Over the last years, the digital marketing sphere has encountered drastic changes that have evolved how brands and consumers interact. For this reason, we have put together the latest marketing trends in 2020 to help you and your brand stay relevant through the changes.
It’s essential to stay aware of the new marketing trends to optimize your brand and reach your targeted goals.
Here are the marketing trends that will bring in the most effective attention you need for your business to thrive;
1.Branding
Business branding is ALWAYS going to be relevant in marketing because consumers now have the liberty of picking from an array of similar brands. Whatever business idea you’ve got, there’s a chance that someone out there is already or planning to do something similar. What’s going to make your brand stand out is if its targeted consumers feel a level of connection and trust in it. Telling captivating stories and humanizing your brand is an effective way of calling your brand the right kind of attention.
Building a reliable brand also means that Google will rank your content top when users search for related content. Google’s current ranking factor is the EAT factor which is;
– Trustworthiness: top-ranking sites need to be recommended by other trusted websites,
– Expertise: high-ranking sites must have quality content from experts, and
– Authority: high-ranking pages must have the relevant authority on the subject.
For the reason that Google is demanding authoritative, up-to-date, and accurate content, branding is top on the list of top digital marketing trends for 2020. If your brand relates to finance, health, or any other industry where accurate information is essential, your marketing team will have to pay more attention to building expertise and delivering quality content.
2.Social Media Marketing
The social media marketing trend may just remain one of the most significant digital marketing trends for the year. Social media channels need to be utilized to survive the 2020 digital marketing current. Social media apps have gone beyond what it used to be and are now one of the most viable marketing media to find potential consumers. Not only does it allow for personalization, but it’s also straightforward and direct for interaction. Using the different channels –videos, AR, and TVs –to engage followers and community is necessary. Some of the social media trends that marketers and brands need to pay attention to are;
– Facebook
● Facebook Pay: this trend makes it easier for consumers to pay for products on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp because of its in-stream and on-platform payment features.
● Facebook Watch allows for video-on-demand service.
● Cross-stream messaging: across Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
● Oculus: termed to be the next big thing in social evolution because it’s a VR interactive technology.
– Instagram IGTV: allows for long-form videos that regular posts cannot contain.
– Twitter
● Narrowcast tweets enable marketers to optimize tweets by limiting its audience, usage, and narrowing them down to a particular hashtag or target audience.
● mDAU: a new metric that allows users to monetize daily active users.
– LinkedIn
● LinkedIn groups: allow you to form and join different groups on the platform, just like the Facebook groups.
● LinkedIn video: LinkedIn allows for video content sharing on the platform, and its improved discoverability makes it a viable marketing tool.
– Stories
Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube have introduced their different versions of the ‘My Story’ trend over the last year. They can be utilized by brands to increase brand awareness and engage with consumers (especially the younger audience). Using polls, links, geofilters, location tags, live videos, and CTAs are some of the best ways to optimize the stories trend in marketing.
Using these channels allow brands to develop contact, deliver information, boost sales, and provide support to their consumers.
3.Interactive Content
Following social media marketing and stories, interactive content is an original and fast-growing trend that’s caused a shift from the regular text-based content to engagement-oriented ones. Adding interactive sections to your social media channels or website is an efficient way to provide value for visitors, get them engaged, and learn more about your brand. Most importantly, these interactions allow for a personal connection to brands and aid the decision processing on the customer’s part. Some of the widely-used interactive platforms are assessments like quizzes, surveys, and polls, contests, calculators, and augmented reality ads.
Buyers are more convinced to buy from brands that allow for interactive content because they feel like an essential part of the decision process and have more personalized experiences. Using interactive content also allows you to cut down on presumptions. To a large extent, you’re able to create the results your audience needs because you already obtained the required data and history that you need from the engagements.
4.User-Generated Content (UGC)
Another thoroughly user-centered marketing trend is the User-Generated Content trend. This is one of the new marketing trends that allows marketers to take advantage of the Millennial market. With UGC, marketers make users feel in charge of the content and spread it far and wide. The idea of this strategy is to increase engagement and drive conversations around the brand.
Consumers are made to feel like important decision-makers, and they’re better influenced by themselves to make purchases or patronize the brand. In 2019, user-generated content topped the list of marketing tactics that immensely shaped the most shoppers’ decisions.
UGC can come in different forms –offering discounts, incentives, partnering up with consumers for a worthy cause, or basic blog posts and comments generated by users. Sometimes it’s even as simple as a Q&A section where people ask questions and get appropriate answers.
The reasons why UGC is essential are; first, it helps update your content regularly. Any type of comment, review, or question keeps pushing your content to the top, ultimately the goal of your content. Then, it also adds to content length. You get better SEO rankings with more content. So, consumers writing reviews and comments can give you the range you need to boost your SEO. Lastly, UGC helps gain unique content for your brand, which again gives a positive boost to your SEO.
5.E-Commerce and Shoppable Posts
On the one hand, social media has excellent growth potential for businesses, e-commerce, on the other hand, has weighty sales potentials. Pulling these two together has proven to be a very viable marketing trend in 2020. Earlier in 2019, Instagram introduced the Instagram Checkout feature that allowed consumers to check out’ different products’ and complete their purchases. It was a definite turn for e-commerce because the chances of brands losing customers due to switching apps to make purchases were considerably reduced.
