Content Marketing Trends to Embrace This Year

Leg warmers; planking; 80s-style mall bangs – not all trends are worth following. But, some trends are popular for a good reason. Let’s take a look at the content marketing trends you should consider embracing this year.

1. Smart AI Implementation

AI adoption is arguably the biggest trend right now – not just in content marketing, but across numerous sectors.

In a 2024 poll from Basis Technologies, 90% of marketing professionals said they use generative AI at least once a month and 70% said they use generative AI weekly. AI usage isn’t just common – it’s also becoming much more popular. In the 2023 poll, only 50% of marketers said they used generative AI weekly.

There’s a lot of hype around AI, with many professionals eager to adopt it rapidly in the hopes it will give them a competitive edge. However, there are also drawbacks. The New York Times says chatbots may hallucinate more than people realize, with some models making things up when summarizing facts as often as 27% of the time. There are also serious copyright concerns. In fact, a poll from Gallup found that most Americans have negative views on the potential impact of AI.

All this goes to show that you can’t simply enter a prompt and let AI take over your marketing campaign. If you want authentic, insightful content that engenders trust and builds brand awareness, human writing is still essential – and you need human oversight throughout the process. However, AI can make certain processes faster and more effective, especially when it comes to things like SEO and analytics.

2. Diversification of Marketing Channels

Marketing channel diversification has always been important, but it’s becoming more critical than ever as major social media sites experience disruption. To give some examples, BBC says many X (previously known as Twitter) users have left for Bluesky, while CBS News said some small business owners worried they’d lose their livelihoods due to a TikTok ban.

Should businesses give up on social media? A report from Memo found that social media engagement is down, meaning fewer people are reacting, commenting, and sharing social posts. However, this does not necessarily mean that readership is down, as social media engagement doesn’t tend to correlate with readership, especially for positive content.

Social media still plays a huge role in marketing. However, relying on one channel is risky. Diversification is one solution. The 2024 Marketing Channel Diversification Report from Nift Advertising for Brands has found that brands using at least three marketing channels are 73% more likely to achieve a higher return on ad spend.

Which marketing channels are most popular? According to Content Marketing Institute, 89% of B2B marketers use social media, 84% use a corporate blog, and 71% use email newsletter.

3. Increased Focus on Thought Leadership

Trust has become a rare commodity. According to research from PwC, 90% of business executives think customers trust their companies highly – but only 30% of consumers say they trust companies highly. Plus, the trust gap is growing.

AI-generated content and data privacy concerns aren’t likely to help the situation. Instead, authentic and insightful thought leadership may be the key to gaining trust.

A 2024 report from Edelman confirms this, at least for B2B companies. Of the decision-makers surveyed, 73% said an organization’s thought leadership is a more trustworthy way to assess the organization's capabilities and competencies than marketing materials and product sheets. Furthermore, around 90% of decision-makers and C-suite executives say they are more receptive to sales and marketing outreach from companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership.

These findings are likely to help shape B2B content strategies in 2025. However, 30% of producers of thought leadership in the Edelman report said their organization doesn’t know how to use thought leadership effectively in sales or marketing, meaning this is not necessarily an easy win. Creating high-quality content that decision-makers want to read is just half the battle – businesses also need to learn how to incorporate this content into an effective sales and marketing funnel.

Is Your Content Marketing Strategy Ready for 2025?

To succeed in 2025, you need high-quality and insightful content that you distribute through multiple channels. Inbound Insurance Marketing can help. Whether you want to explore thought leadership, social media, or email – or all three – we can work with you to create an effective strategy. Use the Content Market Roadmap to see what type of content you need.