What Marketing Trends Are Most Likely to Dominate in 2020 for Digital-Based Brands

It’s no surprise digital marketing continues to take the business world by storm, growing and evolving every year. New trends, techniques, and strategies are on the rise all to counter new algorithms. To keep up with how to best reach audience, staying on the cusp of emerging marketing trends in 2020 is central.

VR/AR

Continuing to emerge as a major trend, augmented reality and virtual reality both are surging forward although are far from coming to reach their full potential. IKEA is one of the more publicized uses of AR, using it to help consumers visualize IKEA furniture in their own homes. How can you use AR or VR in a small business digital marketing campaign? 2019 never quite got us there, in terms of giving general websites and brands that opportunity. It remains to be seen if technology and coding will progress to the point where this is the case in 2020.

Is there meaning?

Consumers want to know the companies they’re buying from align with their views and understands their perspective. Is there meaning behind your brand, products, services or marketing – there should be. This may be attaching your brand to a non-controversial social cause, donating to a charity or cause, or building a community around something that’s passionate to you. A corporation that just exists to be a corporation is quickly losing favor in consumer eyes. Explode your growth and give a purchase from your brand meaning.

Video in 2020 and beyond

Consumers are gradually making the switch from text and images to wanting to consume only video. For this reason, so many platforms have opened up with new opportunities to launch campaigns with video. YouTube has helped so many brands build multi-million dollar annual revenues but it’s also not the only platform. Live video on Facebook and Instagram are a powerhouse, keeping users there up to 3 times longer than non-live video and producing 6 times as many interactions.

Voice search

Like video marketing, voice search is still very much coming into its own. By 2021, it’s estimated more than 50% of all searches will be done through voice assistant software of some kind. Worldwide, 4.9 billion voice assistants will be in use by next summer 2020. This is expected to continue growing. Long-tail keyword optimization, voice search SEO, and voice search-based marketing has the potential to shoot a brand today to where they’re going to need to be tomorrow to maximize results.

Ephemeral content

Ephemeral content are posts that disappear after a certain period of time. Snapchat’s built a whole platform off ephemeral content. Facebook and Instagram also have components of ephemeral content, which have proven to be extremely effective at triggering immediate, boosted engagement. Although ephemeral content doesn’t stick around for long, it doesn’t require a big budget or much planning either. Low-budget, smartphone-shot video is good enough to craft a meaningful story that connects.

Content marketing that shows expertise

In 2020, content marketing that seeks to inform, to communicate with, and to entertain will achieve great things for a brand. The key to amazing high-level content marketing is to deliver content from a place of authority. If you know what you’re talking about, become a subject matter expert (SME) in your field, and write unique articles that a user can only find through your website – no plagiarism, no duplicate generic blogs, and no re-writing – this draws attention.

Page loading speed

Among all these high-tech, advanced marketing strategies on the rise in 2020, forgetting the basics like page loading speed can be a mistake. Most users exit a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Not only that but Google SEO algorithms prioritize fast loading websites over ineffective, slow loading ones. For as much as you may try to deliver unique, creative high-performance web pages, don’t forget to keep it as speedy as possible.

SERPs and featured snippets of text on search results

When we Google, we see snippets come up at the top of the page alongside paid ads. Those snippets hold prime real estate. Users are likely to click on the first snippet and is oftentimes the only search result they’ll view. Needless to say, this is a highly coveted SEO position. SEO SERP strategies are helping brands deliver information in a new way. Unlike eCommerce companies focusing solely on selling product, if a brand can zero in on providing information and expertise with SERP-based content delivery, this can elevate you above others on Google, Bing, and elsewhere.

Location-specific marketing and web pages

Niche, location-based marketing cuts through the noise and gets your brand in front of the customers you want. Unless you’re marketing globally, you should be using SEO keywords with geographic tags attached. If you are marketing product and services nationally, creating location-based landing pages for major cities or geographic regions you’re in will help target those markets. Partnering these with local events and/or local-specific promotions, a brand becomes further embedded into local culture and can hopefully use this to dominate local competitors.

A rejection of the generic and a demand for personalized marketing

Consumers don’t want to be hit with one-size-fits-all ads. They want personalized marketing boasting a real connection to them. More than 90 percent find personalized emails appealing and 80 percent are more likely to buy your products or services when they’re offered a personalized experience. The best, simplest approach to personalized marketing are email marketing campaigns. Create segmented lists with personalized blasts. They perform far and above generic email sends that do not differentiate between subscribers.

User participation

Users on social media in particular want something to participate in. They want to like, share, comment, and respond. Encourage this participation. Advocate for comments or responses, getting in touch with you directly or publicly on social media. Your answer to their response can build a connection that continues to grow for days on-end. If you don’t have users interacting with and commenting on your content, you’re going to have a problem in 2020.

Customer testimonials as an influencer strategy

If you can’t afford to buy influencer marketing, let your customers be your influencers. Your customer stories as testimonials help with word-of-mouth, legitimizing your brand and reducing skepticism that may be surrounding a product or service. Today, everything feels like marketing. Even human-to-human connection sometimes can just be an exercise in selling. Customer testimonials are a far more effective brand-building strategy, helping to connect and provoke interaction.

eCommerce posts on social media to drive instant sales

The ubiquitous presence of social media in our lives has meant virtually any person with a smartphone, tablet, or computer connected. Every eCommerce online marketing strategy plugged into social media can reap big rewards. Up to 72% of Instagram users have purchased product advertised through an app and a similar percentage use Pinterest to spot unique products to buy. What social media sites are best for eCommerce social media product posts? Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are the winning three.

Visual, interactive content that’s new and different

Up to 91 percent of Internet users want more interactive content. Expect more brands to implement visually stunning, stand-out interactive content marketing strategies. The more interaction, the more engagement. This keeps users on page for longer. Interactive content is more likely to be shared as well, is publicity-getting and attention-grabbing, and is likely to be enjoyed more than any written word or still image.

Influencer marketing will continue to hit its stride

Influencer marketing had a big year in 2019, exceeding the growth experienced in 2018. Next year, we expect influencers to be equally powerful in the digital marketing landscape. A big percentage of young Internet users 18-34 will consider purchasing a product after seeing it endorsed by an influencer. Micro-influencers with engaged followers are particularly high-value for digital marketers.