So, if you have an e-commerce business and you already have a link to your shop on your bio, then you want to take it a step further and utilize the shoppable posts from Instagram. Instagram is the right path for combining e-commerce and visual marketing and has a very high chance of maximizing sales opportunities. It provides the right audience through its over 1 billion users, but it also allows brands to leverage its audience with customer-centered shoppable posts. Businesses can take advantage of this innovative marketing technique by improving followers’ user experience and creating interactive ads that allow users to shop and make payments easily on the same site because the sales funnel has been shortened.
6.Influencer Marketing
Influence plays a vital role in how far a brand message can get across to its targeted audience. For this reason, influence marketing is a very authentic form of advertising that’s trending in the business world. This is a word-of-mouth style of marketing where well-known celebrities or personalities with a large (and relevant) online following can promote your brand through social media channels. People are more likely to use products that trusted influencers recommend to them than rely on what the brands themselves say. An example of this will be sending your new sneakers to a famous basketball player to wear and post on his social media, and of course, tag you. For brands with the competition, this affiliate marketing trend is a go-to option to promote their products’ reach and trustworthiness. Surveys show that 58% of consumers in 2019 purchased at least one product as a result of an influencer’s recommendation in the last six months, rather than on traditional ads.
Also, influencer marketing is taking a different turn as a result of artificial intelligence influence. It’s now getting faster and easier to acquire the right influencers who will bring the proper engagement and ROI for brands because of AI.
7.Micro-influencer Marketing
Another niche of influencer marketing that’s gaining waves is micro-influencer marketing. While traditional influencer marketing is viable on its own, this variation is more affordable and has its advantages. For brands that are probably just starting and cannot yet compete with high-flying brands for the first-tier influencers, they can utilize small- and medium-sized influencers to work with them.
A Micro-influencer is simply a medium-sized (about 30,000 followers) influencer who has narrower niches—popular enough to be influential, and still engage with followers while not being overloaded with sponsorship offers.
While they are usually affordable, they also provide a better engagement rate than some of the most popular influencers. The fact that they have fewer followers allows them to dedicate more personal time to them and promote your brand. At the same time, micro-influencers usually have niches themselves. If you find one of them specializing in a niche that’s relating to your brand, then it’s a viable marketing strategy.
For niche brands, micro-influencers can give up to a 60% higher engagement and six times more cost-effective than influencers with more followers.
8.Omnichannel Marketing
Omnichannel marketing is still very relevant in 2020. It always preaches the same gospel of a seamless and consistent message across all mediums that the brand is accessible –especially on social media channels and other online platforms. It offers an enhanced user experience and a unified brand voice that drives consumers to action across multiple marketing channels. To get the best result with this strategy, all available channels need to be linked and run concurrently. The advantages of using various channels –like social media, apps, blogs, and email – against single channels are that there’s an increased engagement rate level, higher purchase frequency, more order value, and tremendous customer retention rates.
The omnichannel marketing story gets better with the increase in SaaS companies on the loose that provides the best tools to efficiently manage multiple channels. Asides, AI and big data are having a significant impact on how brands give a personalized experience. The best brands today are those that keep up with customer journeys and personalize their purchase experiences.
To remain relevant, brands need to strive to get into the customer’s thoughts and understand how they want to be treated. Omnichannel marketing gives a practical approach to this.
9.Chatbots and Conversational Marketing
The future of digital marketing is more about conversations. People want to be able to find what they need when they need them. Because there’s a lot of attention-seeking activities in the world, marketing needs to tap into the trend and have real-time connections with consumers. Conversational marketing is about enhancing the user experience through a feedback-driven model that allows for engagement across devices, platforms, and schedules based on the consumer’s choice.
Chatbots are an essential aspect of conversational marketing. It’s an AI-driven technology that allows instant messaging for brands to chat in real-time with their consumers. One reason why chatbots are beneficial to brands is that it allows for 24-hour service and instant responses to different inquiries.
Consumers pick these virtual assistants over other forms of interaction channels because they are quick to respond, recall buying history, automate repetitive tasks, and aren’t as emotional as humans.
A handful of brands have utilized this AI-driven technology –an example is the ridesharing services of Lyft. Lyft services can be requested with voice or chat, with the chatbot asking for information and connecting drivers to riders.
10.Personalization
Following conversational marketing, personalization is another digital trending tool that allows consumers to have experiences centered on them. An effective way of engaging consumers is to personalize marketing to their needs. Generic adverts tend to turn consumers off a brand than personalized ones can. This strategy has its roots in psychology – people love to see and hear their names in print, especially when it’s something that appeals to them. Giving people the ‘feeling’ that experiences can be tailored around them is more appealing and result-driven. It helps forge a real connection with the target market. In the process of making each customer feel significant, it also gives a higher chance of getting the required results from your target audience. Little efforts like personalization have proven to bring in remarkable results. A research carried out by Epsilon shows that about 80% of consumers indicated that personalized experiences are most likely going to convince them to do business with a brand. Personalization means digging deep into data and identifying consumer interests and then giving them custom products, content, and even emails. Sending personalized emails to trigger more action than batch-and-blast emails can.
