India is currently battling a pandemic as, what some might call, the epicentre of the outbreak. However, this period also marks the beginning of the post-COVID or what has come to be known as the new normal. It has been established time and again that the new normal will witness a massive change in the way we deal with everyday life and give way to a changing landscape driven by digital transformation, across industries. In such a scenario, consumer behaviour is also bound to see a big change and marketers need to keep a check on these changing patterns and pivot their efforts accordingly. A report by Gartner indicates that consumers are now expecting increased mindfulness from brands in these testing times. They are expecting brands to address the larger issue instead of being opportunistic. At this time, it has become increasingly important to communicate around the brand’s purpose and values. Consumers would expect that instead of adopting product push strategies, brands will gravitate to empathetic communication to connect with consumers on a deeper level.  Let's look at a few factors that will drive this change and how marketers can step up to adjust to the changing consumer.

Customers prioritise trusted relationships

 Customers in the post-COVID world are willing to choose brands that are working towards the larger good instead of just propagating about their products or services. In fact, according to EY, close to 62% of consumers say they would prefer to buy products from companies, which are doing good for society – and 29% are even prepared to pay a premium for these brands. Brands need to make sure that these efforts are a part of their digital strategies as well. Digital strategies for brands should now focus on reflecting brand values and pay attention to representing social activism and outreach. Not only will this help brands gain consumer attention but also allow greater loyalty in the long run. Aside from this, it would also help in driving consideration, purchase, and feedback from consumers.

Spend on conversions and brand value

The changing consumer behaviour and their difficulty in trusting new brands have made it increasingly important for brands to strive to build this trust. They need to utilize a purpose-driven & human-centric approach to conquer new & loyal customers with the funnel dynamic. This is why your digital marketing strategy needs to  Spread awareness by building brand power, meaningfulness & value for money. Aside from that the strategy should also focus on driving consideration & maximise ROAS by utilizing innovative performance tactics to generate interest & connect with the consumer. Ultimately, it should accelerate conversion by focusing on innovative & personalized campaigns.

Go Phygital

 According to Forbes, Online sales have grown 43% between February and May 2020 and are accounting for 19.3% of all sales. This is just one of the examples that prove the importance of an online presence in the post-COVID world. The necessity of staying indoors has made consumers more open to online experiences. This has made it clear that brands now need to allocate a higher budget to digital marketing and go Phygital by adopting an omnichannel approach. Some new-age brands are also deploying virtual platforms to connect customers with real-life experts, places & events to create social trust and provide a familiar environment. Now brands need to reimagine virtual communications, commerce & brand experiences that leverage social, AR, VR, web platforms for engagement & delivery

Marketing localisation

 Marketing localisation will become increasingly important in the post-COVID world in light of the social distancing norms and travel restrictions. According to a report by Facebook and Boston Consulting Group, as consumers adjust to the “new normal,” businesses will require a hyper-focused market strategy to increase sales. For this, brands need to redirect budgets to digital channels to reach homebound consumers using marketing localization & increase consumer loyalty. Building a long-term digital strategy that is focussed on retention & audience engagement in a specific local area and focussing on local ratings & reviews is a vital step to scale-up your localized marketing strategy. You can leverage tools like Google My Business to update local listings with relevant information to save your consumers time & confusion. Brands also need to carve a niche for themselves by diving deeper by market and data into their operations

Boost customer engagement

The unprecedented times that we’ve found ourselves in has made it clear that we need to be incredibly agile in adapting to customer needs. Once brands have built the trust of their consumers, adopted an omnichannel strategy, and leveraged local marketing, brands also need to focus on driving more strengthened customer engagement. This is why brands need to conduct immediate social listening to assess consumer sentiment. Moreover, it is also important to accelerate customer segmentation, digital lead generation and nurturing to boost engagement. For this, you need to build a new communication plan to bring evolved brand vision & values to the market. Another great idea could be to Refresh loyalty programs to account for new digital & experiential means of engagement & new customers. Moreover, building a feedback capability to incorporate changes in customer behaviour & evolve to meet changing expectations across products & services can prove to be incredibly helpful. In order to be in sync with the changing consumer behaviour brands need to adopt policies that establish strong trust among employees, customers, partners and the community and need to reflect this in their digital efforts. This helps them ensure transparency & clearly communicate the information to various stakeholders for visibility into business practices. Download the PDF version

