Lets discuss about 11 Digital marketing trends you can’t ignore in 2020.
2020 started with lock down across the globe resulting in a change in the work culture of businesses. Work from home became the new normal for most digital agencies and other companies, making them more productive than before.
When a trend becomes a new normal, it increases the productivity and performance of that task. Similarly, the latest trends in the digital world will make online advertisement improve its performance. To know how to measure the performance of your campaign to read about the Important Key performance indicators(KPI) in Digital Marketing.
I wanted to share my perspective on digital marketing trends that can be adopted quickly by SMEs and Large companies to thrive in this new age innovation:
1) Programmatic advertisement
Programmatic advertisement allows the AI to serve the ads to the users based on the browsing history as they visit publisher sites and search for product/service on Google SERP. For example, Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic ad buying.
The AI will serve the ads based on the targeting set by a human, of course. This automation makes the campaigns more efficient and fast, which results in lower customer acquisition costs and higher conversion rates.
The US programmatic ad spending forecast of 2018 shows that 86.6% of digital display ads served were programmatic ads by 2020.
To learn more and utilize this digital marketing trend, check out the PPC hero’s guide.
2) Google Ads Smart bidding
In simple words, smart bidding is giving control to the Google AI system to optimize your budget to maximize ROI. Small and large companies can use the Google ads smart bidding in their PPC campaigns strategy.
The benefits of using Google Ads Smart bidding is that it works for multiple goals:
Target CPA: Generate new leads for the maximum cost per acquisition that you set.
Maximize conversions: Google’s AI system will optimize the campaign’s budget based on your campaign data. There are chances of more conversions leading to increased conversion rates.
Target ROAS: Using this feature, we can get the best return on advertising spend.
We need to learn a lot about how bidding works before we start using Smart bidding, and you can learn more in detail in this Google Ads article About Smart Bidding.
3) User-generated content
The Coca-Cola Company made the use of User-generated content strategy to reach more users. They selected 150 to 250 names, printed them on the Coke bottle, and asked consumers to share the image with a hashtag #shareacoke.
This simple strategy can give you millions of new consumers, brand engagement, increased conversions, and a broader audience.
In March 2019, Instagram launched a feature where users can complete the purchase from within Instagram without visiting the website. The Instagram checkout option has helped increase conversions and reduce the cart abandonment rate because now there isn’t any need to switch apps or sign in to a store.
The eCommerce brands and startups need to develop interactive ads and content, which makes the user click on the ad, increasing the engagement and conversions then and there.
4) Social Media stories
Mobile users are growing at a rapid pace, and story ads are the best as they make the best use of a mobile screen. Social media users are in millions; therefore, it becomes necessary to include story ads in your social media strategy. Let’s learn about the benefits of story ads:
- Increased brand awareness
- Better engagement with followers
- Increased traffic to your website
- Creating Polls for Instagram stories and use of Snapchat geo-filters
- Storytelling makes your ads look more appealing to the user.
As Youtube, WhatsApp, and Facebook introduced their story features after Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter moments (in a way), we can admit that it’s going to be a year of stories.
5) Personalization
If you want to improve your revenue, create a brand, retain customers, then personalization of content, emails, products, and services is necessary. Consider these personalization stats:
- 63% of consumers are highly annoyed with generic advertising blasts
- 80% say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences
- 90% claim they find personalization appealing
6) Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence holds exceptional future opportunities in digital marketing. There are several benefits of adding AI technology in your digital marketing plan because it has multiple benefits.
- It helps in delivering a personalized experience to your customers by predicting their behavior online.
- AI will give us a competitive advantage and help enter new business ventures.
- Reporting will be more accurate, which can help plan further strategies, eventually leading to better conversions.
- AI will help scale up content marketing, as we will need AI tools for content creation. There AI tools available like Acrolinx, which is used by major brands like Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Nestle, and Caterpillar for content creation.
7) Chatbots
You might have heard: chatbots are the future. Chatbots can improve the way your business communicates with your customers. There’s still panic within marketers on how to include chatbots in your digital marketing strategy.
As we discussed, AI tech is the future; the chatbots uses artificial intelligence. It helps to understand the complex request, personalize responses, and improve the interactions. The chatbot technology is progressing at a slow pace, and humans create the chatbots by using the bot-building platforms. The benefits of chatbots are:
- Quick replies to inquiries
- 24/7 available
- Improves website performance
8) Voice search Adoption
The use of Voice search has increased at a fast pace globally. We are already in a revolution where we are using voice search smart speakers in our daily life. On my research online, I was able to find these numbers:
In 2020, 50% of searches online will be based on voice search.
In the USA, 55% will have access to Smart speakers like Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft’s Cortona by 2022.
Adopting voice search technology on your website will give a better experience to the user.
9) Augmented reality
Google lens, IKEA, Lenskart.com have all updated their apps with augmented reality technology. It gives the user a unique experience in their purchase journey. The AR lens can also help the user try the product before buying them using the augmented shopping experience. Using advanced tech for your daily business creates a buzz in the market that also helps in branding.
10) Visual search
Visual search helps to search for the product online using the screenshots, photographs, internet images. Pinterest, Google Lens, Cam find, and Bing visual search are already using this feature. Visual search improves the user experience and makes it easy for them to search for a product online by simply uploading an image.
11) Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the most important digital marketing strategies, and it will continue to be for the next ten years, at least. According to a recent HubSpot Research report, four of the top six channels on which global consumers watch a video are social channels. There are types of videos created for marketing purpose demo videos, branding videos, event videos, interview videos, etc. These five factors make video marketing more effective:
- Creating shorter videos of 10 second to 30 seconds
- We are focusing on Storytelling rather than a sales pitch.
- Trying to add humor to make it more engaging.
- Seo optimized video setup.
- Using videos, we can Educate the customers with ease.
Besides Youtube, we have Instagram Tv, also known as IGTV, to upload videos with a duration of more than 1 minute and Instagram feed to upload shorter videos less than 1 minute, Instagram Reel for 15 seconds short videos. We can go live for a demo session of your product on Facebook, youtube, and Instagram to connect with your audience in a live one on one environment.