The new year is right around the corner and we know you have already prepared with a well-planned business growth strategies and goals. But here is the thing: digital marketing is not going to be the same for the year 2020, rather it is going to be more digitally advanced.
When you ask, what’s really going to happen in 2020. We’re sure they will tell you things like “50% of the search queries will be dominated by voice search.” But all those stuffs have already been talked about round the year. So we have collected some trends and innovations that are actually more interesting & that will surely affect your marketing strategy.
So…what are those digital marketing trends and innovation for 2020?
Alright, without any more descriptions, here it goes…
#1 Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is definitely going to be at the heart of global business and industry in the future, and it’s already taking over many jobs. So how exactly this is going to help in your digital marketing strategy?
AI can analyse consumer search patterns and behaviours, use data from social media platforms and help business understand how costumers find any products or services. So we can say that very soon AI will be the driving force behind many services & we can already see them implemented in these areas:
- Basic communication
- Product recommendations
- Email personalization
- eCommerce Transactions
One of the best example of AI is a Facebook messenger bot created by Mastercard. It deciphers what customer wants and responds to their queries like a real person. Read the messages exchanged between the consumer and the chatbot.
#2 Optimize your business with Voice Search for Conversions
“At least 50% of all online searches will be voice searches” says ComScore. Yes, we all have heard about it and is not a new trend. So here’s the take.
Optimizing your business website for voice search is a great way for your brand exposure, but how is it going to convert into sales? We know one such solutions that is simple and easy to implement that is Jetson.ai.
What is Jetson.ai?
We all know that these days, devices like Google Home and Alexa have become popular and gradually it is taking place in everyone’s home or offices. So Jetson.ai works with these kind of devices so people can buy from your website using the voice search.
Simply upload your menu items or product catalogue to Jetson’s dashboard and start reaching new customers that are looking to conveniently transact. This is really interesting for industries like restaurants, retails and hospitality.
#3 Chatbots to take off drastically
Chatbots are going to be an important asset in digital marketing. Moreover, the AI based chatbots use the instant messaging feature to chat with the customers in real time day or night. Many customers prefer interacting with a chatbot as they are 24/7 available and it accurately recalls your entire purchase history and never lose patients most importantly.
Some other surveys on chatbots:
“By 2022, chatbots will help businesses save over $8 billion per annum.” – Juniper Research
“Chatbots will power 85% of customer service by 2020.” – G2
“63% of respondents prefer messaging an online chatbot to communicate with a business or brand.” – Mindshare
#4 Unique Selling Proposition (USP) will almost be non-existent
With your business you may have various USPs like cost structure, advanced technology & features or even a marketing advantage. But over the years we feel that business USPs are slowly disappearing.
It’s easy for anyone to copy these days. So something could work right now, but won’t last forever. So how your business will be stronger than your competitors?
It’s BRANDING…
Think of the Kardashians. According to Forbes, Kyle launched a billion-dollar cosmetic business making her wealthiest member of the Kardashian-Jenner family. But we all know her company isn’t doing any revolution. All she has is just a strong brand which helps to monetize the cosmetic company.
This is just one company and the same goes for Nike, American Express, Zomato… and the list goes on. This is the only reason why companies spend over 10B dollars a year on influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using key leaders to amplify your brand message to a larger market. 63% of consumers trust influencers’ opinions of products much more than what brands say about themselves.
If your business is local (in areas of interest as well as geographically), the business growth tendency towards 2020 will be focusing collaborating with local influencers.
#5 Social Messaging Apps
If you thought social messaging apps are just for sending forwards and emojis, you should better take a look at these numbers:
10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger every month. – G2
WhatsApp has 1.6 billion active users and 55 billion messages are sent via every day. – WhatsApp
The top three social messaging apps – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat – have more combined users than Facebook or YouTube. – Inc.
Since people are spending more time messaging each other, it makes complete sense to market your products through these medium where your customers are hanging out most of the time. These messaging apps are helpful in sending messages to customers as they allow personalization and can add value to the user experience. Here are some benefits:
- Boost sales
- Involve people in events
- Cultivate contact
- Regain potential customers
- Deliver information directly to the targeted people
- Provide support and assistance
#6 Micro-Moments is the new battlegrounds for brands
A micro-moment is an intent rich moment when, customers have different intentions: to do, to learn, to go, to buy, etc. Now this is called a customer intent. People generally make instant decisions within these four micro-moments:
READ MORE: HOW TO LEVERAGE THESE FOUR MICRO-MOMENTS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
In 2020 and beyond, customer journey will be more dynamic and even unpredictable as it needs to respond to rapid changes in consumer desires. For businesses that seek immediate sales should greatly focus on high intent keywords with ready to buy moments.
#7 Social media stories
Snapchat was the pioneer to come with the concept of “My Story”, then Instagram and Facebook stories were introduced. Later YouTube unveiled their own story format – Reels.
Since these types of stories posted disappears after set period of time, marketers can grab the opportunities and make good use of FOMO (fear of missing out). Businesses can get inspired by some of these ways to use social media stories:
- Using polls with Instagram stories
- Give live video a try when creating stories
- Invite followers to explore more with clear call-to-actions
- Add location tags
- Add mention for other brands or your fans
There are clearly certain benefits with social media stories such as increased brand awareness, constant engagement, quick way to announce something to your fans and increased traffic to your website.
