Content marketing is king when it comes to bringing attention to a brand and attracting consumers to purchase a service or product. The evolution of technology and digital marketing over the past decade and beyond has granted organizations access to target markets through online avenues such as search engine optimization, social media, public reviews, and audience relations.
Everest Business Funding, a leader in the revenue-based finance industry and trusted small business partner, states that since this digital door has been opened, consumers have greater expectations for brands to engage with them through interesting, valuable, and relevant content. The elevating expectation of consumers over the past decade has led to the explosion of online content marketing. Check out the breakdown of digital content marketing’s growth below:
It started with Google
Compared to today’s marketing world, ten years ago was a much less complicated time. When looking a decade back, there were fewer options in technology, such as fewer smartphone choices available, and connecting with others over the internet was nowhere near the level it operates on in 2023. In addition, think about the amount of information that has been added to the world wide web over the past ten years, especially when online content marketing really started to boom. What particularly added to the growth of content marketing was businesses meeting the online content formula for ROI success with continuous valuable content high in quality and quantity.
Then came social media
In 2013, social media came up to bat and boosted the growth of online content marketing to shape it into how we know it today. Social media started as a way for people to stay connected with friends and family, which is still the case in 2023. However, social media remains that and much more as it has become a full-blown media outlet where multi-million dollar businesses are branding themselves and focusing a large portion of their marketing efforts towards the social media space. Forbes notes that today’s social media platforms host over 3.6 billion users.
The rise of influencers on social media played a role in building today’s online content marketing, too, and is still a popular marketing strategy utilized for content marketing and displaying brands.
Cue the addition of visual messaging
From videos to memes, visual messaging became a marketing strategy gold mine as more consumers reacted quickly to powerful brand marketing. Fast and effective visual messaging is the bread and butter of successful social media content and aided in creating a large focus and approach to online content marketing strategies. Search engine optimization, or SEO, also grew to shape how marketing teams look at and use keywords, messaging, and branding tactics.
And the increase in mobile device use
The evidence is clear by simply looking around in a 2023 public space: people are avid users of their mobile devices. In comparison to 2017, Statista shares that global mobile data traffic will be seven times more in today’s world. The drastic increase in mobile device use has optimized content marketing strategies when having to deliver proactive messaging across multiple devices for a successful online content marketing campaign.