1. Voice Search
The first of our 6 2020 digital marketing trends is Voice Search.
Although it has been around for a little while now, the increasingly common occurrence of AI-powered assistants, like Alexa and Siri in our lives, has caused the use of voice search to skyrocket.
More and more people are searching online using their voice, instead of typing in a query. And the text we type into Google search is different than how we would speak to a digital assistant; instead of typing “weather Bristol ”, we would ask “What’s the weather like in Bristol today?”
Because of this, you need to optimize your content for voice search. Content marketers should focus on anticipating the questions their audience would ask in a conversational manner and create content based on those conversational questions and longtail keywords.
2. Email Marketing
Email Marketing has been at the core of digital marketing for decades. Despite a lot of new technologies and various waves of digital marketing trends, email marketing still remains the king of Digital Marketing.
Email marketing is an appropriate way of understanding and targeting audiences whilst improving customer engagement and helping marketers to understand the behaviour of existing as well as potential customers.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: will email marketing still be relevant in the coming years? With millennial audiences (future consumers) communicating mostly through messaging apps, it’s tempting to think that email marketing is dead. However, according to Litmus, 70 percent of people believe email will still be relevant in 10 years’ time.
3. Better audience targeting through AI and first-party data
It’s quality over quantity, always.
Which is why, many brands are now wanting to capitalize on their first-party data, instead of opting for second and third-party data. First-party data allows for exact, valuable insights into a customer’s direct engagement with the brand, whether it’s their individual interests, which ads they engage with, or how much time they spend on the brand’s website.
This information is unfiltered, specific, and relevant, which helps to build an audience profile that is an exact match with the product or service in question. It is also cost-effective, as it’s free, and is lawful and transparent. Nike is one such company, which has already announced that they will be selling only directly going forward.
We’ve noticed a few other big brands who seem to be following suit. Have you received any emails recently that say “Click here to continue receiving our emails, or do nothing and we will remove you”… or something like that?
This is a way for brands to really narrow down their mailing lists in order to ensure that their campaigns are only hitting those who are genuinely interested and engaged. If we always prefer quality over quantity, then maybe now is the time to cut down those massive mailing lists?
4. Video continues to kill the radio star
Video and live-streaming have become huge recently thanks to new platforms like TikTok. According to HubSpot, 54 percent of consumers want to see more video content from brands or businesses they support.
So, if you want your content marketing to connect and engage your audience in 2020, then it’s time to start using videos.
One of the easiest ways to try out the live-streaming trend is with Facebook Live and Instagram Live; your business can hold a live Q&A for instance, to interact in real-time with your audience.
But don’t overthink it. People don’t expect polished movies, especially when live-streaming, the more authentic the better.
However, if you do want to buff out those “mms” and stumbles there are many free video editing tools online that will do the job, such as Clipchamp.
5. “Experiences” will eclipse products in marketing focus
2020 will become the year of ‘experiences.’ Promoting products will no longer be the marketer’s main end game.
As more businesses reposition themselves as ‘ service’ providers, they will need to re-tool their marketing strategies to demonstrate the full experience of what it’s like to engage with the brand.
Examples are already taking hold in several markets: car manufacturers are promoting themselves as ‘mobility providers,’ and banks are billing themselves as ‘financial wellness providers.’
This trend seems to come off the back of people’s focus being less about “having” and more about “doing” and “feeling”, so try and tap into this if you can.
6. Zero-Click Searches
Have you heard of the zero-click search? Oh yes, it is a true thing and you can expect more and more of these searches in 2020. Hence why it’s made our list of 2020 digital marketing trends.
As search engines try to improve their user experience, it may have negative effects for your business.
A zero-click search is exactly what it sounds like – a search that no one clicks a result. That’s because whatever the user is searching for is answered right there within the search engine, such as within the featured snippets on Google. This can hurt your SEO efforts.
Unfortunately, zero-search results are increasing. According to Search Engine Journal, 34.4 percent of all desktop searches and 62.5 percent of mobile searches result in no clicks. This trend has been on the rise for the past two years and does not look like it’s going to slow down anytime soon.
Of course, you want to rank for that coveted top answer position in the SERPs, but what’s the point if no one is going to click on your link?
Zero clicks means fewer impressions, lower click-through rates, and less organic traffic to your site. So you should rethink how you answer a question in your copy and keep this in mind – how will I answer the user’s question AND make them click the link?
Now that you’re aware of these important content marketing trends for 2020, you can start coming up with a plan for how to implement them into your own digital marketing strategy. Start planning for these trends ahead of time, and you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.
Contact the Dentons Digital team if you would like some friendly advice about your digital marketing.