Artificial Intelligence, data collection, social media insights amongst other resources have made personalization easier –from product, design, service, and content recommendation – to achieve.
The best case study for successful personalization is Netflix and YouTube. Do you ever wonder how most of the recommendations on your Netflix and YouTube channel seem to be what interests you? It’s merely integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software with their apps and website to acquire data and make a tailored movie or channel recommendations to users based on their preferences.
11.Sentimental Analysis
Machine-learning has yet again brought in a new wave of strategy that can be used to understand humans and communicate better. Sentiment analysis, or social listening, refers to the practice of analyzing and collecting the reactions of consumers and users to a product or service, on online platforms –especially on social media. It’s an advanced level of online reviews and posts which gives brands the exact evaluation of how users feel about their services or products. And the beautiful thing about it is that it’s not a stressful strategy. With sentimental analysis, you can understand what the user likes about your product and what they expect.
The reality of sentiment analysis is that it isn’t exactly a new idea, just that it has a new face to it that makes it more popular than it used to be. The data collected via the different tools and algorithms help you evaluate what consumers think about your product.
Sentimental analysis can be accessed via emojis and slangs that only advanced natural language can process in computers.
Leading sentiment analysis tools include Critical Mention, Repustate, and Lexalytics. Marketers can (and should) utilize this technique to fine-tune products and strategies for marketing, sales, social media, and content.
12.5G Technology
If there’s a trend that’s going to leave a significant mark on digital marketing in 2020, it’s the emergence of the 5G technology. Virtually every industry is controlled by mobile technology –or at least has an impact. 5G allows for improved digital communications around the globe that’ll cut through to a business and create more opportunities. As a result, marketing strategies will evolve to include more consumers and new trends, especially those relating to augmented reality.
There’s a lot of big dreams for when 5G takes over everywhere – like powering connected devices, railways and major roads. What this means in context is that 5G technology will drastically change how digital content is accessed –more user-controlled than digital marketer controlled.
So for brands to thrive, there’s going to be a need to teach more user-centered strategies and tools instead of the traditional advertising trends. To stay relevant in at least the next few years, more 5G technology-centered plans would have to be put in place by brand owners and marketers.
13.IoT Advertising
With the daily development of 5G technology, IoT becomes more relevant to the world of marketing. The Internet of Things (IoT) allows for all smart devices, smart homes, smart cars, and sharp objects to be connected. As a result, it’ll create more opportunities to advertise products and services, hinging on personalized marketing.
The data collected from our daily activities through these technologies will help make more personalized experiences about our preferences. Astute digital marketers can (and will) take advantage of this and build advertising means. An example of a brand that already uses it is Johnnie Walker. Johnnie Walker has built-in electronic sensors in its Blue Label bottles that disclose the bottles’ state –whether they have been opened or not and where they are on the supply chain.
Other brands can take advantage of the offer IoT brings and build more advertising opportunities.
14.AI-Based Marketing Automation
Integrating AI automation into sales and marketing processes in 2020 is an easy and fast-growing digital trend for businesses that want to capture, nurture, and convert leads. First, there are a lot of amazing benefits that come with automation. They include improved customer retention, predictive analytics, improved user experience, saved time and costs, search ad boosts with audience insights, marketing performance measurement, scaled up content marketing, highly personalized website experience, improved blog reach, and a lot more.
Business owners don’t always have the luxury of time to post-sales and promotions on social media, chase down all abandoned carts, email every new subscriber, or even reply to every inquiry. Marketing automation gives the platform to schedule releases in advance, set up campaigns and promotions, track analytics, know what’s working, what needs improvement, and much more.
Specifically, marketing automation can be used for;
– Lead generation
The most prominent example here will be pop-ups requiring your email address on websites where purchases are made. You get your purchases in your inbox in no time, and from then on, you get personalized emails from that brand.
– Social media
You can schedule posts and automate responses to customers for specific times, saving you time and ‘trouble.’
– Cart abandonment
Automated marketing also allows brands to track down abandoned carts and send imploring notifications to the customers to complete their purchases.
– Segmented populations
Marketing automation also plays a vital role in personalizing content for consumers.
15.Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the top content marketing trends right now and will probably be the same for some years. The reason for this is that many gains come with it for different brands. It increases customer engagement because customers respond to videos better; it’s also an effective way of showing off products.
It’s a prevalent means for consumers to learn about and boost their confidence in new products. The conversion rates with video marketing are incredibly high compared to other forms of digital marketing. The beautiful thing about this trend is that it keeps getting better. It isn’t just about YouTube anymore. Over the last year, video marketing has evolved to include many features and different apps. Top on the list are;
- Live videos
Instagram Live and Facebook Live have become one of the biggest trends of 2020, and businesses are utilizing them to drive sales use for interviews, behind-the-scenes glimpses, product demos, Q-and-As, giveaways, company events, office life, and a lot more. You can make captivating videos and capitalize on the ‘fear of missing out’ mentality to hook your viewers to your brand. A report published by Businesswire in 2016 expects the live video industry to be worth over $70 billion by 2021.
