We all are surrounded by a lot of buzz words like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Mixed Reality and what not. The world is changing dynamically with the advancements in technology.
This change is revolutionizing the digital marketing industry too. Digital Marketing is technology-driven and changes in technology are leading to a lot of changes in digital marketing too.
Like any other industry, if one has to sustain in the digital marketing industry too, one has to be well versed with the latest trends in the industry.
If you are in digital marketing and if you are not following the latest digital marketing trends, you are losing out a lot of opportunities. Also, you are endangering your business by staying stagnant.
In this article, let us explore the top digital marketing trends which you must know in 2020.
Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2020
#1. Voice Search
Voice search is a voice-based modern technology that permits individuals to carry out searches by talking to a gadget. The number of people doing voice search is increasing with the increase in the number of internet and mobile phone users.
Earlier, it was popular in Apple phones – Siri. But, now every device has a voice assistant. Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortona are being used widely.
The virtual assistant based smart speakers has also leveraged the number of voice searches.
People order things online, book tickets, play music, plan holidays and much more by conversing with virtual assistants.
If you are not optimizing your content for voice search, your competitor is going to eat your business.
The boosting use of voice search has made it crucial for businesses to reconsider their digital advertising and marketing techniques in 2020.
#2. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence for a long time was just spoken about. But recently, it has been implemented too across various sectors and the organizations adopting it are increasing.
Artificial intelligence is changing customer-facing services for electronic marketing experts by boosting performance and optimizing the customer experience.
One typical instance of AI throughout the web is the use of chatbots to supply customer services to customers. Chatbots in itself is one of the key digital marketing trends for 2020.
Artificial intelligence is used by digital marketers for communication, content creation, email personalization, content curation, predictive analytics, etc.
Natural language processing is widely used by search engines. Google’s BERT update clearly illustrates this.
Data is produced at a rapid scale and pace. In order to process and get insights out of it, AI is used. AI is used by organizations to identify the patterns in the market and for studying consumer behavior.
AI has the power to revolutionize your business and is hence one of the key digital marketing trends in 2020.
#3. Personalization
When talking about digital marketing trends, how can we ignore the power of personalization?
Consumers love it when they are targeted products/services related to them and not just everything. Tell them how can you help them and solve their problems. Every individual is different and has a different taste.
Consumers are extra comfy providing personal details to their preferred brand names if they get something in return. They submit types, download whitepapers, participate in studies to get discounts, and also suggest their preferred acquisitions or choices.
So, what’s the catch? With every one of these customer data being offered, the customer expects brands to protect any kind of sensitive information and also provide more individualized experiences when they return.
Your emails, social media campaigns, landing pages, messages, etc should be personalized. The landing page must ensure that it is as per the customer’s interests else even if the customer will reach the landing page in his/her customer journey but will not take any action.
#4. Chatbots
Visit a website and you will find a chatbot. Go to the Facebook page of companies/individuals and you the messenger bot will greet you. We are all surrounded by chatbots.
A huge number of customer service activities are now automated and taken care of by chatbots.
Especially in a country like India, where voice-based queries are increasing and regional language is widely used over the internet, chatbots have a great scope.
A recent article in Business Line beautifully explains how chatbots can be used in public governance, healthcare, trade and commerce, etc. Read it here.
More and more businesses are using Facebook messenger and WhatsApp Business now. In India, BookMyShow has set an amazing example of using this advancement in digital space.
They have integrated WhatsApp with their ticket booking system. Whenever a user books a movie ticket online, he receives an M-ticket QR code on his WhatsApp.
#5. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is a type of marketing in which brands take help from key leaders to promote the products/services. Social media is widely used and people speak their hearts out there.
Imagine that you are selling a shirt that is wrinkleless and good for the skin. You are a new company and consumers have very little trust in you. So, if you directly promote your product, it might not result in the expected amount of sales. But, if you hire an influencer like a fashion blogger or a celebrity, then this will help people buy.
Why?
A fashion blogger would be already having a fan base and is a trusted name in that industry. He/she would have already collaborated with several other brands in the past and have helped people to stay up to date with fashion trends.
When such an influencer will promote the shirt which you are trying to sell, obviously more amount of sales will occur.
As per Influencer Marketing Hub, “Businesses are making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing”.
It is simple. Instead of the brand advertising directly, you get in touch with an influencer and he/she promotes it for you. Influencer marketing if done right can lead to a lot of conversions.
But, if done in the wrong way, it can cause a lot of damage to the business. You need to watch the documentary on Fyre Festival to understand how influencers can attract such a large amount of people to register for an event and how it can fail.
