Content marketing refers to marketing material that is considered educational or informative rather than promotional. You can think of content marketing as marketing in disguise; the best examples of content marketing won’t look like marketing, and the user won’t feel like they are being marketed to. To achieve this, you must create content that doesn’t disrupt the user’s experience or journey. Today, content marketing continues to evolve, so here are three trends that you need to be aware of in 2025.
Zero-Click Searches
If you’ve ever typed a question into Google and been presented with the answer without clicking on a website, this is what we call a zero-click search. This can occur through map packs, if you’re searching for your closest Italian restaurant, or featured snippets, which commonly show up when typing a question into Google. Nowadays, zero-click searches are often achieved through AI summaries, which are displayed at the top of many search engine result pages.
Try tailoring content towards AI snippets to take advantage of this new feature. If you can provide valuable content that can be used to create an AI snippet, your website will be linked to the right of the text.
Quality Is Key
With a rise in the quantity of AI-generated content, quality content has become even more important. In 2025, an article can be generated in a matter of seconds by tools such as ChatGPT. But while AI can work at a speed that humans can’t compete with, the quality is often not at the same level.
Google has long ranked content using the E-E-A-T model which means Google’s algorithm uses experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust as factors to rank content. While AI-powered platforms are able to produce content at a faster speed than humans, they may struggle to incorporate these factors into articles and blog posts.
Short-Form Video
The rise of short-form video goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. The rise of TikTok and YouTube shorts highlights the popularity of short-form videos perfectly and the continued growth of these apps illustrates why we shouldn’t expect short-form to go anywhere.
It could be that short-form video’s boom has been caused by decreasing attention spans. Studies suggest that attention spans have dropped from more than 2 minutes to around 45 seconds. As a result, it can be extra beneficial to turn to short videos as a form of content marketing if your product is being targeted towards younger audiences.
It’s important to remember that the direction in which content marketing is heading could change at any second, and you must be ready to adapt your strategy to your target audience’s demands. Maybe soon we’ll see a demand for longer-form content or even a return to physical marketing materials. If you feel like you need further assistance with your content marketing strategy, it may be worthwhile reaching out to a content marketing agency that specialises in your industry to ensure your strategy hits the mark.