- Personalized videos
1:1 videos are now being integrated into emails, making them more personalized and message-centered. They are more likely to get audience and engagement from consumers than regular emails can because they see watching less stressful than reading through.
- 360-degree video content
This new marketing trend involves a more interactive experience. It’s the circular symbol on the top left corner of the video that allows viewers to slide any moving image to the direction they wish.
- Video SEO
SERPs are beginning to include YouTube and other video channels, so video optimization is becoming of essence.
Product videos give consumers the confidence they need in their purchases more than mere pictures and texts can. Google is also beginning to rank content that includes videos higher than similar content without video. Of all the benefits that video marketing has, it shouldn’t be forgotten because its content can always be reformatted to anything you need. Not only can you put up a YouTube video, but you can also;
– Transcribe it to texts beneath the video,
– Put up the transcription on your blog or website while embedding the youtube video,
– Turn the transcription to an article on your blog to include relevant images,
– Turn the video to an audio podcast,
– Put up the same video on Facebook to get more engagements (instead of sharing the youtube link),
– Include the video as thumbnails in your email marketing scheme.
The video marketing trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The best brands will take advantage of it.
16.Visualization
Visualization has changed the face of Google searches and taken user experience to a whole new level. No longer are people restricted to typing descriptions to Google, but they can now put in pictures to get more specific results when they search.
The first question is, how does the new visualization affect brands? Let’s take a look at the different search tools that turn a consumer’s lens into a search bar.
– Google Lens
Google owns this visual search engine, and it allows for the recognition of objects via a camera app. It will enable you to find similar products to what you have and where you can get them, it uses barcodes to find more information about a product, save phone numbers, and learn about places, events, landmark objects or persons. Google Lens is the new face of real-time augmented reality.
– Pinterest Lens
Google Lens isn’t the only viable visual search tool. Long before Google Lens became a thing, Pinterest had introduced Lens that allows anyone to take pictures of items and find out where the items are sold on the internet or just find similar products. It is particularly suitable for searches relating to art, beauty, fashion, outfits, products, home décor, food, animals, travel, and vehicles. As the pioneer visual search tool, it has many functions that it offers to users. Some of them are:
● Pincodes that allow you to pin down inspirations, as soon as you have them.
● Lens Your Look allows users to plan their outfits exactly how they’ll love it.
● Partnership with brands like Samsung and Target that helps users search through their catalogs to buy products.
● Shop the Look that allows you to purchase products from Pinterest partners,
● Catalogs allow you to upload and sell your products.
– Bing Visual Search
Bing also allows users to find a specific feature contained in an image quickly. If you’re interested in a particular part of a picture, Bing Visual Search will enable you to get the ‘Detailed View’ of the item.
The new question now is, how can visualization be leveraged to drive business sales?
Visual search is a top trend in 2020. Gen Z and Millennials are more particular about visual searches than anyone else. They are the higher percentile of Pinterest users. So, marketers can jump on this trend and draw consumers to their products. Adding high-quality images that have descriptive words, including image searches to the online inventory, infographics, and advertising on alternative social media channels, will boost search results. This is because not only do they aid visibility, it also makes your content more absorbable.
You can also take it to a new level and include image sitemaps, descriptive filenames, and alternative texts (Alt Tags) to images.
17.Voice Search and Smart Speakers
There can’t be any proper talk about the latest digital marketing trends without referring to the voice-activated digital assistant trend. The fact that people are paying more attention to Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant than they do to people around them has made it vital for this trend to keep improving. Because of how essential voice searches are right now, AI is developing to make fewer errors in interpreting voice searches. And now, marketers are integrating voice search as a necessary factor in their digital marketing strategies. A little above half of online searches are now done by voice, smart speakers exist in most American homes and are used almost every day, and very importantly, voice shopping is becoming a thing. So, why not?
Several businesses are already including voice search strategies in delivering value-based and relevant content effectively to customers. Patròn Tequila is a model for brands that are planning on using this technique. Smart speaker users use their digital assistants to ask Patròn for a cocktail recipe. This helps them to increase their brand visibility and enables users to buy the product directly from the recipe results. Alexa has over 30,000 abilities, while Google Assistant can carry out over 2,000 activities. And these numbers will only keep increasing as time goes on. This style is most likely going to affect the way ads run, and not just how companies can increase their brand awareness with audio content.
The take-home point is that brands should optimize their content for voice searches. Focus on writing for humans and search engines –specifically Google Snippets– at the same time without neglecting one for the other. Even if smart speaker advertising isn’t on the table for you right now, make sure your content is in conversational styles so your visibility can be increased.
18.Automated and Smart Bidding in Google Ads
Smart bidding got into the market in 2016. And up until now, it hasn’t reached its fullest potential. Despite its impact, it could be quite exhausting to keep up with the intense competition on social media platforms and other traditional advertising channels. This is why the Google Ads Smart Bidding is a new marketing trend that attention should be paid to.
An ordinary Google ad campaign can be tough to handle and push through all the stages of adjustment, bids, and phrasing to get the best results. But with AI and machine learning ruling the show, automation helps adjust biddings in real-time. It’s possible to give in to this automation and still control your ad plan. Human strategies are involved in optimizing Pay-Per-Click campaign performances. You may have to test the different strategies against each other to know which one works for you. You can either target CPA, ROAS, or just maximize the conversions you get from your ads. You can also base them on different signals like locations, operating systems, time of day, or even browser.
