The Evolution of Content Marketing + Predictions for the Future

If we’ve learned anything about content marketing over the years, it’s that content marketing is constantly evolving. Over time, we’ve seen the industry grow in not only prominence, but also complexity. From new tools to the advent of AI to consumers' ever-changing habits and preferences, the content marketing space is far from static. That’s why we’re breaking it down.

Read on to learn about the history of content marketing, how it has changed in the past decade, and our predictions for the future of the content marketing industry.

The History of Content Marketing

Content marketing has no definitive starting point or exact history, but companies have used written content to educate and engage their target audiences in many ways over the years, regardless of whether they called it “content marketing.” Here are some of our favorite content marketing examples and milestones throughout history.

1732

Benjamin Franklin publishes the first Poor Richard’s Almanack to promote his printing business.

1801

To grow its business, Paris bookstore Librairie Galignani opens a reading room and prints a newspaper featuring articles from authors and books.

1867

The Locomotive, the oldest U.S. company magazine to be continuously published under the same name, is first published by Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co.

1882

The Edison Electric Light Co. shares a bulletin to promote the benefits of electric lighting.

1887

Scribner’s Magazine is published to generate sales of Charles Scribner’s Sons’ books.

1888

Johnson & Johnson debuts the Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment manual, which speaks to the needs of the doctors to whom the company sells bandages. Johnson & Johnson also releases two publications featuring articles helpful for the medical community.

1895

John Deere debuts a quarterly magazine, The Furrow, which shares agricultural tips and articles — plus advertisements for John Deere’s products.

1900

Michelin releases the first of many The Michelin Guide books, which offer valuable information on hotels, restaurants, places to find auto maintenance, and general travel advice.

1902

Woodward’s Genesee Pure Food Co. starts placing ads in the Ladies’ Home Journal for Jell-O.

1912

John Deere’s The Furrow accumulates 4 million readers, solidifying the idea that becoming a fixture in people’s homes and building brand loyalty are important marketing and sales strategies.

1924

Sears starts the “World’s Largest Store” radio show, a radio broadcast that targets the farming industry. The show discusses farming, advertises Sears’ products, and features musicians and comedians.

1960s

Esso (now Exxon) releases its “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” campaign across TV, magazines, radio, and newspapers, suggesting that Esso’s gas has the strength of a tiger. This is the first time a consistent campaign has been applied to multiple channels.

1993

O’Reilly and Associates is the first company to launch a commercial website.

1994

Justin Hall of Swarthmore College creates the first blog (then called a “weblog”).

1996

The phrase “content marketing” originates from a discussion for journalists at the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

2003

“The Facebook,” now just Facebook, is born and creates a ripple effect leading to the social media aspect of content marketing.

2005

YouTube launches, creating a groundbreaking development in video-sharing and content marketing.

2005

Google Analytics launches and becomes the first free enterprise-level analytics product, allowing more businesses than ever to take a more data-driven approach to content marketing.

2006

Twitter is created and is quickly adopted by brands to engage with consumers and share content.

2011

Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” study finds that 88% of consumers encounter a zero moment of truth — a stage in the buyer’s journey when they research a product or service before purchasing. This highlights just how important content marketing is in the sales process.

2019

Natural language processing technology sees significant advancements, enabling artificial intelligence to better understand and interpret human language. Chatbots, virtual assistants, and content analysis tools become more sophisticated.

E-commerce platforms further embrace AI-driven personalization to provide highly tailored shopping experiences. Product recommendation engines become more refined, offering customers product suggestions based on their preferences, browsing behavior, and purchase history.

AI-driven tools gain traction for content creation. From generating personalized product descriptions to automating social media post creation, content marketers begin experimenting with AI to increase efficiently.

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic forces more work than ever to go virtual, amplifying the need for digital marketing approaches.

Email marketing sees a surge in personalization through AI. Marketers utilize AI algorithms to analyze customer data, segment audiences, and deliver targeted and personalized email campaigns, leading to increased engagement and conversion rates.

AI-powered dynamic content becomes more prevalent on websites. Websites start adapting their content and layouts in real time based on user behavior, preferences, and past interactions.

Chatbots continue to evolve, providing more human-like interactions. Advanced AI algorithms allow chatbots to understand user intent better and deliver more accurate and relevant responses.

AI-powered advertising platforms enable highly targeted and personalized ad campaigns. Marketers leverage AI algorithms to identify the most relevant audiences and deliver ads tailored to individual preferences and behavior.

Social media platforms integrate AI-powered features, such as content recommendations, sentiment analysis, and chatbot interactions, to enhance user experiences and support marketers in reaching their target audiences more effectively.

OpenAI releases a demo of ChatGPT, and the large language model quickly goes viral. Companies begin incorporating ChatGPT into their content marketing efforts.

Sources: Content Marketing Institute, CopyPress, HubSpot, LinkedIn

The Evolution of Content Marketing Over the Past Decade

Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen content marketing evolve dramatically. In 2011, it felt like every company knew they “needed a blog,” but many had no idea why, or to what end, or even how to set up calls to action and get people to subscribe. Now, rather than seeing content marketing as simply having a website and a blog, companies are looking at it as a comprehensive, long-term strategy that encompasses content, SEO, and public relations.

A big reason for this turning point? The realization that consumers often make decisions before directly interacting with a company.

