Digital marketing has now become one of the most common yet very significant terms. While most people would think of it as merely making a website and handling social media accounts of their business, it has a lot more hidden in its depth.
Digital marketing has now become one of the most common yet very significant terms. While most people would think of it as merely making a website and handling social media accounts of their business, it has a lot more hidden in its depth.
Over the years, we have seen a digital era taking control over the world. Everything, right from shopping to education has gone digital. What’s more significant is that the digital world has everyone as their target audience.
From a school kid to millennium generation to the elderly ones, no one can be ignored while you plan your campaign. So now that we’ve already come very far in this digital world, let us see what 2020 has in store for us.
As an intelligent digital marketer, you would always want to plan. The first step in planning is analyzing and learning. So for that matter, we’ve listed some of the trends that you just can’t (and shouldn’t) miss in 2020.
1. Artificial intelligence
While you might be fancying the term already, it’s time to realize its potential and act accordingly. With significant progress and development in the last decade, 2020 might witness the dominance of Artificial Intelligence in its full force.
Taking the experts’ insight in a note, we realize that 2020 is going to be the year t witness overwhelming progress in IT Sector and Digital marketing which would be possible because of AI and VR.
“Digital workplace leaders will proactively implement AI-based technologies such as virtual assistants or other NLP-based conversational agents and robots to support and augment employees’ tasks and productivity. However, the AI agents must be properly monitored to prevent digital harassment and frustrating user experiences,” says Helen Poitevin.
2. Voice Search Optimization
We can see that it is quite already in trend. Voice search optimization is not just a progressive step, but it has now become a necessity. With gradual and revolutionary development in technology, user behavior has changed drastically.
Therefore, being a digital marketer you would realize the need to change certain strategies according to the changing user behavior. Voice search is one of them. Owing to the jet-set life and ease of technology, the user is now inclined to enter the query through voice search.
This means the keyword targeting should change accordingly. To help you realize the severe need for voice search optimization, we have some stats. According to ComScore, over 50% of the searches in 2020 will be from voice search.
One of the best ways to optimize for voice searches is to answer questions. Understand that your user is searching because he wants an answer. Frame your content accordingly so it would be easier for the search engines to detect your content as the best fit result for the query.
3. Social media stories
Social media stories are no more a new concept. Being first founded by Snapchat, it has now become very evident and common in all the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and even Youtube (as it launches the new feature of reels which is similar to stories).
Since these stories last for only 24 hours, it allows brands to make the most out of their target audience using the FOMO (fear of missing out). There are multiple ways in which social media stories can be used by brands and businesses.
In most of the cases, they work best during some offer or sale. Again, this uses the psychology of FOMO. It can also be used to increase brand awareness. Social media stories have provided a new gateway to grab audience attention and hence, it’s something that you should not miss in 2020.
“Ultimately, people want to do business with brands they like, know and trust. That’s why we should look at social media less as a marketing platform and more as a collaboration platform - that’s where its power is unlocked,” says Neal Schaffer.
Social media stories can be used in this sense to build that trust and add a personal touch to communicate with your user.
4. Personalization
Personalized marketing has become one of the necessities if you want to stand out and ahead of your competitors. Personalized communication with your audience has proved to be the key ingredient in the run of customer retention. Therefore, your 2020 marketing strategy should be dominated by personalization of content, emails, products and more. To support this with stats, we’ve listed some facts below.
- 63% of consumers are highly annoyed with generic advertising blasts
- 80% say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences
- 90% claim they find personalization appealing
“Personalized, triggered emails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast emails.”, says Kevin George. This must make it clear why personalization as a marketing strategy cannot be avoided in 2020.
5. Chatbots
One of the very common communication channels in the business world is email. However, it has been observed in 2019 that the click rate in emails has dropped by over 9%. What does this suggest? Is email marketing no more rewarding? No. Email marketing remains one of the most effective communication methods.
However, we need to back it up with additional support. Alternative communication channels need to be set-up for interaction with your customers. This is where the role of the chatbots comes into play. According to Oracle, 80% of businesses will want chatbots by 2020. Make sure you don’t miss out!
Like every year, Digital Marketing is going to witness many new trends and changes in 2020. What would make you the best among your competitors would be analytical planning. For this, make sure you understand and re-evaluate your user behavior at regular intervals.
These 5 trends are the key points which you must keep in your mind while planning an effective strategy for the digital marketing campaign in 2020. As the decade changes, your marketing strategy and planning should change too. Make sure to be a step-ahead of your competitors by following some simple analytical routine.