Whichever one you pick, this trend gives marketers the luxury of focusing on essential aspects like analytics, copywriting, and strategy, while it takes care of the rest.
19.Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Immersive Technology
While many companies are taking advantage of immersive technologies, it still has a long way to influence brand and consumer experiences. This new wave of technologies allows users to create their actual reality out of augmented and virtual reality experiences. Brands can now give facility tours, product creation experiences, improve shopping experiences, help consumers make better buying decisions, and increase brand awareness and engagement with the AR and VR technology. Moreover, as it becomes more accessible, small businesses can take advantage of it and include them in their marketing schemes.
It may also seem like AR is a better option to improve marketing schemes than VR is. For instance, IKEA allows consumers to see what a piece of furniture would look like in their space before purchasing with their app and AR. Sephora Virtual Artist from ModiFace enables users to see the different forms and colors of make-up and how it’ll look on your face before making any purchase or physically applying it.
Immersive technologies have a high tendency to change the outlook of major businesses in the future. It’s only wise that brands start including the plans in their marketing strategies.
20.Artificial Intelligence
We are now in the era of Artificial Intelligence dominance. AI is found in almost every sector and plans to be the focal point of world business soon. We can find many examples of brands that have adopted AI as an essential part of their business scheme. Uber uses Knightscope security robots to patrol outdoor areas and put a check to crimes by reporting suspicious activities, collecting data of owners, and a lot more. Google has also introduced RankBrain as part of its staple algorithm that processes search queries to define the most relevant result using cutting-edge machine learning. It makes it possible for people in business to put up high-quality content and for users to find them quick enough.
Top on the list of why people should adopt AI into marketing is that it quickly analyzes consumer behavior and search patterns with access to data from different platforms. This helps businesses define the needs of consumers and work towards achieving them.
If your brand is tilting towards e-commerce, content creation, email personalization, product recommendation, and communication, then AI is an aspect that desperately needs your attention. Implementing AI will give brands a sharp edge over competitors who don’t.
21.Programmatic Advertising
Following on from AI, programmatic advertising is a trend that allows you to automate your ad buying to target a more specific audience. It comes with efficiency and speed; it costs less to acquire customers with it, bringing in higher conversion rates. Not tapping into programmatic advertising is not taking advantage of the enormous opportunities it has, considering that it has transformed the face of digital advertising in 2020 –a large percentage of digital display ads have been automated. Automating your advertisements give you almost limitless targeting signals to individualize your advertisements and target a specific customer habit on different platforms, compared to the few targets you get with manual advertisement campaigns.
22.Micro-Moments
Marketing is always going to be about consumer needs and how they can get what they want when they need it. And in 2020, these moments are when people turn to their different devices to act on their needs.
And in business terms, that means knowing something, going somewhere, doing something, or buying a product or service. For marketers to act on this, they have to be available, useful, and quick.
Marketers need to factor in unpredictability and fast changes in the consumer journey to stay in the game. Because of how mobilized the world has become, people tend to rely on the fast-pace of their devices to get their needs met. When marketers use this same path to meet the needs of consumers, it all just makes sense.
The micro-moment rule evolves around awareness, consideration, and decision. Knowledge of when consumers want something, being there for those moments, delivering the need, making it easy to access their needs, and making every moment count.
23.Browser Push Notifications
Email marketing and push notifications have an intertwined relationship, in that they’re targeted at users for the same reason. But for the purpose, that push notifications get quicker attention and signups than newsletter does is why online stores and brands are gravitating towards it.
The rise of personalized push notifications has brought an increase to the opening and usage conversion rates. People, especially the younger ones, prefer modes of communication that deal with fewer touchpoints.
The notifications can also be utilized in re-engaging people who haven’t completed the purchase process to pick up their abandoned carts. These notifications can include images to push conversion.
24.Augmented and Predictive Analytics
Augmented analytics uses Natural Language Processing and machine learning to automate the preparation and sharing of data. Predictive analytics uses data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning to ascertain patterns and try to predict the future. About digital marketing, these data science tasks are now utilized to score leads, individual segment personalization, and improve customer loyalty. It’s fast becoming a norm in many industries to use these techniques.
Retail giant Amazon is at the forefront of this trend with its Chrome extension –Amazon Assistant –that allows users to get personalized product recommendations while on other websites.
These two analytics make it easy to work faster and smarter by first predicting what will happen and then using machine learning to prepare and understand why things happen. Data science insights are predicted to be primarily automated before the year runs out, which can only mean that big data derived from businesses will give way for personalized decision-making and increase productivity.
25.Big Data and Deep Learning
Marketers who know how to harness the significant data potentials have the edge over others in expanding their businesses. The big data industry is snowballing, and marketers who know their way around it –managing, analyzing, and leveraging data –are most likely to get hired by big and small companies. This is a marketing trend that Forbes has named to be top on the list of new strategies in 2020. It reports that about 78% of organizations have working customer data platforms shaping how companies react to data.
