Digital Marketing Trends You Don’t Want To Miss
Digital Transformation Accelerated
The digital marketing trends we have seen over the past couple of years have reshaped the way many businesses approach marketing. However, a large portion shied away from the latest digital tools and didn’t leverage them for their services or products. So, the original trend forecast for 2020 remained on the same path of slow evolution.
Nonetheless, the year did not unfold as planned, and the infamous (novel) n-COVID-19 pandemic – propelled the entire world to go in quick adaptation mode. Adapt to survive or risk extinction, isn’t that what they say?
Indeed, businesses found themselves standing still at an inevitable crossroads. They needed to go forward and digitize not only their marketing processes but also, the way in which services and products reach the consumer. This requires an accelerated digital marketing strategy that encompasses new tools, the use of the latest features and content formats available online to spread the word in a novel way. Novel times call for novel measures, after all.
What are these new and improved digital marketing trends of the year that you don’t want to miss?
While marketing has moved beyond branding and advertising to include data analysis and AI, you can still expect the list to include customer experience (CX), employee engagement, and content visualization with a strong focus on people.
Novel Tactics
1. Customer Experience
Dubbed the year of the customer, 2020 is all about making sure that your Customer Experience (CX) is focused on keeping your current customers loyal and happy, and perhaps attracting new ones in the process. It costs less to keep your customers than get new ones, and eventually, loyalty pays off by increasing brand reputation.
But what does CX mean in the post-pandemic age? It means, not trying to convince people to buy from your company, but offering them a fantastic experience. That means promoting a positive culture, top-of-the-line service, and a continuous online presence.
The shift towards an almost exclusive online market – at a time when consumers are spending a staggering amount of time at home and online – has given these consumers much more power. They are no longer passive players, but instead, they are pro-active in their research and finding the best options. So, plain advertising just won’t cut it, and let’s not forget easy and safe payment options and a mobile-oriented experience.
2. Employee Engagement
If CX has become the cornerstone of a successful business, then you must have the resources to provide that fantastic customer service which is the key to the whole experience. That’s where employee engagement comes in. A disgruntled employee reflects on your brand and can affect service, reputation, and ultimately your sales. Your employees are the face of your brand. So, having a great framework and a culture for positive interactions between employees and customers is crucial. A happy employee will care about your business and feel personally involved in its processes.
3. AI-Based Automation
We have seen a lot of Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration into our daily lives over the last few years. Therefore, businesses are tapping into this well to automate their marketing activities. From voice search capabilities to smart assistants; websites are leveraging greatly the use of chatbots to improve their customer service and offer a new channel of interaction with leads and customers.
AI technology is reducing the mundane time-consuming tasks that marketers had to do manually, so they can focus on upping their strategy game and offer unparalleled CX instead. It is all about using AI to learn more about your customers while enabling the hyper-personalization of experience and marketing communication.
4. Educate With Your Content
Content is king. Even in 2020.
There is nothing surprising about this statement, content is the undisputed king. However, not all content is royal. Nurturing leads and building an enticing customer experience is now all about providing rich, interesting, and even educational content. Use assets to position yourself as a relevant and authoritative, source of information that resonates with your audience.
5. Personalize Your Marketing Messages
A one-way communication approach is so old fashioned. While brands have evolved from the unidirectional approach, it is no longer enough to just engage and interact with consumers. In 2020, marketers must dig into analytics and really understand the data, demographics, and affinities. They must put themselves in their audience’s shoes and deliver a personalized message every single time they communicate with them. They must take on the role of a virtual friend who knows the patterns, behavior, and issues – fears, wishes, and wants – that the consumer has. Therefore, they must reply to the question before it is asked. And yes, this means personal emails that include the first name in the greeting, custom audiences for remarketing with intentional creative. You can create effective personalization by segmenting your audience into small groups based on an action that you can address in your next communication.
6. The Data Behind The Creative
Platforms like Google and Facebook have refined their algorithms to become highly adept at determining which ad image and copy will generate the best conversion rate. Moreover, the decidedly flexible and smart audience targeting has allowed marketers to shift their focus on A/B testing their creative with the aid of data. This means, exploring performance based on the visual, the copy, and the creativity of the ad. This data-first approach, analyzes the metrics of existing creative, identifies the gaps, and optimizes the ad accordingly.
7. Regular Content Updates
Invest in producing – and repurposing – fresh content. It is no secret that Google has a freshness ranking factor and updating your blog is one of the ways to keep that ranking high. If you are short on new material, don’t fret, you can easily recycle old content. As long as you are putting out quality content, you can use simple updates and tweaks – changing the article date for example – to score a win.
8. Guest Blogging Opportunities
Guest blogging is a matchless way to expand organic reach while hitting that SEO mark. It is an inclusive method that really contributes towards the provision of interesting, personal, and out of the box content – which can be educational at times too. These articles will boost your traffic and can even draw in leads.
9. Livestream
Live-streaming was on the rise in 2019 and will continue to dominate in 2020. This is because it is free, it isn’t costly or time-consuming to produce, reaches a broader target audience, and most importantly; offers authentic personal user engagement.
10. Explainer Videos
You can’t hide from video content. It has a proven record for being highly engaging. Moreover, when Google algorithms continue to favor videos, you know you hit your SEO goal. However, not all videos are created equal. Try to explore a more in-depth style with explainer videos, otherwise known as educational content. Steer away from crude promotional material and dive into the added value that being informative provides.
11. SERP Position Zero & Featured Snippets
Search Engine Optimization continues to be an integral part of digital marketing in 2020 – provided with a twist. The majority of searches now take place on mobile – with a large portion using voice search – thus changing people’s behavior on search engines. The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) is no longer the ultimate goal to reach. The need for more information, in a faster way, on-the-go, has led to the rise of the featured snippet. This means that users no longer need to visit a website to get the information they are looking for.
Therefore, it is once again all about location, location, location. And the highest real estate value on google is Position Zero. The top of the page, before any other listing.
As businesses try to take the highly sought after position zero, they need to implement various new SEO techniques and optimized practices for content. It is a first-come, first-serve situation determined by excellence.
Towards More Personalization
It may seem like technology has a clear upper hand in the way digital marketing strategies are conducted. However, there is a rapidly growing curve that shows a people-centric attitude is the path of choice going forward.
We can only expect that digital tools (from e-shopping to video content) will continue to be refined and adapted to meet the very human needs of a socially available brand and its target audience. From utilizing data collection to customizing ads and remarketing those items that sparked customer curiosity; to incorporating AI in our lives in an effort to humanize marketing…the demand is pointing clearly towards personalization.
Nonetheless, keep in mind that marketing is not about following steps in a list. It has become an increasingly complex endeavor – particularly in 2020 – and requires businesses to go above and beyond what they are used to doing, and re-assess their overall objectives. As marketing efforts are no longer perceived as the responsibility of a single department, you need to go through a strategic marketing transformation to radically improve your CX and increase revenue.