In 2011, Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” study found that 88% of consumers encounter a Zero Moment of Truth — a stage in the buyer’s journey when they research a product or service before purchasing. As a result of this research phase of consumers’ journeys, companies began to realize that content marketing is an important part of educating and engaging potential customers and nurturing them toward a sale. The ZMOT study also brought the need for SEO into the spotlight, revealing that the brand’s appearance in search results is imperative for influencing consumers during this moment of truth.

After this study came out, Google tweaked its algorithm in order to discourage keyword stuffing. This change made creating high-quality, relevant, meaningful content even more important.

Later, in August 2022, Google launched the "helpful content update," which uses a machine learning algorithm to identify unhelpful content that appears to be solely created for ranking well rather than truly informing and helping searchers and providing value. According to Google, the helpful content update is "part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results."

Of course, Google isn’t the only factor that has influenced content marketing’s evolution in recent history. Social media’s growth has popularized more passive content consumption. While consumers use Google searches to find specific answers or content, they began using social media to stumble upon content more casually. To capitalize on this, companies began creating more attention-grabbing, visually appealing, highly shareable content. And video has also grown in prominence. In fact, by 2017, more than half of consumers said they wanted to see videos from their favorite brands.

In addition to types of content changing, the technology powering the industry has also advanced a lot over the past decade. Ten years ago, it was not easy to attribute tangible business results to content marketing. But now, I could tell you exactly how much revenue our company drove from specific content campaigns we’ve done thanks to the features we use in HubSpot.

To learn more about how content marketing and SEO can work together to achieve your goals, download your free guide below.

The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing for SEO

7 Predictions for the Future of Content Marketing

Content marketing has evolved so much over the years, and that trend won’t change any time soon! That’s why, based on our decade of experience in the industry, we’ve outlined our predictions for what the next five years might hold.

1. Content-driven SEO will continue to be a differentiator.

We’ll continue to see more and more content, so creating unique, high-quality content with SEO in mind will be critical. Organic search is a big driver of website traffic, so it’s important that all content is written with SEO in mind. This ensures that content is showing up in relevant search results. But you can’t just write content and stuff it with keywords. Search engines are smarter than that. You need to fill your content with unique expert insights to help the content stand out and provide real value to your audience.

And remember: You can't fully rely on AI to create your content. While AI can be helpful for outlines, keyword research, and first drafts of content, AI's output can be unreliable, inaccurate, or even plagiarized. (Plus, Google says AI-generated content goes against guidelines.) So if you do use AI, make sure a human reviews, fact-checks, and edits the content.

2. A cohesive content strategy will be imperative for seeing measurable results from content marketing.

You might secure press in a publication that results in a spike in traffic to your website. But without a comprehensive content strategy, the results might end there. Increased traffic is great, but if you haven’t optimized visitors’ journeys when they land on your website, you won’t know who makes up the traffic and will have no way to nurture them, rendering the increase in traffic less useful than it could’ve been. With a cohesive strategy in place, the result you’re trying to achieve is identified first so you can build a plan that drives those specific results.

3. Historical optimization will continue to grow in importance.

Content marketing has really taken off in the past 10 years with businesses creating an unprecedented amount of content. As companies try to find new and creative ways to get in front of their audiences, we’ll see companies focusing less on creating new content and more on updating older content to build up its search rankings and to provide up-to-date, relevant insights without always having to put in the time and effort to create new content from scratch.

4. Events will continue to gain prominence and require a diversified content mix.

We learned a lot during the coronavirus pandemic, but one of the most important insights is that strategies need to be diversified.

The good news? Events are back!

But content strategies still need to be diversified to ensure you have the right collateral for every touchpoint before, during, and after events.

5. All types of marketing will be expected to drive measurable results.

Content marketing and PR have long been seen as fluffy industries in which it’s hard to tie tangible results to the work — especially in the B2B space. The more emphasis marketers put on understanding the buyer’s journey, the more impact marketers can have on influencing a buyer’s decision. With marketing automation platforms continuing to provide more value and detailed insights to marketers, the more value and metrics-driven results marketing and PR departments will be able to deliver.

6. The publishing industry will continue to evolve its business model.

More and more free content is being created each day, which makes it difficult for publishers to maintain a profit from their content. Companies will need to stay up to speed on what opportunities exist in the publishing space so they can get their content in front of their target audience, which might mean switching between paid and organic content opportunities or doing a mix of the two.

7. Marketers will need to take a page from the entertainment industry.

A lot of marketers have focused on the data around people having short attention spans. But binging entertainment has become commonplace. Instead of focusing on people’s attention spans, marketers should look at what can be learned from the entertainment industry by inspecting leads’ entry points on the website. For example, does the preview encourage leads to binge the content? People invest time when the topic interests them and when they're having an engaging experience, so marketers have to make content so captivating — and easy to engage with — that people can’t resist immersing themselves in it.

To learn more about content marketing and how you can use it to work toward your business goals, download your free whitepaper below.

Download "The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing"

From the inception of content marketing to the present, the industry has never stayed stagnant. And that trend will only continue as we grow and as new technologies emerge. That’s why we marketers have to stay agile and commit ourselves to being lifelong learners. To begin that journey, keep an eye on these seven predictions for the content marketing industry.

Wondering how you can capitalize on these opportunities for your business? Click here to book a quick call to speak with one of our content marketing experts.

The Evolution of Content Marketing + Our Predictions for the Future of the Industry