As big data could turn out to be a double-edged sword, the best of digital marketers are those who can maneuver the necessary tools to enable faster time-to-market for AI applications. It grows at a rapid rate and could become risky if data isn’t managed correctly. Data privacy is another aspect that attention needs to be paid to, especially with the revolution of data privacy laws.
26.SEO and Content Marketing
With the new improvements that Google BERT system has introduced to online content, it’s impossible to thrive without having well-researched, fast speed, and regularly updated content in 2020. The new system is designed to aid the understanding of the natural language used in search inquiries. What matters now is page speed, well-written content, and useful links.
With a good content marketing strategy, and high-quality content, you not only pull traffic to your website and increase your search engine ranking, but you can also provide invaluable information that allows you to stand out as an authority in your field. Consumers give high regard for brands that dish out quality content compared to any form of marketing. Also, ad blockers are becoming more a thing with internet users, and getting across to them with ads may not be an ideal way to get across to them. Content marketing can be leveraged from different angles to achieve marketing goals. They include;
– Blog posts,
– Service pages,
– FAQs,
– Case studies,
– Image and video curation,
– Newsletters.
Content marketing is an essential b2b marketing trend that is not going anywhere soon, so you may capitalize on it to generate optimum results for your brand.
27.Long-Form Content
With all the talk on content, SEO, and Google ranking systems so far, if there’s one obvious thing, it’s that long posts are the way to your audience and Google’s heart. Shorter content posts don’t give as much information and value as 3000, and more words long ones will provide you with, especially when they’re well researched. You can establish yourself as an authority in your field when you’re able to provide adequate content with targeted keywords. Also, trustworthiness is determined with long-form content because you acquire more backlinks for organic traffic.
The aim of your content game should be to make available every information users may need on that particular subject. Such long-form content is regarded as a pillar content because of how much value the readers are provided with, and how high they are ranked on search engines.
Putting it into context, the advantages of long-form content include:
– Less bounce rate, because they find every information they need on a particular subject on your page.
– Longer time on your site, because you have long enough content,
– High sharing potential and multiple backlinks,
– Traffic, because valuable content hardly diminish, no matter how long,
– High ranking on Google because of all of the above.
28.Semantic Keyword Research
While long-content is very important, the content has to be written with semantic keywords in mind. If you put out a 6,000-word post regularly, but it doesn’t include keywords that users whom your content is targeted at periodically search for, then you may as well not put anything up. Without keyword intent in mind, it’ll be tough for users to find your content (no matter how valuable it could be). Content should always be ‘findable.’ After all, that’s the primary goal of putting it out in the first place. And how do you work with semantic keywords? By including words and phrases that a typical user will input into their search bar when they need to find some information, a product, or anything relating to your content.
Also, have Google analytic in mind. The search engines are based on the content of the queries and drills in determining user search intent. Voice searches and AI are other reasons to have keywords search in mind. What would a typical person say to Siri when he wants to find a local restaurant in Philly?
Content marketers need to prioritize this and exploit its benefits. Make the most out of your content by including related keywords, phrases, and questions as much as you can. Show that you’re putting your audience’s needs first in your marketing strategies.
29.Structured Data SEO
A new content marketing trend that came with 2020 is the use of structured data in SEO results. This means that the data on the ground is properly organized so that search engines can categorize them. It targets the back-end code of the content to be neatly structured in labeled tables, columns, and rows. When this is done right, there’s a huge SEO boost to your content, which pushes it up the Google Snippets ranks. Through that, you are able to put important information about your brand out there.
We’re now seeing marketing tilting towards structured data, as the internet traffic games continue to swell with about half of it coming from mobile devices. Some sites allow website owners to embed structured data on their sites with semantic vocabulary tags. The result of this is that search engines are quick to understand and interpret the content as they come in search inquiries.
30.Alternate Search Engines
While we’re putting our money on trends that are either currently the rave of the moment or have massive potentials, some other trends are some other trends that aren’t in the limelight yet but have high tendencies of blowing up in a few years. One of these is the use of alternative search engines.
Today’s most popular and dominant search engine is Google, with other search engines not coming anywhere close to it. This may be because Google combines sophistication with relevance in delivering comprehensive results for user search inquiries. But there are other search engines that, although not as popular as Google, provide privacy-eccentric services to their users. One of those includes the privately held company, DuckDuckGo. It has gained a level of popularity amongst users who are particular about privacy.
The fact is, the world is tilting towards online privacy as the days go by. With some of the privacy scandals that the popular search engines have been involved in, these alternative search engines should probably be paid more attention. For brands with content centered on privacy, their marketers should consider optimizing content more than traditional search engines.
31.Privacy Marketing
Data privacy and online privacy were some of the most significant issues of 2019. Many of the world’s biggest brands were confronted with data breach controversy, which was one of the reasons for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that is ranked as the most restrictive state privacy law in the United States. People are getting more serious about keeping their affairs private, and it’d be great for marketers who have such people as the target audience to rely on this trend.
People want to be able to put their trust in brands without thinking so much about it. Digital marketers need to continually earn their trust and keep reinforcing their allegiance to privacy to earn their consumer’s trust. This can be done by;
– Understanding the needs of the audience,
– Develop a message around what they want and engage them,
– Use the right channel to join them,
– Develop a relationship with them through this channel.
