Digital Marketing is becoming increasingly indispensable for businesses to accelerate their growth as we are already in a digital era. Being aware of the key digital marketing trends will benefit your business and brand in various ways, from being cost effective to building brand loyalty. Here are 11 digital marketing trends that you should be aware of in 2020 and we hope that you will find one or a couple of strategies that is suitable for your business.
- Artificial intelligence
2020 might be the year artificial intelligence (AI) dominates and if you have yet to realise it, it is time to do so. It is predicted that by 2025, the AI global market will reach a $190 billion. It has already replaced many occupations and is expected to be the core of businesses and industries globally in the future.
Take for instance, AI is one of the most important components in the business operations of Alibaba. AI is used to predict what customers will want to buy and with natural language processing, the company is able to generate automatically the relevant product descriptions.
Before you decide if you should hop onto the AI trend, let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why some businesses are choosing to adopt AI based on a survey result presented by Patricia Neil.
1) 84% of respondents voted that AI allows them to achieve a competitive edge
2) 75% voted that AI provides the potential to get into new businesses 3) 75% voted that the new organisations using AI will enter their market
4) 63% voted that there will be a need to use AI in response to pressures to reduce costs
AI is powerful enough to help businesses analyse consumer behaviour and search patterns. It is crucial that you understand your consumers and know how they are engaging with your business.
To inspire you further, take a look at this example in the consumer goods industry. Hello Barbie uses natural language processing, machine learning and advanced analytics to communicate with the child. It is able to hold a dialogue with the child and generate an accurate response under less than a second. Other brands that are already using AI to improve their marketing efforts include Netflix, Starbucks and Sephora.
It is unsurprising that AI will be a driving force to look out for behind many businesses and we already see it in some of the services provided.
- AI chatbots to communicate with consumers · Content creation for websites
- Email personalization and automation
- Sales forecast driven by AI expected to take in $1.2 trillion a year by 2020
It is perhaps time to consider the benefits adopting AI brings to your business which includes giving you a competitive edge and accelerating your growth.
- Chatbots
You might have come across a chatbot while you were surfing the web. A chatbot is an artificial intelligence software that is used to hold a conversation with a user. It is able to generate responses over any time with a site viewer.
According to the Learning Hub, past survey findings reveal that:
• Chatbots will drive 85% of customer service by 2020
• 64% believe that one of the top benefits chatbots bring is its 24-hour service
and 55% value the immediate response chatbots can generate for enquiries
• 63% of people prefer communicating with a bot to get engage with a
business or brand
• Expected cuts to business costs by $8 billion by 2022
Chatbots are popular among consumers as they are responsive, available 24/7 and provide prompt replies. One of the most desired customer services might be patience and you can always receive such standards of service from your virtual assistants. With your customer service taken care of, you can focus on more important business work.
Many businesses have adopted the use of chatbots and one of them is Sephora. Sephora’s virtual assistant will assist you by providing reviews of products and its ratings when you shop in a store.
Check out the other brands that have capitalised on this digital marketing trend with exciting uses of their chatbots in their businesses. They include Lyft, Whole Foods, Mastercard and The Wal Street Journal
- Personalization
You might want to consider to stop having a one-size fits all for your digital marketing. It is important to personalise your content, emails, products and more for your business to stand out.
Consider what consumers have to say about personalization marketing:
• 90% of respondents found personalization appealing
• 80% of consumers are more engaged to do businesses with those that offers personalization
If you are an avid user of Netflix, you might notice how curated your content has been to suit your preference based on your interest and past viewing history. Netflix is one of the companies that have been successful in using personalization marketing.
There are many benefits that comes from personalization:
• Users get relevant content
• Information is delivered to them at the right time
• Consumers receive valuable suggestions
• You remind them of their recent browsing history
- Video marketing
In digital marketing, you can’t afford to leave out video marketing. It remains one of the most important marketing trends and is likely to stay.
Consider these stats provided by Joe Rinaldi showing how video marketing can
benefit businesses:
• 70% of consumers reveal that they have shared a brand’s video
• 72% of businesses testified that their conversion rates have improved with
videos
• 52% of consumers responded that product videos give them the confidence
to make a purchase.
