Angela Hausman, PhD September 22, 2020 The times they are a’changing, especially when it comes to how businesses use their marketing strategies to build brand awareness, attract new customers, and convert more sales. Don’t let your brand become a marketing dinosaur by using old strategies that lead to declining performance over time. Happily, you can read all about the most impactful digital marketing trends of 2020 and beyond in the post below.
Digital marketing trends for 2020
1. Video marketing
Video marketing has been hot for years, but don’t let that entice you toward complacency. If you aren’t using video as part of your digital marketing strategy already, you should and, if you’re using video marketing currently, think of ways to highlight videos to improve market performance. After all, using video increases visits to your site and encourages users to stay on your site longer. Video marketing might also improve sales conversions and even boost your SEO!
The reason video marketing works is that it drives engagement and encourages organic click-through rate (CTR), a video is a powerful tool that demonstrates how your product solves consumer problems, and the visual appeal of video encourages clicks.
It’s hardly surprising that video is so popular either, as users see it as more entertaining and easier to consume than written text. Additionally, with so many people using their smartphones to access sites and stores before any other device, massive walls of tiny text are unappealing and may be even inaccessible. In contrast, a video that can expand to full screen at the touch of a button has much more application and appeal regardless of device. The bandwidth problem on mobile that is a function of the size of video files isn’t as serious today with ubiquitous WIFI that allows video to show at blazing speeds.
Lastly, when it comes to video marketing, there are so many optional video platforms, including Youtube, Vimeo, and live broadcasts from an increasing number of social media sites. Additionally, using video content as the basis for other forms of marketing, such as podcasts from the audio and blog posts is straightforward, making video something of a multipurpose form of marketing.
2. Browser push notifications
Apps use this feature [push notifications] to alert users of content updates, messages and other things that happen within the app. These notifications are used by all types of apps, from games to social networks and everything in between.
A push notification may be a sound, an onscreen alert, a badge or a combination of these things. Users can usually select how they would like to be notified of updates. [source]
Users might choose to click ‘block’ when the push notifications permission box pops up, but many people don’t. In particular, younger users are more likely to choose ‘allow,’ as it means they can easily stay up to date with their favorite brands.
The good news is you can also leverage push notifications as a part of your digital marketing strategy, especially if your business chooses to include special offers, calls to action, and images within them.
You may even wish to operate personalized browser push notifications. Something that prompts users to remember your brand when they perform certain behaviors online. You can even use push notification to take users back to abandoned carts, which helps users complete their orders.
3. Shoppable posts on social media
Social commerce is increasingly popular among both brands and users. Crafting shoppable posts across the major social platforms increases awareness, while at the same time streamlining the inspiration to purchase process.
This is precisely where shoppable posts on social media come in. These posts offer users the ability to buy right from the post.
Instagram leads the way in this area with an integrated checkout function, which means marketing, shopping, and payment all happen inside the app without the need to visit an outside website! Something that has proved hugely successful as the more streamlined your buying process, the greater the sales volume.
While the major social platforms already support shoppable ads, expect other social media platforms to follow, and make sure your marketing strategy is geared towards this type of shopping in the future.
4. Interactivity and user-generated content
Interactivity and user-generated content are hallmarks of social marketing and their use is a digital marketing trend for 2020 that features even greater levels of interactivity and even more user-generated content. Fast fading are the days where your company produced content and controlled your marketing message. Instead, the lines are blurrier between the company and its users, with users controlling your brand messaging to a greater extent all the time through more user-generated content and a greater degree of interactivity. Both of these help forge a positive relationship with your consumers, encourage brand loyalty, and even provide opportunities for customers to evangelize to others, which helps sell more products.
One way to encourage user-generated content and interactivity is to use something like a virtual photo booth as part of your campaign. The advantage of a virtual photo booth is much like that of a physical photo booth commonly used at tradeshows and conferences. These booths allow users to create images and GIFs of themselves, using filters and stickers with your business’s brand. This is an activity that is not just fun, but helps cement their loyalty and provides enhanced reach for your brand awareness based on shares and comments posted about the shared images.
Additionally, other interactive tactics like using augmented reality, embedded calculators, and even 360 VR videos raise engagement and helps ensure the right people see your business’s message. Quizzes and polls are also an easy way to encourage user interaction in a fast, relevant way.
5. Position zero on Google search engine results
For a long time now, the battle surrounding SEO involved getting your business to the first position on searches related to your products, and, failing that, show up as close to the top position as possible. The reason search rank results is so important is that studies of user behavior show that most clicks accrue to the top result with somewhat fewer clicks for other links in the top 10 positions. By the time your link sinks to the second page, the chances of getting a click decline precipitously.
However, number one is no longer the pole position. There is now a position zero up for grabs, and you can significantly improve your marketing effect by getting your business to occupy that 0 position.
Position zero is the snippet you see above the rest of the results on the first page, but below the paid advertising. Content comprising the snippet is usually a brief answer to a question posed by the user. The snippet basically answers the question without requiring users to visit a website to read the answer. This makes position 0 a highly coveted position.
Position zero is so important because of its format. That is, it is in the form of an answer to questions users pose frequently. Commonly, snippets are in the form of tables, bulleted or numbered lists, or text. To take advantage of position 0, brainstorm questions related to your products and niche, then craft content that addresses these questions.
6. Automation
Finally, if you want to stay ahead of the digital marketing trends for 202O, it’s crucial you start to implement automation techniques because the demands to craft content across platforms on a consistent basis requires scheduling posts. Moreover, automation helps assess your ROI and improve ROI by aiding with lead generation and nurturing based on buyers’ behaviors.
Automation offers a host of additional benefits, including a reduction in tedious, time-consuming, and economically draining tasks. Implementing automation frees up your marketing talent to work on aspects of your campaign that are essential to your bottom line.
Automated marketing techniques can also be used to personalize the experience that each user receives when they access your business’s website. Personalized marketing increases your bottom line while also improving satisfaction.
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