32.Website Security
In the same vein of privacy, website security is also paramount. One of the leading reasons for bounce rates in 2019 was regarded as website security. Whenever users don’t feel secure about a particular question, there’s a high chance that they leave within seconds. If this trend continues, Google will take note of it, and your website will slide down the SERPs ratings; this isn’t good news for your business.
Website security is no joke. The majority of web users are now aware of what the ‘S’ in the HTTPS signifies and are more likely to take this into cognizance when visiting sites. Having an unsecured website will not draw the right amount of attention or traffic, irrespective of how high your content is ranked.
Google has made the HTTPS a ranking signal, and a little green padlock is displayed on the URL to indicate that a website is secure. For insecure websites, a security seal of trust is displayed on the site to alert users of their privacy safety.
33.Better Analytics
There are no giving talks about modern marketing without making mention of metrics and data. Measuring numbers through analytics is the way to go when you’re keen on driving results. One reason investing in better analytics is essential is that a consumer’s journey has a bit of complexity. There are so many channels through which consumers can engage your business, thus deriving the numbers from these channels pushes you in the right direction, and you know where improvements are needed.
A sound analytics system is an effective way of managing omnichannel and marketing various products and services. Viable companies are beginning to look past essential Google Analytics and implementing an all-inclusive business intelligence analytics solution. Business intelligence doesn’t affect analytics, but it does support better business decision making through technologies and practices of analysis and presentation of business information.
Therefore, better business intelligence is vital for optimizing business potentials. Paid and free BI options exist in different forms. One of the popular ones is Google’s Data Studio for reporting solutions for those who intend to move past the dashboards of Data Analytics. Metabase and Tableau are also on the table.
34.SEO A/B Split Testing
Still, on the modern marketing and analytics matter, SEO A/B split-testing is another means of analyzing and testing data. SEO A/B testing allows marketers to separate different variables in their marketing campaigns to quickly identify which of them is bringing in the results they need. With this testing, it’s easy to make adjustments to the content to suit the required approach.
Websites can have a high-impression count but a rather low click-through rate. Some platforms (like ClickFlow) allow these websites with untapped SEO potential to improve their traffic, leads, and conversion rates. It will enable you to change your title, title tag, meta description, body content, and everything needed to increase your CTR rates.
The testing therein consists of first picking a target CTR, running experiments for a given number of days (typically 15 days), and getting consistent results of the improvement your site is gaining. You’re able to get the most out of your SEO game because you now know what’s working and what needs improvement. This is a step in the right direction of delivering excellent returns on investments, even without putting in so much.
35.Page Speed
We’ve talked so much about bounce rates and how it affects site ratings on Google. One of the reasons why users will leave a page without accomplishing their intentions is a slow-loading page.
Thankfully, technology has made it possible for pages to load a lot more than it typically does. A marketing strategy that should be utilized is optimizing images on pages to ensure that they don’t impede the speed.
Also, it’s crucial to reduce the number of internal redirects that go through several redirects before users can land on the actual URL. Overcoming this can also speed up your page loading and increase your authority on Google ratings, which you should seek to accomplish with your content. Using internal links to redirect to the site is another viable technique that can be utilized.
36.Geo-Fencing Growth
There’s going to be an increase in the marketing strategy of users based on their real-time location. This marketing strategy is referred to as geo-fencing. A target area could be within a mile of a store. So whenever you get into the area where it’s situated, they get a push notification, text, or any form of communication that lets them know about the store and your services.
This form of marketing isn’t particularly new, but with the continually increasing rise in mobile devices’ use, this marketing trend will continue to be relevant.
Push notifications tend to ‘push’ people into actions than other forms of marketing communications. Geo-fencing is essential for brands who intend to convert digital users to ones that patronize their physical stores.
37.Progressive Web Apps
Progressive web apps are the new category of websites designed to look and work the way mobile apps do. The reason for this is that the prevalence of smartphones has caused a significant decline in the use of desktop for our internet browsing. So, having consumers in mind, more websites are created with a mobile-first design. When the sites are designed, they are mapped out on the smallest screen to deliver an optimum experience to mobile users while including features designed to improve mobile use. This includes touchscreen-friendly navigation, less text-heavy content, working offline, streamlined navigation menus, utilizing device hardware, and collapsible menus functions.
These websites still work the way regular websites do, with more features favoring user experiences for mobile phones.
If more than 75 percent of internet traffic comes from smartphones and other mobile devices, then you know that a mobile-first design may be the right decision for your business’s website. Progressive Web Apps are going to stay relevant as the mobile revolution continues to evolve.
38.Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology is as simple as a series of irreversible data records that clusters of computers manage, but don’t own in themselves. These blocks are secured and connected through cryptographic principles.
The reality is that Blockchain technology isn’t just about the financial world but now relates to almost every industry –including digital marketing. Blockchain helps eliminate intermediaries in digital marketing. Because of how privacy and trust are becoming necessary to marketing techniques, Blockchain is relevant. Not only does it build trust through transparency, but it also gives branding benefits and drives public accountability.
