Accelerating developments in technology have sparked exciting changes for digital marketing. We now have the ability to understand our users better than ever before. Which results in personalized online experiences for everyone on the Internet. Your digital marketing strategy for 2020 should include understandings across a variety of disciplines. Here is what Issuu has learned about the direction of online marketing this year.

Yes, we’re still talking about big data.

Despite the term being thrown around all the time most of us have only a vague idea of how big data and AI are influencing our work. One of the absolute best things you can do is educate yourself about the algorithms driving our networked lives. A traditional marketing research approach is “theoretical in isolation,”or the formation of models from qualitative observation and then evaluating them with statistical tests. We now have more freedom in evaluating our findings with new technology. This is called “empirical then theoretical” where we analyze large datasets with things like neural nets and apply validation techniques for predictions.

There are two main reasons why big data is better.

1. Small samples, no matter how carefully collected, are not representative of your population, are hard to analyze, and are often not normal. (Normal means an equal distribution of points before and after the average value.)

2. It creates psychological profiles and behavior history which predict user behavior.

However, big data is not the cure all for your digital marketing strategy in 2020. Dataset size does not guarantee representativeness of the sample. Also, the fact that data is coming from multiple sources it can be tough to standardize for making comparisons across sources [1]. It supplements your other means of marketing analysis.

Stories.

Just like the standard for conducting marketing research is interdisciplinary so is your content marketing. Story and video formats are staying, and growing. New developments in digital publishing, like google AMP technology, make reading on mobile not only intuitive, but also lightning fast. Issuu Story Cloud creates tap-through highly interactive Visual Stories from your uploaded content shareable on any social media site. With our Visual Stories AMP integration your content truly reaches everywhere because it exists on the larger Internet, not just a single Story site like Instagram or Snap.

Also, don’t forget to snag that search engine space! AMP reports much of the available keyword space is still undersaturated [2]. This won’t be true for long. Rank in your area of expertise in 2020.

Confluence marketing

This is the marriage of content and influence. Influencer campaigns without quality content backing them up is nothing more than the modern face of advertising placement. With our users and consumers more educated than ever we need to identify their loyalties. People will listen to their Internet celebrities before a press release [3]. Think about new partnerships and collaborations for the coming year.

Similarly, a big trend in 2020 is a focus not on the size of the network but the quality. Partnering with micro and nano-influencers is the best strategy because they have loyal authentic followings. Beware of people with large number of followers, not only are they expensive, but many of these people know how to buy followers and likes.

Resources and advice for digital marketing in 2020

A huge new finding from Stanford in marketing is the success of retargeted advertising. Research indicates that a properly placed retargeted ad, within the first week, increases the likelihood a user will return to the website by 15%. If your organization has the capability investment in this type of advertising it is very profitable [4].

Big data is collected through data mining. Consider programs like RapidMiner and Nvivo NCapture for this. Hadoop is another big data analysis program used by companies like Google and Facebook. There’s quality beginners tutorial here. Or, go hands on and learn the R programming language. With a little practice you can start bringing a whole new perspective to your digital marketing. All of these are open source with large support systems online.

In summary, this coming year should focus on bringing better user experiences and interactive programs. Your brand will benefit.

[1] Marketing theory and big data

[2] Use AMP to Create Visual Stories on the Web

[3] Confluence Marketing : The Convergence Of Content And Influence

[4] With “Retargeted” Advertising, Sooner Is Better Than Later