#8 Browser Push Notifications
Browser push notifications are on the rise with 85% of online stores and a wide range of other e-commerce operations using in their business. So who else uses the push notifications?
The updates to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and stricter filters have dented the potency of email marketing. Moreover, the younger audience favours other methods of communication and prefers to deal with less touchpoints when engaging brands.
Surveys say that more and more brands will be adopting browser push notifications in 2020 because they are more sophisticated and personalized. In fact browser push notifications increase conversions with 54% of conversion rate from a segmented push notification compared to only 15% for broadcast messages.
They work great in re-engaging users who have shown interest but failed to convert or abandoned shopping carts.
#9 Shoppable Post and Social Commerce
Both, social media and eCommerce are growing at a very alarming rate and it is no wonder that marketers are using the two together to increase sales opportunities.
It is believed that this type of promotions of products will reduce the risk of purchase abandon because they don’t have to leave or switch the app or sign in to an unknown store.
Instagram reports that the platform has 1 billion users, and 90% of them already follow active shopping brands, with many visiting these profiles on a daily basis.
So is there any better way to leverage this massive potential by using shoppable posts?
#10 More creative, deep and personalized content marketing
Highly focused and personalized content will be the next big thing in digital marketing strategy for 2020.
Reason: consumer has begun asking for more in-depth material. It is known that your single message for all doesn’t fit every single one of your visitors. But through personalization, you can convert more of your visitors into customers.
A basic example of this is Amazon. When you go to Amazon website or app, they know your search patterns or what you typically buy so they show you what they think you want to see in order to boost their conversions.
Marketing is going to become a game of personalization in coming year. This effort will drive the consumer through the sales funnel more efficiently, increasing the strategy’s conversion rate.
#11 Augmented Reality (AR) & Immersive Technologies
AR is much more implementable from marketing point of view. Experts predicts that AR will outpace VR in terms of market share. The main objective of AR in marketing will be to achieve increased brand awareness, greater customer engagement, and higher perceived value.
Having an interesting AR application that gives users a memorable experience helps in creating a buzz for your brand. Therefore, brands are increasingly using this technology to enhance the consumer experience and increase sales.
A simple example is the IKEA Place app which allows you to take the photo of your room from your phone and lets you test their furniture by virtually placing it over. You can move around the furniture around to check how it looks.
#12 Growth of Geo-Fencing
Of course location based marketing is not a new thing but we expect a huge rise in the use of geo-fencing with a growth of $2.4 billion by 2023.
Not only is geo-fencing cheap and relatively easy to implement, it’s very effective for local businesses. You can add more specific targeting layers to local online marketing campaigns, which ultimately boosts campaign performance. For local businesses, the more locally targeted your message is, the better it’s going to perform when your customers are local.
It allows real time targeting based on users’ location. For example, within a mile of a restaurant and when a user enters or leaves this area, they receive a push notification, text message or any form of marketing communication.
#13 Marketing Automation
Marketing automation promises big things; more leads, conversions and sales, all with less work. For marketing professionals, automation offers an exciting opportunity for greater efficiency, cost reduction, and an enhanced customer experience.
By 2020, 30% of businesses worldwide will be using AI in at least one of their sales process. Businesses can use automation and AI to:
- Upsell and Cross Sell to Customers
- Automatically suggests content to visitors to increase their sessions on website
- Identify hot leads
- Improve customer retention
- Deliver personalized website experience
- Target customers across different channels
- Cost & time saving
#14 Position Zero in SERP
We have seen a great increase in voice search for the past couple of years. It has changed the way search engine optimization works. One of the most notable change is the “featured snippets” which appears above the search results (i.e. SERP), called “position zero”, like in this example:
Position zero or rank zero, is the holy grail of modern day SEO as it directly answers the users’ query without requiring to click the website link. This trend is now growing because 62.5% or mobile searches and 34.4% of desktop searches are now resulting in “position zero” search results.
#15 Website Security
Any visitor landing on a website, the very first thing that comes to their mind in seconds is about the security. If they don’t feel safe on your website, they won’t hang around and will just bounce back. And high bounce rate is a nightmare for any online business as you will slide down in SERPs when Google realizes that people don’t want to stay on your website.
Tech Republic notes that there have been over 3,800 data breaches within organizations in 2019 alone! So in 2020 website security should not be an option with Google announcing that HTTPS is a ranking signal and they will flag every unsafe site unless it has an HTTPS.
So it is always advisable to enable the HTTPS protocol for your site, which will show your visitors a little padlock icon in the URL.
Wrapping Up
We guess now you have our definitive digital marketing guide for 2020 with these 15 most important digital marketing trends and innovation. For anyone in the digital marketing, change is an integral part. It is must that you keep on looking ahead and embrace the latest digital marketing trends and technologies in order to gain an edge over your competitors.
For any queries on how you can plan a digital marketing strategy for your business, just drop us a message for free consultation.
