Digital advertising is evolving each day with advances in technology and increased demands from consumers. Marketing techniques that may have worked a few years ago are no longer viable and could hurt a brand more than help boost awareness. Businesses have to constantly stay up to date with the new digital marketing trends to remain ahead of their competition and keep up with constant search algorithm updates. The companies thatembrace innovation are the ones that disrupt the world of advertising and are the ones seeing the biggest gains. Below are some important digital marketing trends businesses should implement in 2020 to increase revenue and reach a broader digital marketplace.
1. Authenticity Is Crucial
When huge amounts of data and information are at our fingertips, more and more consumers are becoming distrusting of advertising and marketing methods. This requires businesses to be authentic and sometimes brutally honest about their brands. People are placing more trust in humans than brands, which is why influencer marketing is on an uptrend and social channels deliver more personal interaction. Companies need to motivate their customers by sharing their experiences with their products and services themselves. Consumers are more motivated to purchase from a brand if they feel it is authentic and real.
“Authenticity is ignored by most SEO agencies,” states Dan ODonnell, owner of Crevand SEO, a New Hampshire search optimization agency. “Cookie-cutter approaches or pre-packaged marketing plans just don’t work anymore. Consumers are demanding more from brands.”
2. The Rise Of Artificial Intelligence
Another hot topic in digital marketing is artificial intelligence. Most consumers don’t fully understand what AI has to offer and what its limitations are, but it hasn’t stopped consumers from showing a lot of interest. The most common type of AI implemented currently is chatbot technology. This allows companies to make improvements to their customer service departments reducing costs significantly.
Chatbots are popular because they can respond to customers’ questions quicker than human representatives and they can take requests more efficiently. However, in many cases, authenticity and human interaction is lost. Many of these chatbot technologies come with personalities and humor programmed into them to offer customers more personalization in an attempt to represent a real person.
Chatbots can easily be integrated into applications, websites and social media platforms. Many brands also use chatbot technology to gather data from the web to be used for implementing better marketing strategies based on demographic data.
3. Social Media Is Taking Over
There are more than 3 billion users of social media around the world. This equates to 42% market penetration and shows just how powerful and important social media is to consumers. When it comes to marketing, numbers like these cannot be ignored. Now that social media is embedded into almost everyone’s daily online use, businesses should pay close attention to the changes, upgrades and social issues that continue to alter the marketing power of these platformsClearly, the more popular marketing trends with social media currently are automation, video and influencers branding.
Businesses need to remember that it’s not going to be helpful to use just a single platform to reach a market. Leads come from multiple platforms and messages need to be focused on particular user expectations for each of these different platforms. Messages that generate leads from Facebook most likely will not return the same results from a YouTube channel. The key to success for brands is to repurpose content across more than one relevant social media platform, optimize these pages and tweak that content to appeal to the audience segment using that particular channel.
4. The Rise In Voice Search Technology
Billions of searches are conducted on Google each day using voice search technology. With the popularity of personal assisting devices such as Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, the number of searches done each day by voice is going to continue rising. Over the years, these devices’ capacity for accurately recognizing human speech has continued to improve significantly. Users have found them to be very helpful when searching for information online or while completing tasks around their home. How businesses adapt to the changes in marketing with consumers performing searches through voice technology could make or break their revenue stream.
One aspect of voice search that poses problems for marketers is that voice-search technology returns a single result for each query. Search engines return multiple results for each search query and consumers have the ability to quickly glance at numerous results and select one of many options. A number three ranking position in a search engine results page generates site traffic. With voice search returning only a single result, a brand must be in the top position to gain any attention.Consumers are content letting a computer make their selection for them and diminish their power to make their own decisions.
All of the branding, marketing, and industry positioning goes out the window if the voice search algorithm does not select a particular brand first. Based on multiple variables, some of which are reviews, pricing, product return rates, purchase history and click through percentages, a computer delivers the best option to a consumer. But what if the variables the algorithm uses are not the same variables that a consumer uses to rate products or services?
As technological advancements continue to shape the digital marketing industry it will require businesses to be more creative in their approach to reaching consumers and demand a much larger effort of grasping changes in user-behavior on marketing platforms.
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