With the number of people watching videos more significantly than before, marketers are highly optimistic about the return on investments offered by videos. They believe that video marketing will continue to influence traffic, leads, sales and audience understanding greatly. It was revealed in a Wyzowl conducted survey that 88% of video marketers found that video gives them a positive ROI in 2020.
There are a few ways to make use of video marketing to drive higher engagement.
This includes Youtube, starting a live-broadcast on Facebook, Instagram or
LinkedIn.
Some other video marketing trends to take note of includes:
• Live video
• 1:1 Video
• Video SEO
• 360-degree video content
As we transit to a digital era, more people are on their mobile phones more ever
and some marketers are struggling with this transition. Lengthy contents or emails
are no longer as appealing to consumers due to the difficulty to read them on
smaller digital devices. Marketers can now opt for videos to present the same
information that works well on various devices without being too concerned about
readability.
Did you know that you are 50X more likely to drive organic search results when you
use videos in your site as compared to text? From an SEO perspective, it is
important to optimize your video content as Google will boost the pages that
includes videos in their ranking. This is because people find video content more
appealing and elicits a better response towards it.
- Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly important in digital marketing. It is a type of social media marketing that involves the use of endorsements and product placements from key opinion leaders. They range from celebrities to the micro influencers you see on Instagram or YouTube.
One reason why influencer marketing is so attractive is because of its perceived authenticity compared to corporate advertising. Trust in a brand is so important that consumers ranked brand trust as one of the top factors in purchase decisions. Influencers are able to help bridge the gap in trust as the Edelman report revealed that 63% of consumers trust the opinion of an influencer more as compared to what brands speak of themselves.
An increasing number of brands are engaging influencers in their marketing efforts.Take for instance, Samsung’s Note 7 launch. They engaged Influencer: CyreneQ, a professional Snapchat artist and designer to promote their launch to her huge following base. She gave audiences a sneak peak of the Note 7 by posting short video clips of its features on her Snapchat account.
Influencer marketing has been disrupting the industry and a mediakix study expected that it will grow to be a $5-$10 billion-dollar market by next year.
Another interesting trend to take note of is the use of artificial intelligence to help businesses find the right influencers to partner with for a more positive return on investment (ROI).
- Social messaging apps
Social messaging apps are platforms that allow for instant messaging. According to Hubspot, the 8 most popular mobile and social media messaging apps include:
- Facebook Messenger · WhatsApp
- Instagram Direct
- Twitter Direct Message · WeChat
- LINE
- Telegram · Skype
Here are some statistics that shows the reach potential social messaging apps can bring about:
• 1.3 billion monthly active users on Facebook Messenger
• WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users
Social messaging apps allows for businesses to add a touch of personalization as they can message consumers directly. Such a connection is useful for building a relationship with customers as well.
Why else should you use messaging apps? Consider these other benefits to your business:
• Cultivate contact
• Deliver information
• Boost sales
• Involve people in events
• Regain potential customers
• Provide support and assistance
- Voice search and smart speakers
The development of voice search technology is disrupting how marketers are optimizing their sites to rank for targeted keywords and queries. Current statistics by DBS Interactive show that 41% of adults use voice search at least once a day. It is expected that in 2020, the number of smartphone users engaging with voice search will be more than half.
Consider these voice search statistics:
- 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 as provided by comScore · Estimated of 21.4 million smart speakers in the United States by 2020 as provided by Activate
- Voice commerce sales is predicted to reach $40 billion by 2022 as provided by OC&C Strategy Consultants
The use of AI in voice searches cannot dismissed and voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google are able to provide more relevant and accurate information as technology continues to develop.
Technology has become so sophisticated that voice assistants such as Alexa and Google can differentiate between voices to respond with more personalized messages and content. Hence, as put forth by the Digital Marketing Institute, voice search is not just about remaining relevant but it can also create a unique and personalised customer experience that will foster greater brand relationships.