Imagine a world without content. A world that is so abstract that it becomes a self-negating proposition in itself. One that cannot be addressed using words that set the context and induces the imagination in the first place. But, for a moment, let's give it a try. What would it mean if nothing were written, if the pronouncement "I give you my word" was sufficient as a contract? If all languages would be spoken text, except that "text" would not exist. Suppose we would have been texting with our friends but only with images but not text. If there would be products but without any expiry date or how to use instructions written on it? Living without content would have been impossible 500 years ago and it still stands true. We all connect with content daily, be it from a magazine, song lyrics, Instagram caption, banners, labels on beauty products, and much more. Even different industry players are leveraging content in the form of content marketing to gain brand recognition & position. They are building a strong brand voice that captures their audience's attention and helps them differentiate from competitors.  The power of the content has never been greater than it is today. As Content marketing has now become one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing the brand presence, and driving sales, modern businesses must work to ensure they are creating valuable, high-quality content that supports and improves the customer journey. 3C's Of Content Marketing: Content Creation  When it comes to content marketing, the first and foremost step is creating content. With more and more consumers demanding a personalized experience, brands should aim to create interactive content since it is the perfect way to grab the consumer's attention & increase engagement. Curate Brands should not just create content to gain clicks, shares, or page views but to create something that the audience finds truly useful. To create something useful, brands should know their target audience. After knowing the audience, one will be able to create content according to the interests of the target audience. Rather than just telling themselves about the brand, the focus should be more on how the brand's products and services can solve the audience's problems. Circulate Brands must spend 20% of their time in content creation, and the rest of it in content promotion. It is time to focus on content promotion & distribution through collaborations, cross-publishing, repurposing content, etc. Brandbuilders & storytellers These days brands are continually looking out for innovative ways to engage their target audiences to achieve their goals. The success and popularity of influencer marketing have made brands move towards a model that celebrates this and enables them to make a mark to establish  Relevance To add credibility to the content by collaborating with an influencer who creates relevant content matching the brand's tonality. Reach By not jumping into the influencer marketing trend haphazardly and taking time to find an influencer that matches the brand. This way, they are able to deliver an authentic message to the specific target group that the brand is trying to reach, and be upfront about it. Resonance An influencer is known for its unbiased and authentic opinions. The fact that posts from an influencer don't appear as advertisement is one of the most significant benefits of influencer generated content. To resonate with the audience effectively, The brand should boost engagement in the influencer marketing campaign through user-generated & customized content. Connecting creativity with content Creativity is critical when it comes to standing out among the noises that distract the target audience daily. To start somewhere, here are a few ideas to kickstart conversations and improve overall brand recognition:

• Brands can take the help of blog posts as they are a cornerstone of B2B content creation due to their SEO benefits & help in the process of primary content distribution.
• Another way is to use gated content that can help generate leads as it requires users to fill in their details to receive access.
• As Robert Gerrish rightly said, "You just need one person to listen, get your message and pass it on to someone else. And, you've doubled your audience", podcasts are one of the best ways brands can talk to their audience. 

Funneling Content Finding the right content to answer the customer's questions, nurture their opinion of and relationship with the brand, and ultimately convert leads into paying customers is hard. So hard that most brands and marketers are lost when it comes to choosing the right kind of content. Every brand should keep these three stages in mind as to provide the right content at the right time to their audience: Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU)/Awareness Stage At this stage, brands capture their audience's attention by providing solutions to the target audience's most pressing needs through relevant content. This must be offered without asking anything in return.  Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU)/Evaluation Stage Once people have been introduced to a brand and have received some degree of free value from them, it's time to convert them to an actual lead. Brands should help prospective buyers make the right decision by providing case studies, product demos & in-depth research reports. Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU)/Decision Stage It's time to present customers with an offer that naturally transitions them into a paying customer. Send out offer reminders through drip email campaigns, free trials, discounts & consultations. On Top with SEO Yeah, creating top-quality content should be the priority, but it should be optimized for search engines. Brands should:

• Foster authority & trust by using high-quality links that pass value from one site to the other.
• Optimize their blog posts for featured snippets to give quick wins and drive traffic from the SERPs.
• Create content that focuses on the target audience with the right keywords & generate high-quality links back to their website.