#6. Video Marketing
The attention span of consumers is reducing. The popularity of video content is increasing and is going to increase much more in 2020. Brands are creating creative and engaging videos to communicate with consumers.
Youtube is the second most popular website after Google and this indicates the demand for video content.
In 2019, ByteDance’s popular video app TikTok was the 2nd most downloaded app. (WhatsApp was the most popularly downloaded app). As per Business Standard, In India, Tiktok was ahead of all other social media apps in 2019.
Video content is consumed much more than any other form of content and the video content consumption rate is highly increasing too.
So, if your brand is not focussing on video marketing in 2020, it is losing out on the tremendous amount of audience which heavily consumes video content.
#7. Featured Snippets
If you are having great SEO for your website and even if it is ranking on the first page of the SERP, you are not winning the game.
In fact, do not be happy if you rank 1st in the SERP.
You would be wondering why should you not be happy if you are at the first position?
Because Featured Snippets are at the zeroeth position. They are also known as Google Answer Box which one can find at the topmost position in a search engine results page.
Whenever a user asks a question in the Google Search, he/she might be shown a Featured Snippet. It is the summary of the answer which is extracted from a relevant web page and might include the link of the web page too.
So, this makes it more likely for the user to click on the Featured Snippet (Position 0).
You might not have the best SEO, but if you are answering user’s questions then there are high chances of your website appearing in a featured snippet. So, optimize for featured snippets.
#8. Interactive Content
When talking about the top digital marketing trends, how can we forget the importance of Content?
The content was, is and will be the KING. But, the world has revolutionized and the king has to be more interactive.
Interactive Content is a piece of content that actively engages the audience and encourages them to take the desired action.
As mentioned earlier too, the attention span of the people is decreasing. This means if your content fails to engage them, they will move ahead. In order to keep them stuck to the content and get a response from them, the content should be so interactive and engaging that the users respond.
A few examples of interactive content that can be used in 2020 are Polls, Surveys, Live Streaming, 360-degree videos, Gamification, etc.
Imagine an amazing video that made you fill a subscription form. Or Maybe a gamified calculator used by insurance providers to calculate the risk and suggest you the best insurance policies. That’s the power of interactive content.
#9. Geo-Fencing
With the advent of technology, targeting individuals and businesses have become much easier and effective. Geo-Fencing is all about location-based advertising.
It uses radiofrequency chips/GPS and alerts whenever someone or something enters a particular region. This helps marketers advertise.
Many global brands like Burger King, Uber, Dunkin Donuts, etc are using this to advertise.
In India, the number of mobile phone users is increasing at a very rapid speed. Mobile phones are reaching even in the remotest corner of the country. And, this is the right time to implement Geo-Fencing for marketing.
Imagine you have a restaurant on a highway. Whenever vehicles passed from your geofenced area, the software analyzes and sends notifications to the mobile phones which are passing by your region and likely to consume food. This sounds futuristic. Right?
But this is possible with the power of analytics and technology. You can target ads to only the prospects which are likely to buy and are in your vicinity.
If you have not yet thought of Geo-fencing, this is the right time to use this amazing digital marketing tactic and be ahead of your competitors.
#10. User-generated content
Digital platforms are now revolving around user-generated content. Whether be it Facebook, Youtube or Tiktok, who is writing posts, sharing content or videos? It is the users using those platforms.
Reviews on e-commerce websites, discussions on forums, comments, feedback, etc are all user-generated content.
The power lies in the hands of consumers and a single tweet can devastate the brand’s image. An artist Dave Carroll created a video “United Breaks Guitar” and uploaded it on Youtube. It went viral. Basically, his guitar was broken by the airlines and he was not getting a proper response from them. This is a very good example of how a user can create content and it can heavily impact the brand.
Talking about India, as the internet is now cheaply available and content can be created on smartphones, UGC is going to be a trend. Many people are creating product review videos, blogs and actively sharing such content. If your brand is helping users, creating engaging experiences and is authentic, users will naturally create a lot of UGC which will help in your advertising and ORM.
You cannot control users from creating content but you can always deliver experiences that motivate them to create awesome content about you and be your brand advocates.
UGC is one of the most exciting digital marketing trends which you cannot ignore in 2020 especially if you are in India.
#11. AR/VR
Augmented reality and virtual reality are no more futuristic. Brands are using them to create experience and experience is of the utmost importance for the consumers.
AR helps people to try the product before buying. VR helps in a lot of simulation which makes it easier to experience things.
