7 Digital Marketing Trends You Should Adopt in 2020
It’s 2020 and lots of things are already in play!
Technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, many of the trends to expect in 2020 centers on technology. However, there’s also a push back against the increased digitization and automation of interactions between brands and consumers, and a desire to make marketing more human again.
While technologies such as AI, voice and data-driven marketing will certainly be big trends for 2020, the overarching focus will be more on people (People oriented marketing), not only technology.
It’s a great time to look ahead at where we’re going in 2020 and the marketing trends we’re likely to see take center stage.
7: Search Engine Results Pages Position & Featured Snippets
SEO will continue to be an important aspect of digital marketing as we move into 2020, but we’re currently experiencing one of the most major shifts in the SEO industry in the last decade.
With the growth of mobile and voice search, people are changing the way they use search engines like Google. Being number one in the search engine result pages or SERPS is no longer necessarily the primary goal your business should be aiming for. Rather work on getting Google to display Featured Snippet from your site. Featured snippets aim at answering the user’s question right away.
Featured snippets “on SERP” information means that you don’t need to click through to a website to get the information you’re looking for anymore – it’s right there on the Google search results page. To learn more about featured snippet, we recommend reading this article.
6: Voice Search
By now, we believe you are familiar with voice search. Perhaps, you have done voice search a couple of times already, so you may not be surprised it’s on this list. Voice search shows no sign of slowing down and will continue to be a major influence on how brands create content and market themselves online. Voice search has been predicted to surge by a whooping 50 percent this year. The implication is that you need to GET SMART and put the voice assistants into consideration when creating contents on your website in 2020. The statistics might not be valid with the developing nations of the world like Nigeria, however 2019 recorded a major increase in voice search.
Consumers are also expecting to use voice search more in the near future – 61% of those aged 25–64 who already use a voice device intend to use it more in the future according to research by PwC.
5: AI-Based Automation
Well, 2020 will be a year of the rise of the robots? Quite likely (but hopefully not in the Terminator-style of dystopian science fiction movies!)
We’ve already seen huge advancements in AI over the last few years, and a great increase in the number of businesses using AI-powered technology and automation to assist their marketing efforts.
AI is one of the major technologies behind voice search and smart assistants. It’s also made chatbots possible, which are now popping up on more websites than ever before.AI technology and automation are helping to take some of the grunt work out of marketing so brands can concentrate on strategy and crafting a fantastic customer experience.
Remember, the human aspect of marketing is still important (perhaps more important than ever before), cos more startups and companies are switching to more human approaches in their customer relations and marketing strategies. So the idea is to use this technology to enhance your marketing efforts, not replace the real people behind them.
Big data, supported by AI and predictive analytics, is also helping brands to learn more about their audience and customers. It’s enabling hyper-personalization of customer experiences and marketing messages at scale.
4: Visual Contents
With the explosion of smart speakers and voice search in recent years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “readable” content is more important than visuals and design these days. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. While advancements in voice search are certainly influencing the way that we’ll create content now and in the future, you should NEVER neglect visual content either.
Research has shown that people prefer visual content to plain text. You just have to look at the growth of image-focused platforms Pinterest and Instagram to see the proof of this. You don’t need a sooth sayer to convince you before you believe this. Ensure you do more of visual contents in your overall contents creation strategies in 2020.
Images are already returned for 19% of searches on Google, and 62% of millennials say they are more interest in visual search than any other new technology. So dont get carried away. Visual still pays. Invest in it.
3. Personalization
Increased data collection and advancements in technology have already had a huge impact on the level of personalization that is possible and on what consumers expect from their interactions with brands.
Today’s consumers are flooded with marketing messages from multiple channels to the point where they have started to tune them out. Traditional advertising is losing its effectiveness, so what’s the answer? Personalized marketing messages that forge a real connection between the brand and the target market.
80% of consumers said that they’d be more likely to do business with a brand that provides a personalized experience, as per a survey by Epsilon.
In the 2002 movie Minority Report, the character John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is bombarded by a series of personalized ads calling him by name as he walks through the city. This was obviously complete science fiction at the time, but not quite two decades later, reality has almost caught up with the marketing future of Stephen Spielberg’s imagination. Imagine getting a pop up or email that mentions some things ‘personal’ which also seems to understand what you need and how you want it. You are more likely to interact more with such ads right? That is the power of personalizing contents’ .
Ensure your contents are less generic. With the ease of data collection and audience segmentation, you can deliver great contents and ads to your target audience and seal better conversion rates and win big!
Focus on Customer Retention, Loyalty and Advocacy
A huge part of providing a great customer experience is making sure that it is ongoing and focused on keeping your existing customers, rather than just attracting new ones. Recurring customers are more valuable than new customers. Studies have found that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep a new one, so it’s definitely worth putting in the effort to keep your customers happy.
Loyal customers also help to increase the reputation and awareness of your brand as they’ll talk about your company and products with their friends and family. Happy customers make great (and free!) brand ambassadors and influencers.
Many of the above-mentioned trends and technology can be helpful for increasing customer retention rates. Personalization, for example, is certainly expected from your existing customers if not your new ones, and it gets easier to personalize communications the more interactions someone has with your brand. So don’t spend all your efforts only on new customer ACQUISITION, spare some on RETENTION!
1. Customer Experience
2020 will be the year of the customer. We already saw a massive shift in beliefs about what marketing actually is. It’s no longer about trying to convince people to buy from or work with your company/business. Instead, the priority has moved towards providing fantastic customer experiences that will keep people coming back for more. In a sense, when you focus on building a positive business culture and providing great service, the marketing almost takes care of itself.
The growth of online content has given consumers more power. They are no longer a passive party when it comes to learning about products. They’re not waiting for you to tell you how great your products are. Instead, they’re going out and doing their own research. So you have to offer them something more than information. Give them a unique experience that will hook them!
Customer experience or CX is already the hottest buzzword in marketing circles, but it’s more than just a passing trend. 73% of people say that customer experience is an important factor in their buying decisions, but currently only 49% of US consumers say that today’s companies provide a good experience.
What exactly makes a great CX? Efficiency, convenience, knowledgeable and friendly service, and easy payment options are what people value most in their customer experience. But aspects more traditionally considered as marketing’s domain are cited too: up-to-date technology, personalization, an easy mobile experience, brand image, and design all add up to the overall customer experience.