Content marketing isn't just a fad. In fact, 89 percent of B2B marketers are using content marketing as a way to increase leads and drive their brand. Online is an evolving world, and if your company doesn't evolve with it, your brand will be left behind. Plain and simple. To help keep your company stay on the cusp of innovation and give you a competitive edge, we've rounded up the top content marketing trends of 2018 you should pay attention to.

Remarketing 

On average, it takes six-to-eight touches with a prospective customer before they become a viable lead. Conversion rates increase with more ad impressions, meaning the more a lead sees the ad, the more likely they are to convert. Just like a follow-up email, re-viewing an ad is a digital version of making multiple touches with a lead. One way you can remarket your digital ads is by creating a custom Facebook audience. You could offer a discount coupon to individuals who have visited your site but haven’t signed up for email or downloaded an offer. Specifying who sees your ad is like bowling a strike. You're hitting all the right angles and have the potential to score big by re-engaging target audiences.

Natural Content

Think voice search. Voice searches already make up 20% of Google searches on mobile. According to one study, 71 percent of 18 - 29-year-olds are using voice assistants compared to just 39 percent of 44 - 53-year-olds. Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri aren’t going anywhere soon. If anything, they will be more prevalent in the years to come which means marketers better listen up! Traditionally, content is created with keywords and phrases that make search engines happy. But, the way people speak is different than keyword searches. Content needs to adapt to natural language and focus on answering questions the way human beings do.

For example, lets take things like your content titles and phrases. If you are writing a blog about content marketing best practices you would phrase it as though someone was asking Siri, "What are content marketing best practices?” not “Best practices for content marketing." If you're having trouble coming up with a natural sounding title, think about how others would talk about your content topic and determine your keywords from that conversation. 

Itty Bitty

I'm not talking about a yellow polka dot bikini. I'm talking about content. Through the years, there has been a steady incline in blog post length because it ranks better in search engine results. But millennials, who make up 21 percent of the market, are looking for bite-sized content.

According to the Content Preferences Survey, webinars are preferred by 64 percent of millennial B2B buyers and infographics by 59 percent when making decisions. Smaller portioned content allows the viewer to read the entirety of the post and attain the information they are looking for in a short time. As a business, longer content may sound like a good practice but it's harder to keep readers engaged. And we want more than engagement, we want conversion.

To implement this is pretty simple and straightforward. If you think about it, you already create snackable content through social media posts. A quick social graphic takes the place of a 2,000 word blog while still getting the same point across. Infographics are another great way to organize a lot of information into a digestible meal for the consumer. We know readers are sick of lengthy overview posts with flimsy, regurgitated insights. They want actionable knowledge and they want it quick. Bite-sized content is a way to do just that.

Video 

It has risen and will continue to rise! On average, adults spent 78 minutes per day with digital video content in 2012. In the past year, young adults spent an average of 177 minutes per day watching video. That’s a 127 percent increase, and it's all on mobile devices. This may be blunt, but if you aren’t investing in video, you’re digging your own grave.

Video can seem daunting and unfriendly to your budget, but I assure you there are ways to create video content without breaking the bank. Apps like Facebook and Instagram have a live video feature. This is a great way to connect to your audience quickly, share your brand, and engage viewers in your business. In 2017, 80 percent of consumers reported they would rather watch a live video than read a blog post. Livestream, a video streaming platform, conducted a survey and found that 82 percent of the respondents preferred to watch a brand’s live video than scroll through their social posts. Something as simple as a behind the scenes clip can develop trust with your customer base, which draws 87 percent of audiences online versus traditional television.

Every day, two million blog posts are written. Standing out amongst the crowd is becoming increasingly difficult. Bite-sized content, video, and natural language are leading the trends in content marketing and marketers will turn to remarketing to reach their prospective customers, especially in B2B. What are you doing to stay ahead?