Content marketing, just like every other kind of marketing, is continually evolving. Is what worked last year going to work this year? Is what worked this year going to work next year? Probably not. While the basis of content marketing will always be great content, as with all marketing, things change and the businesses that use these strategies have to continue to evolve, too, in order to stay on top of the game. So, what is the future of content marketing going to look like? In short: there are going to be big changes and only those that are really on top of those changes are going to see success with content marketing.

Here are what the changes are going to look like over the next year:

Format is going to change entirely.

Right now, content marketing comes in two main forms: the blog and the ebook. But are there other formats that are going to become more appealing in the future? While no one is sure what form exactly content marketing is going to take, there is one thing that is very clear: consumers are going to expect shorter, easier-to-digest content that is more image-heavy. We’ve already started to see this come to fruition, as more and more brands have begun using platforms like Twitter, which have a very limited character count, as big parts of their content marketing strategies.

And as search engines become more and more adept at analyzing not just written content, but images, too, it only makes sense that images will become a more important part of any content marketing strategy.

A saturation of content means new marketing will have to be more niche-centric.

Most consumers of content have already read all of the most generalized content, recycled again and again through different sources. The average consumer now wants much more specific content, that has a much more clear relevance to their needs. For example. There is a big difference between generalized content like “How to Get More Social Media Followers,” and “How to Get More Active Facebook Fans.” Writing more generalized content might be easier and it might require less time and research, but it is just going to be noise. There is already so much generalized content out there that even the best generalized content is going to get lost in it. A much better plan? Write something related to a specific niche and offer real, concrete advice.

Video will become the most important type of content.

In the past, many businesses have shunned video from their content marketing schemes, largely for two reasons: videos are more expensive to produce than a blog post and videos were thought to do little for search engine optimization, because they cannot be keyword-rich. In the future, however, videos are going to be crawl-able. Most search engines have already taken steps to put an emphasis on video, as they are universally more engaging than written content. There’s a reason that every social media platform has made serious allowances for video. If you go to your Facebook feed, you will probably see it littered with automatic-roll videos. Especially if you post videos to YouTube, which is owned by Google, you are going to see better search rankings and more engaging visitors.

Content marketing will beat out traditional marketing.

Traditional marketing (television, magazine, and billboard ads, to name a few) are barely hanging on. There are still lots of businesses that find it valuable to invest their marketing budgets in these outlets, but it’s hard to argue with the cost-effectiveness of content marketing. Its return on investment is higher than just about every other form of advertising and is certainly preferable to consumers when compared with ads that pop up on your screen or act as a barrier at the bottom of a website. Many brands are already defecting from traditional advertising and spending more and more money with content marketing, and we expect to see only more businesses leaving behind the banner ad for content marketing instead.

Retention will become the main goal.

Right now, content marketing is mainly focused on acquisition. Its goal is to encourage someone to sign up for your email list or to turn themselves into a lead for your brand. But as content marketing continues to spread its wings and become the central focus of digital marketing in general, the goal of content marketing will also begin to shift.

Instead of simply becoming the primary way of generating interest in your brand, it will also become the way that you maintain interest in your brand. In the next year, content marketers will spend their time not just driving traffic to web pages, but actually measuring engagement and finding more and more ways to bring you back to a blog or a business website again and again. Its goal will go beyond simply capturing the lead and will start to nurture that lea d and drive it towards conversion.

Content marketing is going to change in the future, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t still be an extremely valuable tactic for all brands and businesses. The right content marketing can still be your main source of qualified leads and high quality, profitable conversions.