5 must-know digital marketing trends in 2020
In this article, I will highlight some important trends in digital marketing that you should not miss. We are now in 2020 and we can see the huge impact that digital marketing has had.
Here are some trends to follow:
1. Chatbots
This AI-based technology uses instant messaging to chat in real-time, day or night, with your customers or site visitors.
Many customers prefer interacting with chatbots as they are responsive 24/7, give answers promptly, accurately recall your entire buying history, and never lose patience. These virtual assistants offer outstanding customer service by meeting customers’ expectations and automating repetitive tasks. But, use chatbots as a supplement to human conversations — never as a replacement. Chatbots are a human engagement enabler. The chatbot’s job is to handle the initial communication and gather any necessary details from your customers — so that when you do step in, you already have what you need to engage people in a meaningful way.
You can have chatbots on your website, on Facebook or on your customer service portal. Wherever you interact with your customers you’ll find an opportunity to leverage chatbot technology.
Chatbots are great for managing the initial steps of the marketing process, whether that’s gathering contact details and information for a sales call, answering general customer service questions or providing direction on common tech issues.
2. Programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising use different platforms to sell inventory on publishing sites and on the advertising side, buying inventory and place ads on a publishers site.
Before programmatic ad buying, digital ads were bought and sold by human ad buyers and salespeople, who can be expensive and unreliable. Technology is being used to replace some of the more menial tasks that humans have historically had to handle, like sending insertion orders to publishers and dealing with ad tags, but they’re still required to optimize campaigns and to plan strategies. Programmatic technology will probably mean there are fewer ad buyers in the world, but it could also allow both marketers and sellers to spend more of their time planning sophisticated, customized campaigns instead of getting bogged down in bureaucracy.
It’s designed to replace human negotiations with machine learning and AI-optimisation. The goal is to increase efficiency and transparency to both the advertiser and the publisher.
3. Voice search marketing
Smart speakers and virtual assistants are changing the way we live and the way we search for information online. In fact, it is predicted that this year, over half of all searches will be done via voice.
Mobile voice searches are 3X more likely to be local searches.
Users are no longer being presented ten different options to review before choosing the best answer to their query. A lot of this has to do with the specific nature of voice search and the challenge it presents to sites optimized for typed searches.
Voice searchers use search differently. They use longer, more conversational queries, so slanting your content to serve these queries, as well as answering questions directly, can help to make it more visible to voice searches. This has the added bonus of making your content more likely to be picked up as a featured snippet or found on position zero on Google.
Because voice search has made reaching many audiences significantly harder, understanding exactly what users are searching for and how they are searching for it is key to creating content that successfully draws organic voice search traffic to your website. To optimize content, we must now consider the difference between a search that is typed and a search that is spoken.
Even if your brand isn’t ready for smart speaker advertising, it’s important that your content is optimized for voice search.
4. Influencer Marketing
Influencers can be well-known celebrities, but more often they are Instagram or YouTube personalities with a huge niche following who can help spread the word about your business or product through their social channels. Influencers can be anywhere. They can be anyone. What makes them influential is their large followings on the web and social media. An influencer can be a popular fashion photographer on Instagram, or a well-read cybersecurity blogger, or a respected marketing executive on LinkedIn. Within any industry, there are influential people.
Influencer marketing is also going to be affected by artificial intelligence. With each year, AI is making the process of finding the right influencers to partner with easier and faster. It’s helping identify those with better engagement, fewer fake followers, and a higher chance of generating a positive return on investment (ROI).
Brands have realized the importance of influencer marketing. Relatability has proved to be more important for a consumer than the popularity of the brand.
5. Vlogging
Advertising is changing, and Vlogging is growing. One of the areas that is striking a note amongst younger people is the rise of the vloggers. Vlogging is a popular video trend we see today, especially on YouTube. Companies can use vlogging to bring viewers closer to their brand, and show their company in a more human way that viewers can connect with. Brands should reflect the changing market, as generations continue their never-ending march, or risk becoming obsolete.
Video has shown itself to have far more grabbing appeal than many static adverts. Recent studies estimate that the average person is bombarded with over 5000 adverts a day. And just as constant stimulation of senses dulls them, people have been desentisized to unimaginative advertising.
Our society wants to watch now, not read. That means brands need to be a part of the video revolution and consider working with vloggers.
Many vloggers focus on an area of expertise and establish authority on a given subject. This allows brands to have access to their target customers and clients like never before.