Blockchain is beginning (and will continue) to trend in the following spheres;
– Authentication and provenance,
– Handling social impressions,
– Tracking media buys,
– Verifying online identities,
– Pinpointing targets,
– Elevating transparency, and
– Protecting personal data.
39.Quantum Computing
This new technology wave is based on quantum physics theory. It uses new units of measurement called quantum bits to store data and increase the system’s computational power. It shows that subatomic particles are present in more than one state concurrently. You may be wondering how this will eventually affect digital marketing. We predict that it’ll affect;
– How mobile data coverage will be improved,
– How AI will develop quantum algorithms that will change and enhance ML,
– How ads will become more relevant through quantum annealing to reach more comprehensive coverage at a better cost.
40.Voice Marketing Funnels
It’s already a known fact that voice search has a significant impact on marketing strategies. However, it’s navigating towards being an essential aspect of business fundamentals, especially about the marketing funnel. Voice-enabled devices and searches have a cumulative impact on marketing. For the reason that we’ve discussed so many emerging digital trends so far, it’s become evident that the regular marketing funnel cannot remain the same way. There is a need for an evolution.
The current voice marketing funnel leads us to diverse stages of the consumer journey. Every consumer represents himself and not just the generic ‘consumer’ picture. This way, personalization, and customized solutions are overly critical.
We also discussed omnichannel marketing earlier. The implication of this is that consumer and brand journeys are already intertwined to affect the revolutionized sales funnel.
The entire idea is that as technology continues to transform, marketers will need to develop strategies that align with these shifts. The digital world needs to remain flexible to changes, and voice search is top on the list of trends that brands need to adjust to in 2020 and beyond.
41.Neuromarketing
As a way of introduction, neuromarketing is a new technology strategy that gives way to measuring and analyzing people’s brain activity to figure out the kinds of content they fancy or the type that draws their attention.
While it seems like a farfetched technique, it’s fast becoming the reality of 2020’s marketing game. What it does when utilized is that your marketing materials (amongst which are ads, websites, content, and email campaigns) are designed to induce a certain kind of neurological reaction that causes responses that will ultimately lead to purchases. This appears like a landmark strategy that helps optimize and adjust content with the information in hand to bring about effectiveness in the way your products and services are engaged.
This type of strategy will be particularly viable in politics, especially since Forbes has endorsed it.
However, we are more concerned about the strides it can produce in the marketing sphere. At the forefront of neuromarketing is SPARK Neuro –a neuro analytics company that helps optimize entertainment and advertising by measuring emotion and attention. With the use of complex algorithms, biometrics, and neurometrics, they analyze emotional levels that effectively help marketers figure out what content to capitalize on, or not.
With neuromarketing, we’re envisioning the future of marketing. Of course, the brain dictates the decisions that all consumers make. A brand that is quick enough to capitalize on that is sure to stand the test of time.
42.Employee Engagement
This is one of the trends that marketers tend to overlook in marketing strategies. For a brand with several employees, the goal should be to push workers who are dedicated, engaged, and excited about the work they do. Employees who feel like an essential part of a company not only help you drive sales as much as possible but can also help your brand build a solid online reputation. It’s as simple as it is –when a person loves the work he does and the company he does it for, they cannot stop sharing the good news.
Employees, even before brand ambassadors, are the human face of your brand. Putting adequate concentration on the interactions you have with them, and those they have with your customers should be a crucial part of your marketing strategy. Most of the time, the marketers or brand owners aren’t the ones conducting customer relations –the employees are. As a result, you need to make sure that they are on the same page as you are and understand the company goals.
When targeting employee engagement, it’s crucial to ensure that your employees understand your brand values. Once this is tackled, employees will transmit the things they know and the energy they’ve received to the customers. It will make a massive impact on how far your company goes and what it achieves at the end of the day.
43.Customer Experience
In the center of all marketing strategies, we have just one person –the customer. And the last few years have brought in a significant shift in how much importance customers have. Fantastic customer experience is now the primary strategy anyone can use to get and retain customers. Whenever brands put more of their focus on building and maintaining a high service culture with customers, the marketing aspect will not be such a hard nut to crack. One thing customers want more than anything else when they patronize a brand is to have seamless experiences. And if a brand can capitalize on this and capture the consumer’s heart, it’ll solve the significant marketing problems for brands.
Simple techniques such as quick responses and personalized messaging go a long way in driving quality engagement through experience. Brands need to remember that they should offer much more than information to their target audience. They need to focus more on delivering exceptional experiences to their consumers.
Excellent consumer experience is hinged on efficiency, convenience, personalization, friendly services, and stress-free payment options. The wave of technology has also brought in the importance of up-to-date technology, brand image, and design.
All of the trends mentioned so far, evolve around great customer experiences. Building great relationships with your customers drives loyalty, which converts sales and retention in the long run. Amazing consumer experience (CX) is one trend that does not leave the digital marketing stage anytime soon.
Conclusion
The digital marketing world is always changing. However, we believe that the above trends and ideas are currently game-changers and will continue to be relevant in the nearest future.
Are there any trends that we missed out on? What marketing trends are you predicting for the nearest future? Let us know!
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