Grow socially High-quality content has the best effect when it gets distributed over social media. It's no wonder that many marketers say that social media and content marketing go together like wine and cheese.

• If the content offered by brands is not meaningful or engaging, it can be tiresome, frustrating, and push the audience elsewhere. Creating share-worthy content in social media is the modern-day word of mouth.
• Establish a relationship with the audience by creating authentic content, such as personifying communication tonality to humanize the brand. This shows that the brand is interested in connecting with the audience and committed to building meaningful relationships with them.
• Focus on adding value to the customer's lifestyle, which helps to build a brand's reputation & establishing authority in the industry.
• Social media should not be used as a stopgap. Initiate direct communication with the audience. But do not bombard them with everything. Play with new ways to connect with the audience. For instance, one day, post a series of Instagram Stories to give customers a behind-the-scenes tour. Next, host a quick Q&A session via Facebook Live video streaming. 

At the end of the day, content is what really matters the most. Nobody will engage if the information is not right and useful to them. Consumers want to find topics and companies that they can relate to or aspire to. The content and conversations must be true to the brand's personality, motto, customers, and business."

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. 

That’s so social! Social media is an ever-changing medium. Whether it’s keeping track of new developments and improvements on various social media platforms or adopting new social media strategies and evolving statistics and data, digital marketers and business owners need to keep themselves well-updated and educated at all times. Here is a list of the top social media updates for the month of May:

1. Facebook launches the most human-like chatbot Facebook creates its own chatbot called Blender, which blends a diverse set of human conversational skills like empathy, knowledge and personality together in one system. It has been brought to the market using a new chatbot recipe of improved decoding techniques and novel blending of skills.
2. Instagram works on “Shops from Facebook” update Instagram is processing “Shops from Facebook” feature which will suggest products to its users according to their previous search across various online websites. They will use the data available across Facebook products, including Instagram, to make personalized recommendations to its users.
3. TikTok unveils new in-app reporting feature TikTok users can report misinformation with this new in-app feature - Misleading Information, which will enable users to distinguish between facts and false content. TikTok has given a sub-category within the feature named “COVID-19 information” where any information related to COVID-19 can be reported.
4. Facebook adds gift cards and donation tools Facebook has expanded its Community Help feature to make it easier for people to support local businesses and nonprofit organizations. Users will be able to find gift cards and vouchers to support local businesses, donate to local nonprofit fundraisers, sign up to become a blood donor and find local job opportunities.
5. LinkedIn releases new tools for Virtual Interviews LinkedIn is introducing 2 new features - a video introduction tool and AI-powered feedback tool, which will help people in preparing for some of the most common questions that are asked in the screening process, with access to quality videos and tips by experts and hiring managers on how to answer the most common interview questions.
6. Bringing back Live With on Facebook With more people turning to live video to connect with their community during COVID-19, Facebook brought back its ‘Live With” feature that lets hosts choose a guest to go Live With during their mobile live broadcasts – either from their Page or profile. With this feature, one can bring on a guest speaker, interview an expert, or perform with a fellow artist, among other cases.
7. Twitter rolls out changes to threaded conversations Twitter introduces a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier for the users to understand who they’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. It will also test putting engagement actions - likes, retweets and reply icons, behind an extra tap to make replies to conversations easier to follow.
8. Facebook reveals its Board members for content Facebook announced the first members of oversight board who will be empowered to make binding decisions about what content must be allowed or removed on both Facebook and Instagram. They will also take cognizance of the disputes about posts, pages, profiles, groups and even ads on Facebook.

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