Trends to Track in Digital Marketing 2020

Gone are the days when artificial intelligence (AI), voice search engine optimization (VSEO) and data-driven marketing were considered absurdly ambitious concepts. In present times, business leaders are greatly prioritizing implementation of these digital marketing trends to drive business growth and thrive in 2020. 

In the time ahead of us, we will see out-of-touch marketing strategies gradually become extinct. This is because personalized content, video, AI-based automation, transparency and brand values have become influential concepts for organizations' survival and success. 

Quick Takeaways:

- Marketing has gone past the traditional forms, i.e. branding and advertising. Hence, marketers must collaborate across departments and focus on building customer experiences while engaging them for lasting relationships. 

- Content visualization can be seen dominating the next year, as 64% of Internet users are more likely to purchase a product online after watching a video. And marketers can observe a 49% boost in business ROI with dynamic video retargeting. 

- Infographics will be an ideal content form to reach to audiences whose attention spans are less. The collection of imagery, minimal text, and relevant charts; infographics are 3 times more likely to be shared than other forms of content. 

- Statistics indicate that content marketing holds the potential to get 3x more leads than paid advertising. 55% of marketers are prioritizing to create content for blogs as a part of their marketing strategy. And 72% of marketers are improving their engagement through content marketing.

- According to research by Statista, there are around 3.9 billion email users in the world, and the number is expected to grow to 4.48 billion users by 2024. Furthermore, 122% is the average return on investment from email marketing. Witnessing the obvious growth of the medium; email marketing, business leaders should focus on prevailing and upcoming innovations in email marketing.

Customer experience will continue to reign. 

Each year, business owners spend a majority of their time driving customer engagement and serving for seamless customer experience. However, the average time that a human being can pay attention is 8 seconds, which brings a challenge for marketers to implement strategies effectively. 

Today's customer is mostly on-the-go; hence, seamlessness plays a vital role in customer engagement. Moreover, they are impatient, and the 'quick nature' of infographics and mobile marketing provides them with the information they want at their fingertips. This results in quick buying decisions, and as a result, marketers can witness increased conversion rates, which serves as a reason for mobile marketing to dominate the digital landscape. 

Artificial intelligence has changed in the wave in the marketing sphere. The hype around AI is growing with each day. Two of the significant transformative customer experience trends; personalization and chatbots are supported by AI technology. 38% of businesses are using forms of AI technology for better customer experience (CX). And the figure is projected to reach 62% by the end of the year. 

Management experts at Bain and Company indicated that a mere 5 per cent boost in customer retention increases profit by 25 per cent. Hence, businesses need to align CX with each aspect of their marketing strategy to provide greater experience, retain customers and attract new ones. 

Immersive technologies paving the way for innovation 

The sister technologies, Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR) offer a more personalized and immersive experience. It helps customers make informed buying decisions. Moreover, Augmented reality saw a record-breaking growth last year. With big names like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google making serious commitments to AR technology, experts are expecting 2020 to be a year for fast-paced industry growth. 

Consumers already lean on map services, but the use of AR in the navigation will provide detailed directions through the 3D rendering of places with precise instructions.

A BRP report exhibited that around 48% of consumers are likely to buy from retailers that provide AR experiences. Hence, brands can leverage AR-assisted shopping apps to enhance the customer experience, benefit the distributors & the manufacturers and most importantly observe increased sales. 

The future of design resides with AR and VR technologies. Brands can produce products with improved and innovative design with AR by showing an immersive, realistic experience of the product being designed.

Get caught in the web-trends for improved user experience.

When it comes to UX and UI, it's important to be cohesive and ensure web accessibility. The terms are much more than an industry buzzword; they facilitate conversions and help marketers increase sales of products. 

Once a quote by Edward Tufte, American professor and statistician, "Confusion and clutter are the failure of design, not the attributes of information" has now turned into a fact. This stays true to user experience as well. One of the best ways to stand out and stay ahead of the competition curve is to stay accessible to the target audience. Hence, brands must focus on neat minimal UI/UX for a seamless customer journey. 

The loading speed will be a crucial element to drive success through SEO efforts and an essential factor in overall user experience. Fast loading websites result in improved search rankings on Google. With the help of Google's speed update algorithm, brands can diminish page load time for their websites. 

Design accents and movements on the screen, having a water-like feel for web design will explode in popularity for the year 2020. Marketers can incorporate the new trend of liquid animation on websites to improve the user interface to ensure users stay and come back for the experience. 

Devise improved rankings for SEO efforts

Today, 50.5% of the population speaks daily to smart speakers or mobile devices to well-known attendees, Siri, Alexa or Cortana. Voice searches have emerged as the new norm, and as predicted by ComScore, nearly half of the searches in the year will be voice searches. Hence, with the use of voice search technology in the SEO strategy by optimizing content & syncing it with search intent such as location-based searches, organizations and marketers can observe increased rankings. 

Schema, structured markup is a continuously evolving concept in the SEO sphere. It helps define the context of a search query and further simplify page content for search engines to easily understand what that page is about. Once added to a webpage, it creates rich snippets in search. These snippets will result in enhanced listings which are more attractive to users. 

Google releases hundreds of algorithm updates every year and this year will be dedicated to Google's new SEO algorithm, BERT. Marketing professionals can utilize it to target relevant, accurate content, especially with mobile users.

The number of zero-click searches has increased over the last few years. Today, zero-click searches have quite an impact. According to the SparkToro report, the previous year witnessed 50.33% of all Google searches ending without a click on both organic and paid search results. By optimizing zero-click searches with the implementation of structured data on the website, a boost in online presence can be noticed. 

Ad(d) value to bring more conversions

Segmentation serves as a key element to detect and define target markets. Companies will witness improved returns on ads and attract more B2B customers by targeting niche websites.

Utilizing Microsoft audience network or Google Display Network (GDN) based on the target profiling will allow running ads targeting users' demographic, professional placements for improved campaign and performance management. 

In-app advertising will be a useful strategy for target marketing. Studies indicate that people spend 90% of their browsing time using mobile apps. So, it wouldn't be surprising to say that at times, advertising brands through apps rather than websites will ensure higher click through rates. 

Organizations can run native ads with top-performing content & create complementary display campaigns using remarketing techniques. Interestingly, as many as 96% of people who visit the brand's website aren't ready to buy. Hence, the method of remarketing can be credited as a powerful way to draw those prospects back into your conversion funnel. 

Closing Notes  

Change is an integral part of the digital marketing sphere. For anyone operating a business, it is crucial to know about prevailing marketing trends. Hence, one must keep looking out to thrive and strive to embrace upcoming technologies to stay ahead of the competition curve.