I’ve always enjoyed looking at the next years upcoming marketing trends. With 2020 around the corner, it is time for all of us to start working on our marketing strategies for next year. How will the new innovations in digital media, platforms and technology shape marketing in 2020?
The past few years we’ve seen the massive impact that digital marketing has had. Facebook and Google continue to dominate the online media, will this change in 2020? I doubt it.
But before we decide on what we will tackle in 2020, let’s take a look at the marketing trends we need to consider in our upcoming planning.
Trend 1: Insights-Driven Marketing
At Sticky Branding, we are huge fans of using analytics and SEO to drive business performance. It’s how we strategize for what’s next.
The newest trend in search engine optimization — driven by ever-changing consumer habits — is voice search. While definitely a game-changer, voice search is still in its infancy. But this will change in 2020.
With our new friends like Siri and Google Home, the opportunity for brands to advertise through this medium is on the forefront. However, before you put all your cards on voice search advertising, you should first optimize the content on your website for voice search. To start, this means creating your content around longer and conversational phrases — and targeted questions — that people would actually say.
Trend 2: Content Marketing
Speaking of content, us content marketers are faced with quite a challenge. First, we need to create a piece of content that will stand out in the world of oversaturated online content. And second, we must keep our audience’s attention and spark engagement, daily.
We’ve tried contests, games, gifs, live stream videos… but now our audience’s want more: More personalization, more knowledge, more credit, and everything in under 10 seconds. If not, see you later! It’s a cold, cold world out there.
On the up side, the way we tell our stories is changing, for the better. Instead of delivering the story to your audience, make your audience the center of the story. Storytelling is becoming more conversational. We all need to share our experiences in our stories.
Trend 3: Influencer Marketing
The focus on influencers is going strong. Influencers build their personal brands and connect directly with their audiences. By doing this, influencers gain trust with large audiences, which in turn, can be used as a powerful endorser when partnered with the right brands.
The research shows that multinational brands are willing to invest 65% more in influencer marketing in 2020.
The key is choosing the right influencers to partner with. Work with influencers who are transparent; whose credibility, reputation, and quality of followers is credible; and who is the right fit for your brand.
Trend 4: Personalization versus Privacy
Privacy and security breaches have covered our news feeds over and over this year. It has been made crystal clear that our data isn’t as safe with online brands as we may have once thought.
From a marketing context, privacy and personalization are two sides of the same coin. You need user data to personalize your customer experiences.
It might sound strange that personalization — an effort to make your services, products, and marketing suitable for the needs of a particular individual — is not already part of everyone’s marketing strategy. In general, personalization gives more control when reaching a specific group of customers. You will be in a better position to reach your targeted audience and create campaigns that are more relevant and effective since they are based on the buying habits of your customers, their interests, and behaviors.
We all need to respect the rights of our users and protect their interests. If we don’t step up, we won’t have their trust and we won’t have them as our customers for long. And we definitely won’t have the opportunity to pitch them on new offerings and incentives.
The keyword here is respect. If you view the respect for the privacy of your users as an underlying value of all your marketing efforts, the rest will come organically. This respect will determine the way you collect and store customer data, and, ultimately, how you use their data in your business.
Trend 5: Conversational Marketing
I know I mentioned this before, but I believe that building more conversational marketing into your marketing strategies for 2020 will have a tremendous impact. By boosting your relevance and speaking with people, like people, will help you grow relationships.
For me, the most exciting trend in marketing today is bringing together rapid consumer adoption of voice search and innovation in search query processing.
As marketers, we have to adapt quickly to the ever-changing trends of digital marketing. As was the case with any other year before 2020, keep your eyes open to emerging trends. We will be voice searching more than we care to admit, and influencers will become our go-to brand spokespeople. But the most important thing for marketers to remember is to keep it personal and conversational (at least until 2021).
What trends will you be watching for in 2020? Let us know!
You’re reading 2020 Marketing Trends: 5 Trends that Will Shape Your Digital Marketing by Sarah Young, originally posted on Sticky Branding. Did you enjoy this article? If so, sign-up for more of Jeremy’s articles at Sticky Branding.