#3 Content Marketing Trends to Watch Out For in 2019 From being just a buzzword in 2011, content marketing has become the number one priority for the marketing department in 2019 and accounts for 36 per cent of a marketers' entire budget

More than 64per cent of SMEs expressed that their current marketing efforts weren't delivering results. However, out of the 36per cent who found success, 2 in 5 of them had invested in content marketing and the success was attributed to quality content, a well thought out content strategy, and right investment in content distribution channels. Investments in marketing should continue by SMEs as competition intensifies with bigger brands.

Content marketing trends will continue to adapt and evolve in 2019; giving companies opportunities to sustain their success. As B2B marketers, to stay ahead of the game in the constantly evolving landscape, look out for these three predictions in content marketing.

3 Key Trends You Will See in 2019

Artificial Intelligence Drove Content – Google's Digital News Initiative (DNI) supports innovation in European digital journalism. In 2017, Google invested more than $800,000 in the Press Association's initiative to generate news stories solely through the use of AI.

In this initiative, while journalists will be involved in spotting and creating stories, AI will be used to assist with massively increasing local stories that would otherwise be impossible to provide manually.

While content and creation and ideation are still not fully automatable, technology can be leveraged to understand your target audience better, map the content they are consuming and create content which they are looking to consume.

New Formats of Content – With consumption of content increasing on mobile platforms, the need of the hour is to develop a content strategy that is more refined and creates better customer engagement. Short case formats, Infographics, Videos are all new formats and are using motion graphics and animations in ways never imagined before.

However, companies need to continue investments the highly sought formats of ebooks, white papers, blogs are optimized for mobile platforms will see success in their omnichannel marketing strategies.

Interactive Content – The internet of things (IoT) has brought content to us through voice-controlled technology.

Through a deep understanding of consumer demographics and the way they want to use content, voice-activated software like Alexa and Siri are rising phenomenally in importance.

In order to experiment with this fairly new trend, brands need to consider if their audience is an adopter of voice-enabled devices if they can consistently produce high-quality audio content and if they are looking for a new channel to reach their audience.

ALigning Trends with Strategy

Many of the content marketing trends such as those listed above are already impacting our lives. Keeping abreast of the trends and aligning the objectives of the business with the evolving needs of the consumers, identifying the right partner who can help brands achieve such desired outcomes is what will result in a successful content marketing strategy for SMEs.