Top 20 Trends in Digital Marketing for 2020
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To keep consumers engaged, it’s important for companies to regularly assess and update their marketing strategies, particularly in the digital realm. Participating in digital marketing trends is a great way to stay viable and present in a crowded, ever-changing marketplace.
The Importance of Digital Marketing Trends
While you may be tempted to let the next marketing trend pass you by, it’s important to jump on the bandwagon when a big digital marketing trend hits. Users engage with content they’re interested in, and they have a wide range of options for what they look at, click on, and interact with. Demonstrating that you’re aware of what’s happening online and taking part in mainstream trends can help keep consumers coming to your page and interacting with your content.
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Top 20 Digital Marketing Trends for 2020
Think about implementing a few of these top digital trends in marketing with your company this year:
1. Social E-commerce
Social e-commerce allows consumers to click through to purchase pages directly from a social media post. Making it easier for consumers to buy what they want when they want it by curtailing the number of checkout steps can reduce buyer abandonment.
2. Direct Messages
Use the direct messaging feature of your business’s social media accounts to interact personally with customers. You can answer questions, respond to concerns, and check in on purchases without the need to migrate to a secondary chat program.
3. Micro-Influencers
Influencers are an important piece of the digital marketing landscape, but micro-influencers are starting to gain value. Micro-influencers have considerably fewer followers, usually around 30,000, but their interactions with those followers are far more personal, giving them substantial influence.
4. Interactive Emails
Make your email easy to interact with by including buttons that take consumers directly to the product page. Include high-quality images and other eye-catching buttons or graphics to keep readers from opening and immediately deleting the message without looking at the contents.
5. Sentiment Analysis
Use sentiment analysis, the process of determining the shades of sentiment in a consumer’s response to a product, to better evaluate the efficacy of a product or service. Often, customers like most of the features of a product but may have one issue. Sentiment analysis allows you to hone in on that one element that customers mention in their online reviews and make changes to improve your products and your sales.
6. Other Social Media
Consider expanding your social media presence to include sites other than just Facebook and Twitter. More and more users, especially younger consumers, are moving to smaller niche platforms for most of their social media interactions.
7. Advertising Automation
Use programmatic advertising to help increase the efficacy of your ads and to decrease your workload. Automating advertising with programmatic advertising uses algorithms and data collection to determine the best possible location and time to display an ad for a potential consumer.
8. Featured Snippets
Featured snippets give searchers a short preview of the article or website on Google and other search engines. However, only the first few results show featured snippets, and these little summaries can have a major impact on click-through rates. Ensure you’re optimizing your featured snippets for SEO.
9. Vlogs
Video is an absolute must these days. Consumers love to watch well-made video content from their favorite brands, companies, and influencers, especially on social media.
10. Gen Z
Gen Z is coming of age and edging millennials out as the demographic to market to. While there’s definitely some overlap in what millennials and Gen Z appreciate in marketing, do some testing to see what your youngest consumers want in their ads so you can engage them online.
11. Chatbots
Use chatbots on your website to help customers with basic questions, comments, and customer service issues without the need to hire an entire team of customer service representatives for 24/7 service.
12. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a primary indicator of SEO success. Start or maintain your company’s blog. Add thoughtful, comprehensive, well-researched articles regularly to keep your website’s SEO high.
13. Voice Search Optimization
Many smart speakers and mobile phones provide information from websites when customers perform a voice search. Think about keeping your content conversational and consider how it will sound when spoken in addition to how it reads.
14. Messaging App Marketing
Use mobile chat apps, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as another avenue for chatting with customers. Consumers like the option of using an app they’re already on rather than a propriety chat option they can only access from a browser for company questions and comments.
15. Multi-Platform Approach
Create an engaging marketing strategy that involves multiple tactics and platforms. It’s not sufficient to focus on one single avenue, like just Facebook or just content for your blog. Link your platforms together to make it easier for customers to find you on the web.
16. Personalization
Consumers like personalization. They’re much more likely to interact with an email that lists their last purchase and suggests products they may like than an email that’s clearly designed for any past customer.
17. Visual Search
Like voice search, visual search is rising in popularity. Ensure you have high-quality images with thoughtful and descriptive alt tags to help search engines match the searcher’s image to your page or product.
18. Stories
Many social media sites are adopting “stories,” or images and video clips that disappear after a set period of time. Use stories to provide fun, in-the-moment ads to consumers.
19. Push Notifications
Browser push notifications are highly effective at getting consumers to complete a call to action. Consider using push notifications to entice customers to provide their email address for a percentage off of their order or another low-pressure engagement.
20. Interactive Content
Include interactive content on your social media pages and website. Use tools like polls, 360-degree photos or videos, and quizzes to engage with potential customers in a fresh way.
Following digital trends in marketing can help keep your company in the public eye and consistently gaining the notice of new customers.
