What is the future of visual Content Marketing?

In a recent blog post, I gave some advise on how to build and maintain a healthy database in order to, not only have a more relevant audience but also improve engagement through really targeted communications. But with companies spending over 15% of their budgets in content marketing (ADMA/Green Hat B2B Marketing Outlook 2014) and using inbound marketing and social media to reach their target audience…

How would you differentiate from your competitors? What content format would help you drive more engagement?

For the last couple of years I’ve seen how B2B companies have moved from static landing pages and boring simple emails to more engaging visual content formats such as short animations, infographics, slideshares and so on. Below are some examples of what leading companies are doing today:

Animated video infographic: Add animation to a standard infographic and you will have a way more engaging piece of content with extra room for messaging as you can have voice over feature. Check some of last year’s best video infographics here.

Slideshare infographics: This is a particular way to produce a visual piece of content when you require a little bit more of extra room for copy. Below is a great example from soappresentations .

Visual articles:  These are a more visual way to publish your standard articles by adding some graphs, icons or callouts with stats that will provide your article or blog post a visual engagement. See a great example from Nextgen Australia here.

HTML5 Infographics: The next generation of infographics (along with video) it’s been around for a while. The more engaging feature of this type of infographics is that you can control the timeline with your mouse while scrolling, making them highly engaging and entertaining for visitors. Normally they are hosted in landing pages (own URLs) and have (limited) responsiveness for mobile devices. One of my favorite HTML5 piece of content from last year is  makeyourmoneymatters.org

Infinite scrolling & parallax effect landing pages: These are really close to the previous format but are oriented to host more content, like a full landing page. Another great example is the spotify site.

But probably most of you are already working with one or more of these formats so…

What is the future of visual Content Marketing? What are the emerging trends?

Working in a highly innovative environment gives me the opportunity to constantly being forced to look for new ways to generate engaging and effective formats of content. Some of the latest formats we have been exploring for our clients are:

HTML5 online tools: The most typical example of an online tool is a standard calculator but lately I’ve seen really cool ways to develop these tools by using more visual approach and HTML5. Google is really leading this field and you can see it in one of its latest online tools Spell up game.

Augmented reality effect videos: We can see an emerging trend in using real videos or photos with illustrations (many TV Ads are using this technic). When put nicely together, the final effect looks really futuristic and highly engaging.

What other content formats have you been using or are you thinking of using? What do you think is the latest trend in content marketing?