Voice search also offers some of these other benefits:
• Drives higher web traffic
• Prevent customers from finding your competitors more easily
To give you some ideas on how you can get on board and get creative with your voice strategy, take a look at what some brands are doing to grow their business:
- Domino’s Pizza allow customers to order from the comfort of their homes without having to pick up their phone or place an online order
- PayPal users can engage Siri for money transactions to friends, family, or businesses
- Nestle provides voice cooking instructions to guide you as you cook · Campbell has a skill to help users choose and cook recipes
As long as you optimize your voice search strategy, you can get your brand to the top of the search engine results page and build a stronger brand relationship.
- Social media stories
Stories are gaining popularity on social media and an increasing number of brands are using it to engage with customers. Although there are short stories that only last for 24 hours, they are powerful in reaching people. Consider the percentage of users who access apps with stories as reported by Statista:
• Facebook: 76%
• Instagram: 83%
• Snapchat: 87%
• YouTube: 76%
Stories are a powerful tool to increase the visibility of brands and some of its advantages suggested by Alexander Bickov are:
• Increased brand awareness
• Constant engagement with followers
• Cost effective
• increase traffic to site
• opportunity to reach younger audiences
According to Sendible, there are 7 ways to get you started on using social media stories to build your brand:
1) use polls within Instagram Stories
2) Add links to your social media stories
3) Take advantage of Snapchat geofilters
4) Add location tags
5) Add mentions for other brands and your fans
6) Try live videos
7) Invite followers to explore more with clear-call-to-action
- Browser push notifications
Did you know that 12 seconds is the attention span of an average internet user in 2000? This is why browser push notifications with small advertising formats achieve the highest CTRs.
But do browser push notifications actually work? Consider these statistics published by PushPushGo:
• From 5% to 25% – the sign-up rate among site visitors for web notifications
• 12% overall CTR for sent web push campaigns
• 85% of online stores and other e-commerce sites use web push notifications
for their businesses
• At least twice as many people sign up for web push notifications compared
to a newsletter
Here are some tips on how to target smartphone users with push notifications:
• Don’t overuse push notifications
• Increase engagement with customers
• Promote products and services such as flash sales and timely updates
• Be relevant
• Know your customers and personalise notifications
Not only that, you can use push notifications to re-engage users. It enables your subscribers to receive notifications in real time even when they are not on your site. When the user engages with the notifications, they will be sent to your website. You can then boost your engagement by up to 4X when you choose to make use of Call-to-Action buttons
10.Social commerce and shoppable post
With 1 billion active users on Instagram every month and 90% of them already followers of businesses, what better way to engage your customers to make a purchase than by using shoppable posts.
It now seems that businesses are not maximising their business potential if they are not promoting their businesses on social media. More and more consumers are shopping on social media as e-commerce shops establish their presence on these platforms.
To maximise your sales, consider merging your checkout page to your social media accounts. For instance, Instagram allows businesses to have a product page that enables customers to complete their purchases directly with Instagram checkout. This simplifies the checkout process for consumers and reduces the risk of them
abandoning their purchase.
It is a great digital marketing strategy that is simple and drives business results
11.Growth of geofencing
When a device enters a set location, geofencing is able to trigger an action such as coupons, notifications or engagement features. Geofencing is an increasingly popular digital marketing tool and its global market is predicted to grow at an estimated USD$2.3 billion by 2023.
Why is Geofencing gaining popularity? Consider some of these statistics:
• 2 times click through rates for mobile ads with geofencing
• 3 out of 4 customers complete an action with geofencing
• 53% of shoppers visited a shop after receiving a location-based message
Besides its optimistic statistics towards business growth, here are some of its major benefits:
• Better targeting
• Cost effective
• Improved data collection
• Personalised customer experience
• Competitive advantage
To inspire you, take a look at how Starbucks used geofencing to attract customers to their stores. Starbucks send push notifications to users who walk by their business or are in the nearby vicinity. For instance, during their happy hour special, Starbucks sends special push notifications to those nearby to inform them of the deal, thereby enticing them to visit the store.
Engaging geofencing is one of the strategy businesses can consider to convert mobile users into brick-and-mortar customers.
We hope that being aware of these digital marketing trends will inspire and help you plan your next business action or strategy. Use these 11 tips and get your business growing.
If you need a free consultation to properly grow your business, email us at ask@demellows.com today.