In India, Lenskart is using AR to enhance the customer experience. It’s website and app both have “3D Try On” feature which lets the user use phone’s or laptop’s camera to try the frames. Similarly, other brands have also started implementing AR/VR to enhance the customer journey.
Hence, you cannot afford to ignore the power of AR/VR.
#12. Marketing Automation
Digital is revolutionizing businesses in India and also how businesses do marketing. As per Hubspot, it is all about using software to automate marketing activities.
You do not need too high-tech machines for this. Simple automation can take place even with an application like Microsoft Excel.
Most of the small and medium-sized businesses in India are in the transition phase – From offline to online. They are slowing shifting from the traditional account book systems to ERP or other automated systems.
But the marketing space has moved ahead a lot and reached AR/VR and beyond. If you are still using traditional manual methods, then you are losing out a lot of business. Marketing automation makes things simple. The targeting can be specifically tailored, customers can be grouped and targeted with various personalized campaigns, social media posts and replies can be automated & much more. That’s the power of Marketing Automation.
#13. YMYL & E-A-T for SEO
YMYL and EAT are 2 most crucial metrics which Google uses in its quality rating guidelines. Here, YMYL is the acronym for “Your Money OR Your Life”. YMYL sites are the ones that can affect the reader’s life or money in any means. Google pays special attention to the inspection of the page quality of such websites.
EAT is the acronym for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness”. It is a critical factor which is used by Google to judge the page quality.
Page quality is very critical for SEO and YMYL & E-A-T are key factors for Google to judge the page quality.
If your content is misleading or incorrect, then please ensure that you get it right as soon as possible. Also, ensure that you post helpful and relevant content that is developed by experts.
#14. Website Security (HTTPS)
Google considers HTTPS as one of the ranking factors. Also, Chrome gives a warning message of “not secure” if the website is not having a valid SSL certificate installed.
So, if your website is not having an SSL certificate, that is if it is still HTTP then you are losing an opportunity to rank higher which you have with HTTPS.
Also when users get the warning message, they do not feel comfortable.
Website Security is very crucial and if you have not yet secured your connection, you cannot delay it further. It is one of the key digital marketing trends in 2020.
#15. Mobile Marketing
Mobile phones are used widely and the way marketing used to happen has also revolutionized. Most of the searches are made from mobile phones.
With the advent of affordable internet and smartphones, the usage has increased a lot and will continue to increase.
Few amazing stats regarding mobile marketing by Quoracreative are:
- In 2019, 80% of people used a mobile phone to search on the internet
- Out of 10, 9 customers are lost due to poor mobile-friendliness
- 48% of buyers use mobiles as the first point of contact to start their search.
The list of stats goes on.
But, the main takeaway here is that mobile marketing cannot be ignored. If your website is not yet mobile-responsive, imagine how will users view it on their mobile screens?
Mobile marketing is one of the digital marketing trends that can help you leverage your business results to the next level.
#16. Long-form content
Do not be surprised to see this as one of the key digital marketing trends in the age of Tiktok. Long-form content works magically even in the age of one-minute video. It is very effective and generates amazing SEO results.
Imagine a person who has to search for information and he gets all the information in one article. He doesn’t have to go to multiple places and this is the beauty of long-form content. It really helps.
And when it helps people, they start loving you for creating it. An amazing example of this type of content is Neil Patel’s blog.
Long-form content illustrates that the content developer has expertise over the niche and depicts authority. Also, long-form content gets more backlinks which help in increasing the ranking in SERP.
But that does not mean you are creating content just for the sake of creating it. Content should have good quality and must be relevant. To reiterate, long-form quality content works.
#17. Email Marketing
Emails were a great tool for communicating and are even today one of the most effective tools of marketing.
With marketing automation and personalization, the ways in which this used to work earlier have changed. But, this is a cost-effective way of reaching the target audience.
The number of worldwide email accounts continues to grow at a faster pace than the number of worldwide email users. In 2018, the average number of email accounts per user ratio is about 1.75 accounts per user. By 2022, the email accounts per user ratio will reach 1.86 accounts per user
Radicati Email Statistics Report
Hence, email marketing is also one of the key digital marketing trends for your marketing success in 2020.
Conclusion
Digital marketing trends are many and the list can go on and on. But, these were the top identified digital marketing trends for 2020. If you have worked on these trends, then please share your experience in the comments sections.
Also, if you have expertise in any of the digital marketing trends mentioned above then please do let me know. I will interview you and publish your interview in the Expert Speaks section.
Thank you for reading. Now, it’s time for you to implement and succeed.
Exactly my thoughts! With all these tech trends creativity would be something that really can help to stand out. Thanks for sharing.