Digital Marketing Trends 2020: An Extensive Guide

2020 - according to the tech geeks, the era of digital Darwinism is finally here. This is an age where society and technology are evolving faster than businesses can naturally adjust. With the mantra of “adapt or perish,” a new wave of digital marketing trends is coming to the forefront. And if you fail to follow the latest trends, you are limiting the brand in both reach and revenue earned.

We have already explored the SEO trends 2020 and PPC trends in 2020 to help you stay competitive. Today, we have curated an extensive list of digital marketing trends that will help your business to not only survive but thrive in this age of transformation.

1. Conversational Marketing

As user experience becomes one of the primary concerns of businesses, companies are using a feedback-driven model in marketing to develop customer loyalty, drive engagement, grow the customer base and finally, enhance revenue.

Unlike the traditional one-way marketing strategies, this type of marketing allows the brands to meet customers on their terms: on their chosen platforms, devices, and time schedules. 

Automated chatbots are furthering this type of marketing. This AI-based technology promotes instant messaging. The primary benefits of chatbots include offering a 24-hour service and prompt responses to queries, thereby enriching the customer experience.

According to a survey by Single Grain, 80% of businesses plan to integrate chatbots into their online platform this year. If you are yet to incorporate the tool, it’s high time to do so.

This leads us to the next point.

2. Personalization

Gone are the days of cookie-cutter marketing messages. Today, the customers expect to get a personalized experience every time they interact with any brand. Take advantage of the analytics tools to collect and interpret customer data and deliver relevant and meaningful customer communication.

From e-mails to product recommendation - personalization triggers brand appeal and creates a positive impact on the customers’ minds.

Not convinced yet? Take a note of these stats: 63% of consumers have reported getting irritated with a generic advertisement, while 80% mention they are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences (source: InstaPage). Are you still wondering why you should care?

3. Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the major online marketing trends of today and possibly for the coming 5-10 years. Videos offer a detailed and authentic brand or product description and are the most popular way customers can learn about a new product.

When we say video marketing, we don’t only mean YouTube. There are several ways to drive higher engagement with video marketing. You can start a live broadcast on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or make a video post and upload on the social media.

FYI, if your website includes a video, then it has 53 times greater chance to drive organic traffic as compared to text. Why? Because videos are more compelling and enhance CTR (Click-Through-Rate). No wonder, video marketing is essential for promoting your business.

Here are some video marketing trends that you must check out:

Live Video - This is used for interviews, behind the scene glimpses, product demos, company events, etc.

Video SEO - YouTube and other video snippets are displayed in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) making video optimization a crucial activity.

360-degree video content - 360-degree video and VR (Virtual Reality) are preferable by many businesses as these offer an immersive experience. Here, viewers can see the video from every angle simply by sliding the moving image left or right.

If you are struggling to do the same all by yourself, seek assistance from any reputed website design company.

4. Influencer Marketing Prompted by Artificial Intelligence

Influencer marketing focuses on employing popular personas to spread the brand message to a larger audience. Most often, they are YouTube or Instagram personalities with a substantial follower base. They can help to spread the word about your product or business through their social channels.

Influencer marketing is usually more effective than corporate advertising. This is reflected in the following stat: 58% of the people have purchased a new product in the last six months based on the recommendation of an influencer. 

Influencer marketing is not simply a gimmick of 2020 as Mediakix predicts that the resources spent on such marketing may reach $10 billion by next year. This speaks volumes of its potency.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is furthering this trend as it quickens the process of finding the right influencer to partner with. It helps to identify people with fewer fake followers and better engagement.

By the way, have you checked our blog on how artificial intelligence is powering digital search? If not, then take a look.

5. Visual Search

Visual Search can take the user experience to a whole new level: people may upload any image to conduct a search and get specific results. As the tech gurus put it: it turns the phone camera into a search bar.

With apps like Google Lens or Pinterest Lens, users can take a picture of any item to check where to buy it online or view the related items. Pinterest Lens has already inspired over 600 million searches.

Leveraging such a wide audience can be highly beneficial to your business. Make sure to optimize for the visual search to get an edge over the competitors and drive more visibility.

Here’s how you can use visual search as part of the marketing tactics:

• Develop image search option into your web inventory.
• Advertise on Pinterest.
• Optimize metadata for every image on your site so that the web crawlers can analyze it. Metadata enhances the possibility of driving traffic.

6. Voice Search

WordStream predicts that 50% of all searches will be conducted via voice by 2020. Such increasing popularity of voice search makes it crucial for businesses to include it in their digital marketing campaigns and offer value-based content to their consumers.

For all voice technology, maintaining a conversational tone and free flow of writing is important. Also, incorporate long-tail keywords that people may speak, rather than type.

Many popular brands are adopting voice search to engage with more number of the target audience. For instance, PayPal users may use Siri to send money to family, friends, or businesses.

Now, you may wonder that optimizing for voice search is a great way to earn traffic and drive brand awareness, but how will it convert into sales?

Well, in 2020, more businesses will try to experiment with new ideas to use smart speakers as a potential channel for driving sales. Jetson is an early runner in such voice commerce space. If you integrate this AI-driven platform in your website, people can buy from your site using voice search. It works with most of the popular devices like Alexa or Google Home. Naturally, it offers a convenient and frictionless experience to the buyers.

The brands need to develop a unique approach to enhance consumer interaction and incorporating such latest trends into the existing business model is the first step. Regularly monitoring the success of your marketing efforts is also crucial to ensure that you are not wasting resources.

7. Shoppable Posts

With both social media and e-commerce growing in parallel, no wonder that brands are seeking to merge the duo to maximize sales.

Instagram has recently run a survey and their report reveals that the majority of consumers are willing to buy products through the ads on their feeds. What’s a better way to leverage such a massive potential audience than by using the shoppable posts?

E-commerce brands can create interactive ads that let users click and shop easily. Instagrammers believe this will allow instant access to the consumers.

8. Interactive Content

Speaking of instant access, we cannot overlook one of the rapidly-evolving digital marketing trends in recent times: interactive content.

2020 will see a shift from the traditional text-oriented content toward a more engaging and dynamic content, which offers an immersive experience to the users. Quizzes, polls and augmented reality ads are some of its examples.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the means of earning a commission by promoting other company’s products. Once you find a product relevant to your niche, you may promote it to others and earn a share of the profit for each sale you make.

Here are the basic steps to get started:

• Join an affiliate programme
• Pick a product to promote
• Share the unique affiliate link of the product via social media, YouTube videos, blog, Facebook ads or any other portal

That’s all! Now, whenever anyone makes a purchase through your link, you earn an affiliate commission.

Sounds interesting, right? It sure is. That’s why about 81% of brands rely on affiliate links as these involve very little investment (source: Smart Insights).

Conclusion

For anyone in digital marketing, change is the only constant. You must strive to embrace new strategies and technologies to survive and gain a competitive edge. However, if you are not a tech-geek, we recommend you to engage a company offering professional digital marketing services.

So, there you have it - our informative guide to the 9 most important digital marketing trends you cannot afford to overlook in 2020.

Which one do you find the most useful? We are awaiting your comment. Feel free to share.