Top Content Marketing Campaigns & Trends to Know (With Examples)

Recent content marketing trends that shaped content marketing and 25 examples of great content marketing campaigns in recent times!

Your success as a freelance creative or as a content marketer depends in many ways on your ability to stay informed about the most current content marketing trends and examples. Of course, your greatest challenge might be the lack of time you have to devote to keeping up on the news.

To stay up to date, you need look no further than this curated monthly update to learn about the news and topics that will be most valuable for you. A quick glance at our roundup once a month will give you a solid foundation to keep you in the know for the coming days and weeks ahead, without getting lost in the noise.

Recent content marketing trends:

1. Honda uses ‘Engine Room’ content hub to shift focus to storytelling.

Honda has, ahem, shifted gears in its content marketing practices to now focus more of its efforts on creating content that specializes in telling unique stories — rather than short, splashy bursts of information as the company has done in the past. At the Festival of Marketing conference, Honda digital content and social media section manager Nick Bennett shared that the company decided 16 months ago it wanted to focus on a content hub where it could share all of its storytelling content.

The result of this effort is a hub known as “Honda Engine Room.” Within this hub, Honda owners and would-be Honda owners have the opportunity to consume and share more than 140 pieces of storytelling content. Bennett said that because it is becoming increasingly difficult to utilize organic social media, the concept of utilizing a combination of paid, owned and earned channels is more important than ever before.

2. You really need to develop a conversational marketing strategy.

More than 4 in 5 customers say the service you provide is as important as the product you sell. If your customer service does not extend in effective ways into digital spheres, you might be risking the success of your business. In order to provide customers with the experience they desire, you must have a robust conversational marketing strategy in place.

In a comparison of person-to-person contact and chatbot contact, researchers found that the expectations of personal and digital solutions are nearly identical. For example, 44 percent of survey respondents say that they expect a response within five seconds when corresponding with a human. Similarly, 42 percent say they expect a response within five seconds when dealing with a chatbot. Likewise, in a comparison of 2018 responses to 2019 responses, people expect quicker response times in online live chats and chatbots in 2019.

3. Observations from Mozilla’s 18-month departure from Facebook, Instagram.

Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mozilla executives decided their commitment to user privacy was more important than their ability to target Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users. Therefore, the company ceased using Facebook-owned platforms in its marketing efforts. Although this may seem like it would seriously hamper Mozilla’s marketing efforts, the company claims otherwise.

Instead of utilizing Facebook properties for advertising, Mozilla is using Google-owned properties. Likewise, the company has utilized non-digital marketing efforts to promote its services. For example, it has a traveling display that combines elements of an art exhibit with a pop-up store to show users what happens with their data online. For its content marketing efforts, Mozilla has developed a series of podcasts, known as IRL, that tell stories of internet privacy and consumption.

4. See YouTube’s 10 best 6-second ads in the past 12 months.

Creating a memorable video is hard. Creating a memorable video in 6 seconds is insanely hard. However, it can be done — and it can be done well. In fact, not only does YouTube want you to know it can be done — it wants you to see examples of the best 6-second bumper ads so you can be successful too.

The company developed a creative rating test to determine the top videos, then used an algorithm that counted total views and engagement.

Based on these criteria, here are the top 10 YouTube 6-second bumper ads in the last year:

1. Subaru

2. Frito-Lay

3. Eggo Waffles

4. Halls

5. Charmin

6. Hershey’s

7. Reese’s

8. Frigidaire

9. Cheetos

10. Dove

5. Like it or not, Facebook likes Instagram’s plan to hide likes.

It looks like Instagram’s test of removing public-facing likes is gaining traction with Facebook as well. Facebook confirmed it is experimenting with likes to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong in early September. Currently, Facebook’s experiment consists of hiding likes to those who come across others’ content, however, users can continue to see the like count for their own Facebook posts.

Facebook hasn’t said much about this test — but it doesn’t need to. The impact will be obvious. If you have been reliant on Facebook likes anywhere in your marketing strategy as a “showcase” of the popularity of your content, you may need to rethink your social media strategy to ensure that each piece of content is engaging on its own without relying on empty likes.

6. Facebook’s ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ tool will have major impact on your ads.

After Mark Zuckerberg first officially teased a new tool earlier this year that would allow Facebook users to have more control of their data, the social behemoth has now officially rolled out the tool in South Korea, Spain and Ireland.

The tool, known as “Off-Facebook Activity,” allows Facebook users to determine how much of their information they want to share with potential advertisers. In essence, those who utilize this new tool make it nearly impossible for Facebook, Messenger or Instagram to target ads at audiences based on their web browsing data.

7. See what’s trending with email marketing.

A recent analysis of four billion emails in 126 countries found some interesting information that can help email marketers in understanding current trends for the remainder of 2019.

The following items are included among some of the findings:

• The three most effective words to use in an email subject line are “ebook,” “PDF,” and “newsletter.”

• Double opt-in emails are resulting in higher open rates and shares, while decreasing the risk of security threats.

