the market will impact content marketing moving forward.

Three big predictions? The need for even more personalized content, the continued dominance of social media, and more content that appeals to consumer values, ethics, and morals.

More personalization

As the market recovers and the world reopens, experts predict that highly personalized, ultra-targeted content will be more important – and in demand – than ever before.

“It’s no secret that personalization has become a key indicator of brand success. Even before the pandemic, we knew data and personalized marketing would be essential for brands looking to build solid, long-term relationships with their customers,” explains Daniel Newman in Forbes. Still, when the pandemic forced brands to ditch nearly everything for digital platforms, personalization became an even more dominant force.”

In fact, for many customers personalization is now considered a “basic expectation” based on the annual Twilio Segment report.

For content marketers and businesses, this means the collection and analysis of customer data will be of the utmost importance this year and beyond. And to that extent, expect the collection and analysis of how consumers interact with different kinds of content to also be of top concern.

Bottom line? In the future, more personalized content will become the norm for savvy content marketers looking to snag more views, clicks, customers, and sales.

An appeal to values

Secondly, as the world recovers from 2020, many consumers have witnessed a shift in values, ethics, and morals.

Now, for content marketing to hit the mark, information must be useful, relevant, and mesh with a customer’s personal values, morals, or ethics.

“Marketing messages need to be personally relevant, aligned to an individual’s situation and values, as opposed to demographics, such as age and gender. Creating a personal, human connection within any commercial message requires defining consumer segments that describe people according to multiple dimensions that influence their purchasing behavior — from their psychographics to attitudinal characteristics,” explains Janet Balis in Harvard Business Review.

The EY Future Consumer Index discovered five different groups of consumers, post-2020:

1. Affordability first: 32% of consumers are most concerned about sticking to a budget
2. Health first: 25% of consumers want to protect their health and their family’s health above all else
3. Planet first: 16% of consumers are concerned about the environment and want to make green, low-impact purchases the most
4. Society first: 15% of consumers most want to support businesses that are fighting for equality and justice
5. Experience first: 12% of consumers want to spend on experiences, rather than objects

Moving ahead, expect businesses to want to spend the most on targeted content marketing that can appeal to consumer values or ethical judgements.

Major social media

Finally, as the market recovers and the world reopens experts also predict the continued importance and dominance of superior social media content in impactful content marketing.

During 2020’s stay-at-home orders and with the shuttering of many businesses, consumers spent more time than ever looking at screens and using social media to stay connected to far flung family, friends, and work colleagues.

However, this increased screen time did not necessarily translate to a consumer desire for more engagement with businesses on social media.

“Many brands made the mistake of trying to capitalize on the increased social media activity during the pandemic, completely overlooking the fact that people primarily wanted to connect with each other, not brands…In 2021, marketers will strive to place more value on content over engagement—passive audiences are still consuming your content,” explains MarketingWeek.

For content marketers, this means now is the time to focus on producing and sharing the most relevant and interesting content possible on social media, rather than engagement.

This year and beyond

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted every facet of daily life. Now, as more become vaccinated, the world reopens, and the market recovers it’s important to remember 2020 will continue to impact life moving ahead.

For content marketers this will likely mean a shift to even more personalized content, a demand for more values-driven campaigns and content, and a return to focusing on social media content over social media engagement.