Another year of creativity, strategy, and opportunity has passed. But a foggy head and a Bank Holiday later, it will all begin again in earnest. So, we’ve put together a little extra info to get you clued up on what’s what in digital marketing in 2020. Hone your strategies, add a little extra to your campaigns, and give your customers what they want, with 5 of the key trends across the digital landscape.
Experience is everything
If you think about it for a moment, it’s no surprise that customer experience (or CX) has become ever more essential to any good marketing campaign. Of all the time you spend browsing on your digital devices, how many ads or posts actually jump out and grab you? In 2020, marketing will become about appeasing the 73% of consumers that value CX highly, and want personalisation, ease of use on every device and platform, and brands they can genuinely relate to.
Knowledge is power
A big part of appeasing these customers, however, is ensuring that you embody not just the digital presence they demand – but the service to back it up. The same research, as above, found that almost half of consumers will actually leave a brand if its own employees aren’t knowledgeable on the products and services they sell. So, to ensure your digital campaigns are well-supported – and sufficiently represented – make sure that any employees they come into contact with are fully prepared to provide the level of service you promise online.
Going live
There’s no doubt that video has been one of the most consistently impactful formats of the last few years, with people spending up to 3 times longer watching live video, than pre-recorded messages. And as consumers become more accustomed to streaming, and feel the need to live more clearly ‘in the moment’, live video marketing is set for a massive boom in 2020 and beyond. Live video gives viewers the sense that they can genuinely influence the content (more on that in a mo), rather than simply being a pre-selected, targeted, and ultimately passive watcher.
Influencing changes shape
No modern digital marketing trends post would be complete without covering the current shape of the influencer marketing landscape. Continuously growing now for a number of years, influencing is set to take a slightly different path for many brands from 2020 onwards. While big, prominent names will always have their place in all forms of advertising, people are becoming more engaged with micro-influencers. Trusting them on a more personal level, influencer marketing agency Socially Powerful has been one of the agencies that have already felt success by tapping into the lesser-known, but earnestly followed influencers on the planet.
Stories stay mainstream
Although Instagram and Facebook added stories to their platforms on the back of Snapchat’s immense success, this simple way of adding short, snappy videos to your campaigns isn’t going away any time soon. Many brands and marketers may have thought of stories as something of a flash in the pan, in the sense that stories would be gone almost as quickly as they disappeared from pages. However, TikTok has now been added to the mix, and there’s no doubt that younger audiences adore ‘a good story’. So, it’s up to you to continuously add the latest tale in your brand’s marketing mix, by making smart use of this simple, and cost-effective advertising solution.