Globally, the amount spent on digital marketing in 2020 is expected to reach $1.3 trillion.
Should you use the same marketing strategy as you have in previous years? A new year brings new marketing trends, and it’s essential you follow them to appeal to consumers and keep up with the competition.
Streaming Video Ad Engagement
Video will continue its reign in 2020. While businesses should still focus on creating engaging video content, it’s essential to create a video ad strategy.
This includes knowing your audience and identifying and presenting your brand image. You must warm up your audience initially, so that they get to know you and your brand before you can ask them to take any action. Then, if your audience targeting is accurate, hopefully they will like you and your message so that they will trust you well enough to act upon your call to action.
Experiment with different video styles, tones and scripts as you segment your audience and videos.
Social Media Influencer Marketing
Influencers take followers into their daily lives, sharing content about their passions, hobbies, daily activities and even their loved ones, relating to their audience. According to research, 70% of teenagers trust influencers more than celebrities.
Reach out to an influencer that makes sense for your brand. Establish them as affiliates, promoting your products and services on their social media channels.
If you have never partnered with an influencer before, find one that you are comfortable representing your brand. Remember that they are essentially a spokesperson for your company, so what they say and how they act reflects on you. From there, contact them — most influencers have a business email you can reach out to.
Interactive Content
Moving forward, it would be smart to focus on interactive content as opposed to traditional content. The user controls interactive content, controlling the experience and personalizing the content they consume.
There are many examples of interactive content:
Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR): AR and VR are taking over. More industries, from real estate to mobile gaming, are utilizing these tools. You can implement VR and/or AR into your marketing strategy, something Starbucks started experimenting with in 2017.
Shoppable Posts: Shoppable posts allow customers to shop at your store directly from a social media app. Instagram now offers a convenient integration, so businesses can tag their products from an e-commerce platform, such as Shopify.
Polls and Quizzes: People love interaction, especially if you can create a poll or quiz that is fun and speaks to them. It is also a great way to bolster your email list for future campaigns. Create interactive content that’s engaging, shareable and helps your audience remember your brand.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI can help enhance the personalization of your marketing and advertising efforts. Modern marketing methods will be able to collect better customer data and AI will continue improving the way we use that data.
For example, brands can use AI to create better video content. This can help them analyze viewer behaviors and know what videos they want to watch. AI can also help to improve the sales pipeline. Not only will we be able to better market to customers, but we can better predict their next move. This helps improve the customer journey.
Voice Search
Twenty percent of searches conducted on Google are voice searches. With the popularity of smart devices, such as Alexa, this trend will only continue growing. Optimize your content for voice search. Use long-tail keywords that are worded more like phrases. These are phrases people are more likely to speak rather than type.
This includes long-tail search queries for local SEO. Instead of optimizing your content for a term such as “vegan restaurants Chicago,” optimize your content for a long-tail keyword such as, “What are the best vegan restaurants in Chicago?”
Social Media Stories
It’s still essential to have a social media marketing strategy moving forward. However, I’d recommend focusing on social media Stories more than posting.
Stories are a carousel of uploads that last 24 hours. You can include text, images, video and even URLs, depending on the social media platform and how many followers you have.
One major benefit of posting Stories? We’ve found that Stories can better help brands get in front of younger audiences.
Smart Bidding
Google Ads is getting smarter. Google implemented an update called smart bidding.
This optimizes your bids using machine learning. You can set your bids automatically, especially during sales; you have different conversion actions to choose from; and you can use these actions toward different campaigns simultaneously.
Position Zero
What’s position zero on Google? It’s technically not a position at all. Rather, it’s a snippet.
Users will no longer open your content on a Google search unless they really want to read your content. They may not even read your title or meta description.
What they want is to search for something and receive an answer immediately.
This is where the rich snippet comes in. A rich snippet is a part of the content that corresponds to the inquiry and is shown at the top of the search results.
To rank for a snippet, research trending keywords that rank for snippets. Optimize your content for these search terms.
Consumer Privacy
GDPR is moving to the U.S. California is developing a new law, and it’s predicted that all U.S. businesses will have to comply with consumer data privacy.
Comply with consumer protection standards and inform your customers about their rights. This is more of a marketing benefit than you realize, and your customers will appreciate the data disclaimer. The data privacy disclaimer can develop more trust between you and your customers. It may even cause customers to switch to your brand, away from competitors.
In summation, keeping your brand hip while also finding the best ways to reach your audience should be your main goal in 2020. These tips can help get you where you need to be moving forward.