It’s that time of year again — the time when marketers are doing everything they can to prepare and acquire a budget for their 2016 initiatives. However, you can’t just walk into your meetings and open your hands to your C-suite like a small child asking for an allowance. You need to walk in with solid information, a documented strategy, and objective support behind each dollar you’re asking for.

Here’s a list of 10 trends to consider when you set out to request and allocate your 2016 marketing budget:

1. A “Trough of Disillusionment” Will Plague Content Effectiveness

Research in CMI’s 2016 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report found that only 30 percent of B2B marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing, down eight percent from last year. Writing on this finding, Joe Pulizzi said, “While perhaps the industry is approaching a trough of disillusionment, companies that report being clear on what success or effectiveness looks like also show a higher effectiveness rate (55 percent).”

While there’s no reason to panic if you’re a company in the 30 percent, it’s still critical that you analyze your current content efforts and understand what isn’t working. Take time to review how every person on your team is utilizing that content and where the ball is being dropped.

2. Ad Blocking Will Continue to Shift Companies From “Me” Marketing to “You” Marketing

The original idea behind marketing was to promote and advertise your business, products, and services to potential customers, regardless of their stage in the buyer’s journey. But with technology evolving and information so easily accessible, customers are looking for more information than just what your business does. They’re looking for value, and they intentionally consume content to find it — not advertisements alone. And the rise of ad-blocking features is intensifying this trend.

Customers don’t want content they’re not interested in shoved in their faces. Start rethinking your content strategy to build a following organically by sharing your expert knowledge with your audience and positioning yourself as an industry leader. That way, you’ll build your own army of brand advocates who will help move your content (and business) forward.

3. Distribution Will Skyrocket in Value

If content is king, distribution is giving it a run for its money. Quality content is subjective to the reader, and while a certain level of quality should be consistent, finding earned ways to distribute and amplify your content on the paid level will be a vital way to differentiate your brand.

One of the ways my company, Influence & Co., has seen an increase in distribution is through executive branding. This process involves publishing quality content, coming from company leaders, on publications that reach our target audience. To learn more, download a road map to creating, managing, and distributing content.

4. Publishers and Social Media Will Intersect

We started to see a shift back in April as Twitter released a new feature allowing users to comment on their retweets, enabling them to offer lengthier commentary. Now, it’s reported on Re/code that the long-form content movement on Twitter is continuing forward, even through the removal of its 140-character limit. This would dramatically affect content marketing by opening the floodgates to marketers using Twitter as a publishing platform, which we’ve already seen from LinkedIn and Medium.

5. The Era of the “Informed Customer” Will Dawn

With 88 percent of B2B companies using content marketing, buyers are aware that information is available that can help them make better decisions. Additionally, Google is moving to optimize this with its launch of micro-moments to harness and improve consumer intent on the web.

So how can marketers use their content efforts to harness this knowledge? By following the paths their customers follow and seeding educational and engaging content in those areas. Brands will continue to act as publications to win the race among competitors to inform their customers and become trusted sources.

6. Visual Complements to Content: Video Will Continue to Move Upward

The Guardian stated, “By 2017, video will account for 69 percent of all consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco.” And this should come as no surprise; we’ve seen a number of companies killing it with video campaigns recently. But what else can we expect?

Last month, my team interviewed Fred Bendaña, SVP at Creative Producers Group, who talked about his thoughts on where video is headed: “The thing that we’re also going to see is less highly produced video. You’re going to see more user-generated content. For example, Apple just released its new iPhone, which has a 12-megapixel camera.

“At the end of the day, we are all now professional photographers. You no longer need an entire video crew. What you do need are folks who can take that content and compile it in a meaningful way to tell that story with impact.”

While you budget and plan your content marketing strategy for next year, consider whether video should complement those strategies.

7. SEO Budgets Will Center on Creating Valuable Content

Google is increasingly rewarding content creators who understand the meaning of valuable content. Long-tail searches have the potential to result in more high-quality traffic and sales for companies down the road. In fact, a recent article from Moz states that one of the company’s clients has seen a 135 percent increase in the number of pages gaining traffic via search, with an accompanying 98 percent increase in overall organic traffic.

Gone are the days when companies paid for links. Now, your budget needs to shift toward creating meaningful content for the reader and away from stale link-building strategies.

8. Content Will No Longer Be a Marketing-Only Initiative

PR, social media, recruiting, employee training, and other parts of business are (finally) starting to look at marketing as a central hub for content. And one way we will see companies more easily and effectively creating and leveraging content is through a company knowledge bank. These banks enable other teams to both pull and incorporate their own information from a central location and ultimately fuel entire team goals and initiatives.

To learn more about this process, check out my article about knowledge banks on the Content Marketing Institute’s blog.

9. Facebook Instant Articles Will Empower Publishers

Facebook has made its way into the publishing game by releasing Instant Articles, encouraging publishers to run articles and native ads directly on the social platform. Facebook stated that the Instant Articles platform was created “to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience, and monetization opportunities.”While it’s still in its infancy, I think we’ll see a much bigger rollout among bigger brands, and we’ll get a better feel for its effects on the content marketing industry in the coming months. Nonetheless, it’s an important component to keep in mind when planning your content and distribution strategies for the first quarter.

10. Mobile Will Continue to Grow

This ever-growing trend is probably the most predictable on the list. With 3.65 billion unique mobile users in the world, you can bet companies need to incorporate more mobile in their marketing strategies. Responsive design, embedded videos, and other mobile elements will become standard and expected by consumers, so ensure your development team has set up your business for mobile success.

As 2015 comes to a close and marketers start ramping up their budget allocation for 2016, it’s crucial to educate yourself on the latest trends in content marketing. It’s an exciting time of year to see major brands making big strides in hopes of differentiating themselves amongst their competitors, and I’m looking forward to watching them do so.

Did I miss any key trends? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments

John Hallis a keynote speaker and the CEO of Influence & Co., a company that specializes in expertise extraction, knowledge management, and thought leadership distribution that is used to fuel marketing efforts. （Source：The Creator/Maker Friendly www.forbes.com）