Brands and agencies across the web leverage content marketing to engage with their audiences and drive sales. It can take many forms including SEO, social media marketing, and newsletters.
Over the past couple of years, content marketing has evolved rapidly, thanks to disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence.
2024 is no different. From different AI models that can help agency content marketing teams produce content faster to the increased demand for hyper-personalization, things have changed.
This has impacted how content marketing teams work together and with clients (in the case of agencies) and the nature of the content they produce. Now it’s more essential than ever to stay updated to make the most out of content marketing efforts.
In this article, let’s look at the state of agency content marketing in 2024 to determine the best way forward for brand promotion.
Key Trends Shaping Agency Content Marketing in 2024
Marketers are getting better at implementing AI technologies within their workflows to create convincing content. Research suggests that 76% of businesses have had AI content ranked at least once since adoption.
90% of the marketers who got a positive ROI from video content marketing are considering increasing their budget in 2024. AI video tools like Synthesia and HeyGen are making it easier for businesses to keep production costs low.
However, there are still challenges that pose roadblocks in agency content marketing workflows that affect the ROI of promotional efforts. 59% of marketers, for instance, accept that they are finding it difficult to predict evolving consumer needs.
Additionally, 35% of marketers report difficulties in achieving and maintaining alignment with sales efforts. This is also exacerbated by the data overload caused by multiple dashboards and reports from different agency content marketing tools.
Fortunately, specialized platforms such as Storychief.io centralize content production making it simpler for marketers to create, approve, and publish content. Moreover, high-performance marketing software like SEO crawlers and website content analyzers speed up workflows (ranging from technical SEO to content production) for agencies.
Brands also need to optimize their content for AI and conversational voice search. 24% of consumers in 12 markets revealed that AI search tools helped them find the right information. Although it’s still less than traditional search, it’s something to keep in mind for the future.
Data-Driven Strategies in Agency Content Marketing
Modern marketing software has made it easier for teams to have a pulse on the current trends, monitor audience behavior, and track their content’s performance. This takes the guesswork out of content marketing and facilitates three broad data-driven strategies.
1. Real-time analytics
Content marketing teams in agencies and businesses can know whether an ad, blog article or social media post resonates with their audience within a couple of days if not hours. Affordable tools like Sprout Social and Google Analytics streamline the reporting process further.
This opens the door for quick iterations and agility enabling agency content marketing teams to capitalize on the latest trends. Whether it is modifying the message or targeting a different segment, all can be done on the fly.
Key metrics marketers need to track to gauge the efficacy of their content performance include views, engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Engagement could mean both reactions and comments and conversion rates can be sign-ups, demo requests, or purchases.
2. Cross-platform research
Audiences are now distributed across various platforms to learn, connect, and pass time. This makes it essential for marketers to keep an eye on important platforms for their business and forums and communities across the web.
Constantly monitoring trends and consumer interests across platforms allows marketers to create content on relevant and popular topics. These kinds of content usually give better returns considering the likelihood of engagement increases.
Moreover, being active on different platforms is pivotal for learning which of them is most effective for interacting with their audience. Tools such as BuzzSumo, SimilarWeb, and SparkToro can help with this.
3. Audience segmentation
As we briefly touched upon earlier, consumers across the web are looking for content personalized to their unique tastes. This has made it essential for agency content marketers to segment their audiences based on various factors such as demographics, psychographics, etc.
Breaking audience members into different groups and subgroups makes it easier to create personalized content targeting the preferences and needs of everyone. Additionally, although the overall volume of content created increases, the ROI of each content piece can increase.
Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions speed up the process of segmenting an existing audience. All of the data about the prospect and their past engagement history can help agency content marketing professionals break their audiences down.
Improve Collaboration with Content Marketing Teams: 5 Best Practices
Content marketing teams in agencies use multiple tools to complete various action items in their workflows. On top of that, they are constantly communicating project updates with the relevant stakeholders.
Inefficient collaboration can slow content production down massively while affecting its quality. Apart from a decreased ROI, teams will also have to deal with frustration. The five best practices below can help agency content marketers navigate these challenges effectively:
1. Use unified communication tools
Unified communication tools are collaboration platforms that do more than just relay a message or an update to others. They often integrate advanced capabilities such as approval workflows, project management, and video conferencing.
Content marketing teams in agencies and businesses can both finish relevant action items and keep everyone on the same page. This reduces the number of administrative tasks, which allows marketers to focus more on strategy optimization and content creation.
