Top 12 Digital Marketing Trends in 2020
About 50 years ago, who would have thought that marketing will change so much in the last five years and determine the success of a business based mainly on digital marketing, and the trend in which it is going shows no sign of stopping or taking a break. There is a dramatic shift in the landscape of digital marketing that includes content marketing, social media, PPC, SEO, etc.
Most of the digital marketing trends and strategies are based on the advancement of technology and evolving concurrently. With the advent of the internet, businesses now need to make use of the trends so as to succeed in their endeavor because a trend that is working this year may become obsolete next year.
Here are some digital marketing trends predicted to be popular in 2020 and beyond that, you can no longer pretend aren’t important.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is going to dominate most of the marketing domain from here on as it is evolving day by day. AI is a commercial opportunity that businesses shouldn’t miss out on at least for a few decades more. By 2030, AI is expected to increase global GDP by up to 14%.
AI’s ability to analyze behavior and search patterns of customers and usage of the data drawn from social media platforms and blog posts helps businesses in understanding customers and the opinions of the products and services they receive.
So, those businesses implementing AI in 2019 will be able to cut staffing costs and accelerate growth in 2020 ahead of their peers.
Programmatic Advertising (Google Ads)
Google has announced Google Ads updates that will likely lead to automation and smart bidding becoming the new normal. Programmatic advertising means using AI to automate ad buying so you can target more specific audiences.
For instance, Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic ad buying. It is more competent and swift, thus brings in higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs.
Chatbots
AI technology, Chatbots, will remain an integral part of digital marketing in 2020 and beyond. It uses instant messaging (IM) to chat in real-time regardless of the time of day or night with the customers or website visitors.
Most surveys show that many customers favor interacting with chatbots since they are responsive and available 24/7 with prompt answers, accurate recalling and are ready to answer anything without losing patience. Chatbots give exceptional customer service and let you focus on other important tasks instead.
Personalization
Personalization of your marketing is the key to stand out in 2020 that is to personalize the content, products, emails, and any other aspects that make the customers more akin to you.
The availability of data that AI complies like the history of purchase, the behavior of customers and links visited along with refined software to carry out campaigns, customizing content has made everything easier. 90% of the customers say that personalization is appealing.
A top example of businesses utilizing the influence of personalization is Starbucks, they use a mobile app that fetches data of location and purchase history to be as personal as possible, thus allowing customization of their drinks and encouraging usage that comes along with rewards system, this personalization benefited Starbucks with a revenue close to $2.56 billion.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is an important marketing trend and is likely to continue for the next decade or more. It is not just YouTube, so to observe a higher engagement rate with your video marketing, video posts or live broadcasts on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn is imperative as well.
Here are some other video marketing trends that are gaining more and more traction: Live video, 1:1 video (personalized video by businesses or marketers), Shoppable video content (buy products directly from a video or image), Video SEO (YouTube and other videos are displayed in the SERPs), 360-degree video content (for interactive experience).
Influencer Marketing
It is a kind of “word-of-mouth” marketing focussing on utilizing top leaders especially celebrities to propel your brand’s message to the larger market. Yet, nowadays personalities on Instagram or YouTube who have many followers and who can help endorse your business or product from their social channels are a huge hit.
Since this marketing is largely more authentic, 92% of people trust other consumer endorsements over corporate advertising. This marketing is also going to be influenced by AI as well so that identification of- people with better engagement, fake followers, and thus a chance of generating higher positive ROI can be done.
Social Messaging
The stats show that social messaging is gaining more popularity day by day and so it makes complete sense when your company market the products and services through social messaging apps where the possibility of your potential customers hanging out is higher.
These apps can turn out to be very useful to send messages directly to customers, as they permit personalization and also add value to the experience of the users.
Visual Search
The visual search takes the experience of the users into a whole different level and makes it worth. Here, users can upload an image and direct a search to get more detailed outcomes. With no surprise, Pinterest was among the first businesses that joined on the visual search trend and came out with a visual search tool- Lens.
Yet, Pinterest is not the only one with visual search, Google Lens, CamFind and Bing Visual Search are other visual search engine apps that perform by recognizing the images. According to a survey, 62% of Millennials are more interested in visual search capabilities than any other new technology.
Micro-Moments
Generally, people tend to make spontaneous decisions on what and where to eat, what and where to purchase, and so to make the most of these micro-moments in 2020, businesses have to be where users or consumers are looking for information at that moment like Google says to marketers “be there, be useful, be quick.”
Micro-moments are growing in popularity which means that marketers should reconsider the traditional buyer funnel that follows- awareness, consideration, and decision. Most people today have almost complete dependence on smartphones this helps and emboldens these micro-moments.
Voice Search marketing
Voice search is increasing every day and so it has made it very vital for companies to reconsider their strategy of digital marketing. Therefore in general, people are expected to use voice search more in the days to come.
Voice search plays a key part in imparting every pertinent information that people search for using audio content. As such, AI is evolving and getting smarter thereby decreasing the errors made by voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google.
It is, therefore, very important for all voice technology to think of writing in a conversational manner so as to focus on getting featured snippets on Google and contemplate keywords that people will usually use to speak instead of typing.
Content Marketing
In March 2019, Google updated its latest search algorithm and the effects of it are still being analyzed, yet, according to most experts, early hints display that complete regular update of content is still being greatly favored.
The importance of content marketing is proven by the survey data that 88% of B2B content marketers approve that generating new content succeeds in convincing their viewers to look at the organization as a reliable and trustworthy service.
With the continuation of valuing well-researched, frequently updated articles/blog posts by Google, it is now certain that content marketing is still what most of the marketers will persist to invest. In brief, content marketing continues to be an absolute means of appealing new customers to your website and building real relationships with them, in measurable ways eventually.
Augmented Reality (AR)
In 2020, AR is expected to surpass VR in popularity. Gartner foretells that by 2022, 70% of organizations will be testing immersive technologies, and 25% will have deployed to production.
Since AR is more applicable in reality from a marketing standpoint, experts predict that AR will continue to outpace VR in terms of market share. With AR improving rapidly, we will see a huge uptake in brands finding useful applications for the technology in the future. For instance, Ikea has an app that allows users to visualize what a piece of furniture would look like in their home before making a purchase.
Therefore, future digital marketing is unquestionably getting transformed by the advancement in technology. Those big data, immersive technologies, smart tech, and AI automation are transforming the way brands evaluate data of customers and accordingly interact with them as they are getting savvier and the expectation of a greatly personalized experience is higher.
In order to be in tune with the users and have the advantage over competitors so as to increase conversions in the future, organizations will need to upgrade to get enhanced at generating custom, conversational content mainly audio and video that is to be shared with your targeted audience. And also, investing in some absolutely advanced technology is imperative for you to be ahead of the game.