Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends to Expect by 2020 – A Quick Guide

With the ever-changing technology, it is no surprise that everything that depends on it will have to go along, and this includes digital marketing. The frequent changes in digital marketing trends, algorithms, and updates keep every digital marketing team at their toes and always searching and staying on track on what is new. These frequent updates are important to keep up with marketing strategies that are effective.

10 Digital Marketing Trends 2020

As 2020 is about to begin, we are to expect more Digital Marketing trends to emerge, and to keep up with it, here are exciting trends to watch out for.

1. Shoppable Posts

Since the collaboration of Instagram and Shopify in 2016, businesses start to grow revenue with its help. Therefore, making it easier to market their products through social media.

With 500 million daily users, about 130 million people shop on Instagram every month, and it is expected to rise this coming 2020. 70% of shoppers prefer to use the Instagram app as their shopping tool because of its convenient way of shopping.

Shoppable Posts provide easy way to gain customers by eliminating barriers when purchasing products and allowing customers to shop without leaving the app.

2. Virtual and Augmented Reality

Ever since the release of Virtual Reality (VR), the usage of it is more than for entertainment and medical purposes. Now, it has been integrated into businesses to make it easier for customers to shop.

For a long time, VR became popular, until the entry of another type known as Augmented Reality (AU). Both became part of the marketing world, but it is foreseen that AR will surpass VR in the coming years. This only means AR will become a common trend than VR to promote businesses.

IKEA, PEZ, and Cover girl are some companies that have already integrated AR as part of their marketing strategy.

3. Interactive Content

In today’s era, a lot of people like to interconnect and feel part of what is seen online. Therefore, this build opportunity for businesses to gain more customers.

With Interactive Content and its expected rise in 2020, businesses are likely to engage in these strategies to market their products. This form of content is often sought by 91% of buyers online.

The use of Interactive Content will grow because of the features it offers. It will stand out as it provides something fresh to the market.

Interactive Content will allow:

The best examples of Interactive Contents are quizzes, polls, and videos.

4. Voice Search and Smart Speakers

It was estimated in 2016 that 20% of Google searches are done by using voice search, and most users are between the ages of 18 to 29. As they developed the speech recognition in voice searches, it is projected that users will spike to 50% in 2020.

Businesses should optimize this strategy and incorporate ways to pattern their content with the rising voice search trend.

What goes hand in hand with voice search is the usage of Smart Speakers. Consumers of Smart Speakers have increased since 2018. This has brought opportunities for companies to launch their ads.

The marketing strategy offered in this form are subtle and less invasive. Instead of bombarding listeners with annoying ads, Smart Speakers will mention a brand as a sponsor.

This digital marketing strategy is more likely to explode in 2020.

5. Chatbots

57% of customers preferred to use live chat to answer their inquiries and what better way to help businesses to make this possible is to invest in the usage of Chatbots.

Chatbots are Artificial Intelligence (AI) that mimic a human conversation. This computer program will help guide customers and answer their queries when shopping or visiting a website. Aside from helping customers out, Chatbots are a big help for business owners too.

These AI’s cut annual costs while increasing sales of the company. It also helps gather data of customers when they interact with them. This data can be used to know what customers often purchase and help businesses have an idea of what customers want.

6. Personalization

Gone are the days of traditional advertising and commercials. Nowadays, people are more likely to interact with a business if they have personal experiences with them. Hence, a business should personalize everything for their customers.

One way to give your customers a personalized experience is to use segmented emails. This is a popular technique to market your business in a way that personalizes everything for your customers. Email marketing tools like Mailchimp helps make the managing of emails easy.

7.  Influencer Marketing

The rise of online influencers helped businesses reach more potential customers. This strategy of marketing is a word-of-mouth type of marketing, where influencers spread the message of a certain brand to a larger market.

People trust influencers’ recommendation of products as they are more authentic compared to lengthy and generic commercials. This marketing strategy, despite its rise in 2019, will still be a trend in 2020.

Mediakix shows that businesses will spend $10 billion on influencer marketing in 2020.

8. Videos

2019 is the year Video Marketing became a trend to drive traffic to a website and gain customers, and this will continue in 2020.

Live videos are also more likely to get watched on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

9. SERP Position Zero

It is no longer the goal of websites or businesses to stay in the top position. Instead, it is their goal to take one step higher, and that is to acquire the top spot in SERP known as Position Zero. Position Zero is a snippet of text that could either appear as a paragraph, list or table. This answers the searcher’s inquiry directly.

Position zero is what users will often view. Hence, it is important to focus and place more effort into achieving the zero spot on Google.

10. Social Messaging Apps

If you think social media messaging is used for sending messages for friends and loved ones, think again. There are about 1.3 billion users of Facebook Messenger monthly, and 10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses. This shows that social media messaging is an effective way to reach out to potential customers.

As mentioned above, personalized messages are one effective way to attract more customers. Therefore, with social messaging apps, it’s possible to send personalized messages to your customers and build a relationship with them.

The only way to make your business work is to go along with the flow of the ever-changing digital world. Every change that occurs in marketing must be explored and applied to your business to assure the continuous growth and success of it.

John is the Strategic SEO and Influencer Marketing Manager of Softvire Australia – the leading software eCommerce company in Australia and Softvire New Zealand.

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