Popular options include Trello, Slack, and Microsoft Teams where teams can also share files, consolidate information, and of course, communicate in different ways.
2. Be agile
Agile content marketing teams work in short sprints, look at the impact, reassess the goals, and iterate their approach before starting the next sprint. Typically, a sprint for agency content marketing teams lasts from a couple of weeks to a month.
The key advantages of an agile content marketing approach for agencies include faster response times, reduced production costs, and flexibility.
Cross-functional teams, a lightweight tech stack, and a minimalistic content creation process are essential for reaching and retaining agility. Additionally, teams should hold regular stand-up meetings, discuss roadblocks, and share feedback to be proactive.
3. Centralize data across teams
It’s no surprise that marketing teams are using more and more kinds of tools to promote their brand which come with their own analytics features. This can make it challenging to gain complete visibility across a particular campaign.
Moreover, consolidating reports to gather insights will take longer as teams will manually need to pull the data from each of the software every single time. This also increases the chances of miscommunications and oversights.
A great solution here can be to build a single source of truth with tools like Segment, mParticle, and Tealium. However, a better alternative is to bring the entire content marketing workflow into one comprehensive platform.
Storychief.io is a collaborative workspace for cross-functional and high-performing marketing teams. Everything from topic ideation to draft approval for publication and tracking content performance can be done in one place.
4. Educate employees
While discussing the key content marketing trends for 2024 above, we mentioned the growing importance of AI tools and other advanced software. Agencies and businesses alike are adopting these solutions to produce quality content faster.
To make the most out of these technologies, agencies and businesses need to empower their content marketing teams with the right resources. How-to videos, eBooks, and live training sessions are some effective ways to educate content marketing teams.
Additionally, teams should create a safe space where they can experiment with different software, workflow, principles, and techniques to continue growing.
Agency Content Marketing Success Stories in 2024
We have collected three agency content marketing success stories that show how applying some of the above best practices and strategies can improve the ROI of promotional efforts.
1. CrossCast streamlining content management
CrossCast, a talent pool of marketing operations professionals, was struggling with collaboration issues that affected productivity. The content marketing team was lost in between all the tools in their tech stack which slowed down progress.
They needed to streamline their workflow and shed some tools off of their tech stack. This would allow them to spend less time on administrative tasks.
CrossCast did just that with Storychief.io and saved 80% of the time spent on their overall content management process. They were producing quality content too. This led to a 25% increase in content engagement.
2. MindTheGraph mastering the basics
Agency content marketing also comes with a few low-hanging fruits. These are easy or simple fixes that yield significant returns. And that’s what MindTheGraph, a SaaS infographic tool, focused on to grow their organic reach.
After bolstering the site architecture, writing quality content, and earning backlinks from reputed websites, MindTheGraph achieved a 217% increase in organic traffic. Moreover, they also eliminated a handful of spammy backlinks which boosted their domain authority even more.
The basic search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing foundations helped them rank for 10,000 keywords.
3. Call of Duty leveraging influencers
Call of Duty League (CDL) is an online multiplayer game that collaborated with influencers in the gaming industry to gain more players. These influencers created video content for various platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok which increased engagement and subscription by 32%.
The influencers demonstrated everything from the gameplay to the new player customization opportunities which created a buzz among the gaming audience. This also made it easier for the new players to achieve the same objectives quickly.
Influencer-led agency content marketing strategy leverages the trust and credibility of digital creators to motivate the audience to make a purchase.
Wrapping up
Based on the trends so far, agency content marketing is set to increase the adoption of AI for various action items. Teams also need to optimize their content to make it more interactive and engaging.
Additionally, more users are gravitating toward AI chatbots for conducting online research. Businesses and agencies alike should optimize their content for AI retrieval and conversational voice search.
Real-time analytics, cross-platform research, and audience segmentation help produce content that is in demand, caters to different audiences, and is personalized.
To make the most of these modern tools and workflows, agency content marketing teams need to use unified communication tools, remain proactive to external factors, encourage data visibility, and always be learning.
Agencies have leveraged various strategies to drive great results in terms of visibility and conversion. Keep in mind that these strategies and their implementation methods vary greatly. It could be as simple as restructuring site content or as meticulous as an influencer campaign.
StoryChief.io helps agency content marketing teams take a step in that direction by centralizing the entire content production and marketing analytics workflow in one place. This simplifies collaboration and democratizes data.
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