• Email marketers who send newsletters weekly have a higher clickthrough rate than those who send more often.

• Auto-responder emails that include something like a “welcome” or a “thank you” along with a link for meaningful content have nearly a 90 percent open rate.

8. Six modern tactics to advertise to today’s attention-deficient audiences.

Thanks to technology, the average human attention span is about 8 seconds. This means that if you aren’t quickly grabbing a user’s interest with your content, they will rarely make it to your call-to-action. Visiture Chief Marketing Officer Ronald Dod shared in an article for Marketing Land six strategies for advertising to an audience that is predisposed to not pay attention.

1. Clarity is king. Keep things simple and create an anchor point toward which users gravitate. For example, show a problem your product solves or focus on a new feature.

2. Know the platforms. Tailor the ad content for the platforms on which it will be published. The more you do things the way a platform owner recommends, the more likely your ad content will stick.

3. Keep video in its place. Video can be an effective tool for ads, but consider the length and the depth of the videos and your audience’s desire to consume.

4. Split up your content. Keep things bite-sized rather than super-sized.

5. Personalize. Send targeted ads that are likely to be highly relevant to your audience.

6. Leave an impression. Visual aids and interactive elements can help.

9. Podcasts may soon be a major consideration in your SEO strategy.

Google has announced that it is making serving up podcasts in search results an important part of its search functionality. Users who now search for a topic and the term “podcast” will find playable podcast episodes directly in the search results, alongside the images, articles and videos one would expect.

Additionally, Google Podcasts Product Manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen said in a blog post that soon users won’t even need to search for the term “podcasts,” as serving up relevant, playable podcasts will become a regular function in Google’s search results.

10. Financial Times using newsletter polls to increase retention.

In an effort to encourage its readers to interact more with its email newsletters, Financial Times has started to insert polls into its First FT newsletter. Early results indicate that these polls are helping increase subscriber retention.

Financial Times has run more than two dozen polls in its email newsletter — which has more than 100,000 subscribers — since March.

During that time, the company has seen the polls drive the highest click-through rate to its articles. For now, the publisher is mostly focusing on “yes” or “no” polls, though it expects to branch out into developing broader poll questions soon.

11. Chase sees surprising results from marketing copywriting machines.

Three years ago, Chase began testing a pilot program with Persado, a company that uses artificial intelligence to draft marketing copy. Thanks to the results of this pilot program, Chase announced in late July that it has signed a five-year deal with Persado to expand its services in more of the company’s marketing efforts.

According to Chase, the copy written by Persado consistently led to more clicks from users than the marketing copy written by humans. In some instances, the AI-written copy received twice as many clicks as its human-written counterpart.

12. Facial recognition advertising brings opportunities, concerns.

A new facial recognition tool being tested in Walgreens stores may have a great impact on all digital marketers in the upcoming years. The tool is a cooler door that includes cameras, sensors and digital screens for the purpose of developing smart displays to target individual customers who approach the cooler.

The cameras are able to determine a shopper’s gender and age range as well as how long a shopper stands in front of the door. The technology can also pair this data with external information — like what the temperature outside is — and determine what kinds of ads to serve to shoppers to promote specific items found inside the cooler doors.

Some have expressed concerns with this sort of facial recognition technology. Critics question how accurate the recommendations will be, fear the perpetuation of overstimulation, and wonder if customers will develop banner blindness similar to online ads. On the other hand, this technology clearly has limitless possibilities for marketers.

13. Google tiptoes back into the world of social networking.

Based on the debacle that was Google+, you may not expect Google to jump too quickly into the world of social media — and the company isn’t. Instead, it is testing a new sort of social network that ties people of like interests together and subsequently facilitate real-world connections. The app, known as Shoelace, is currently only available in New York City. App users can show interest in types of activities and the app then recommends daily activities they can join in.

The marketing implications are clear: Marketers may have the potential to develop events to include on the app or sponsor ads on the app to rein in potential customers. However, currently there is no indication of when the app will be opened up to marketers — or if/when it will make it out of New York City.

14. Instagram expands effort to remove public like counts.

How does your brand measure success on social media? Do you take “likes” into account? A trend to remove public “like” counts is gaining steam and may change how people — and brands — view “success” on social media.

In May, Instagram first tested removing the public like counts from some posts in Canada. In a recent tweet, the company announced it was expanding the test to hide public like counts for some users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand.

Instagram said the test would not affect measurement tools for businesses, but time will tell if not having a public display of “likes” will cause more — or fewer — likes on-brand Instagram posts.

15. Gatorade’s newest AR experiment is an extension of its “video everywhere” strategy.

Gatorade has not shied away from utilizing new technologies — including augmented reality — in its marketing efforts. The company’s latest augmented reality venture — a Snapchat lens — focuses on allowing users to use their rear-facing camera to become part of a world where the sole focus is a soccer ball.

Gatorade representative Jill Abbott says this new venture is simply a part of Gatorade’s “video everywhere” strategy — which calls for the brand to think less about premium, online, and linear videos and instead consider how its videos can be wherever its athlete audience is.