Emerging Trends CMOs Need: What’s Next in Content Marketing

Emerging Trends CMOs Need: What’s Next in Content Marketing

With the surging trends of lower-performing advertising and changing consumer behaviour, many marketers have embraced content, with the majority of businesses doing so. Despite of greater marketing performance through contents, there is increasing need for producing a variety of engaging content by the organizations consistently. Content marketers’ patience and performance are being tested as AI infiltrates every tech stack.

Technology is transforming the role of the chief marketing officer (CMO), due to the rapid evolution of digital tools, data analytics, and the ever-expanding role of social media, e-commerce, and the web in daily lives. Further, data-driven decision making, content marketing, marketing automation, and customer insights are playing a role in making the CMO’s job more complex and technical. CMOs must be technologically literate, adaptable, and focused on delivering measurable results in an ever-evolving digital landscape. A content management system (CMS) is essential to a CMO for various reasons, like brand safety, personalization, content creation and publishing, multichannel marketing, analytics, and optimization. In June 2025, despite economic volatility, 71% of CMOs plan to invest more than $10 million annually in GenAI over the next three years, up from 57% last year.

The top trends defining the next era of content marketing and how forward-thinking CMOs are stepping up to keep up with the swift pace.

• Use AI To Assist

AI has been and continues to be used for generating content; the quality of that content may not match that of human writers. It is an integral part of every marketing strategy, irrespective of organization size or industry. As per a study across 17 diverse industries, about 73% of respondents said that companies use Generative AI for creating text, images, videos, or other content types as it believed to saves their company time and money. Developing AI-human content workflows, auditing existing content, clearly disclosing when and how AI tools are used, and monitoring & auditing content are the CMO's action plan for AI-assisted content creation.

• Write for semantic search

Google is making fundamental changes to its algorithm and looking at content semantically, providing a real opportunity for making copy more effective. In terms of search engines, semantics related to the study of words and their logics, enabling Google and other search engines to identify the intent behind the searches for delivering more relevant results, even if search queries don’t contain exact keywords. If for example, a user searches for “Nocturnal Animals”, do they want to know about film, or creatures that are active at night? To predict user intent, search engines now factor in the relationship between words in the query, spelling variations, previous searches, the user’s location, and trending topics. This is why Google developed RankBrain, the artificial intelligence component of its Hummingbird algorithm for evaluating search behaviour and teaching itself to deliver better results. Planning redesigning landing pages, implementing relevant structured data, and keeping a pulse on SERP changes as CMO action aids in enhancing the visibility.

• Create Short-Form Videos

Video marketing has proven to be a successful endeavour for marketing, giving good ROI and aiding in increasing brand awareness. While it also reported that 84% video marketers say video has increased sales and helps keep visitors engaged on their website longer. It includes social media platforms like TikTok, which gain popularity by satisfying the need for diverse content types. CMOs continue to invest in video for building brand awareness, diversifying content, and meeting evolving consumer expectations. Developing a repository of short-form clips which include product demos, teaser videos, video ads, repurposing long-form content, and distribution video via LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are some of the CMO's action plans that are creating more short-form videos.

• Optimize For Voice And Visual Search Discovery

With the rising voice and visual search, customers are seeking products by sharing screenshots or using voice assistants to search for businesses. It was found that about 58% of U.S. adults are using voice search for finding local business information, and video search is surging with the help of platforms such as Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. People speak to devices, scan images, and expect AI-powered assistants to deliver answers without ever clicking a link. This is where Zero-Click Marketing comes in. Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are becoming household staples, changing user behaviour. Furthermore, in visual search, platforms such as Google Lens, Pinterest Lens, Instagram’s product tagging, and Snapchat’s Scan are transforming camera phones into discovery engines.

In a world where people no longer only rely on typed inquiries, voice and visual SEO are becoming crucial disciplines for organizations looking to remain discoverable as the search environment changes. For the AMO action plan to improve voice and image search visibility, add descriptive, keyword-rich alt-text for all images, don’t neglect mobile performance, and add voice format answers in the content.

• Create Interactive Experiences

Interactive content is an effective way for breaking through noise and offering real value, advice and education, enabling users to directly engage with that content. For instance, SnapApp, which is an interactive content platform, defines interactive content that rebels against being created and never accessed or utilized.

CMOs should encourage their teams to integrate an ecosystem of experiences for collecting data and personalize future interactions. Businesses are poised to achieve better segmentation, stronger nurture workflows, and foster greater trust with their target audience. Adding interactive tools like gated lead generation engines, ensuring lead capture forms, and collaboration across marketing, CX, and analytics are some of CMO's action plan for creating interactive experiences.

• Tap Into Micro‑Communities

Search engines are paying attention to this rising micro-communities trend. In order to participate in softer sales tactics that improve consumer experiences, CMOs should map and interact with niche communities that share brand values and create user-generated content projects. Identifying a few key niche communities, starting by observing user behaviour, and sharing user-generated content are some of the CMO's action plan for tapping into micro-communities.

Final Thoughts:

With the robust changing industry, CMOs become strategic futurists, rooted in testing, tracking, and tackling new endeavours that align with shifts in consumer behaviour. CMOs act as the guiding light for handling marketing ethically, from responsible AI usage to properly disclosing AI and scaling human-first, value-driven content initiatives. Additionally, CMOs rigorously track ROI and plan to invest; ultimately, when something isn’t demonstrating its worth, they would swiftly change tactics