12 Digital Marketing Trends That Will Shape Your Business in 2020

1) Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence into robots or machines, which are programmed to think and work like humans. AI has become the driving force behind many of the services like

•   E-commerce transactions
•   Email personalization
•   Product recommendations
•   Basic communication
•   Content creation

It’s been predicted that by the end of 2020 AI will be at the heart of global business and industry.

Example:

•   Predictive analytics is used by Starbucks for serving the personalized recommendations.
•   Alibaba opened “FashionAI” a physical store in china, its goal is to stream the fashion experience through AI

Why AI?

• The Year 2020 will witness 60% of companies using AI for driving digital revenue.
•   Voice assistance is used by 97% of mobile users.
•   71% of B2B marketers are showing interest in AI for personalization.
•   Human interactions will be dropped by 85%.
•   38% of consumers have believed that AI will help in improving customer services.

These statistics give a clear insight to choose AI for your business. 

2) Chatbots

A chatbot is a program that is used to simulate human conversations. It interacts in such a way that the conversion seems to be natural and real-time with customers or visitors.

It remains to be in top trends that will be followed in 2020. 

Benefits of Chatbots:

•   Chatbots provide 24-hours services
•   gives responses quickly to inquiries
•   provide answers even to the simplest questions

By the survey 

•   85% of customer services will be powered by chatbots.
•   63% of respondents will prefer chatbot, to communicate with business
•   $8 billion per annum will be saved by using chatbots, by the year 2022
•   Oracle says 80% of businesses are interested in chatbots.

These stats and the benefits make clear that businesses should choose chatbots.

Example of chatbot in fashion assistance which is already in use.

Having a personal fashion stylist is every fashionista s dream. Chatbots in customer service acts like your fashion stylist. These give product recommendations size recommendations and make your shopping experience more enjoyable and simpler by generating a stress-free shopping environment. This trend is being implemented by “Amiya” a chatbot that assists in the fashion field.

3) Conversational marketing 

By the talk about chatbots it’s clear that today’s marketing is more conversational.

Conversational marketing is the best way of doing business online, which gives personalized experience by generates a healthy relationship between customers and marketers. For this it uses messaging Applications and chatbots. Conversations can be done via messengers, SMS, or via Emails. 

Why choose Conversational marketing in 2020? 

•   Messaging applications become a great thread between customers and businesses. This thread is used to make the conversation more natural, creates the opportunities to cross-sell, and also gives encouragement for sharing. i.e. more sales in less time
•   Chatbots help companies to get valuable data or information naturally. 

When human customer support is compared to the chatbots, chatbots are faster than the older method. Customers are given preference to start the chat at any time and also can end at any pace.

4) Video Marketing: Not an option anymore.

Does your Digital Marketing Company use video marketing for promotions of your brand or businesses? 

If yes,

You are good to go.

If no……… 

Get started this year.

It was on the rise in the year 2019, it continues to be on the rise in 2020 too. Text content cannot beat the power of video content especially in the case of product selling and online services. The webpages which contain video-based content are more likely to get the traffic diverted to it than to the text-based content. Even Google considers the video and pushes the webpages which have video-based content to the ranks.

Why consider the video-based content into Digital marketing trends in 2020???

The following statistics show the importance of video marketing.

•   70% of consumers share the brand’s video
•     According to 72% of businesses, videos have improved conversion rate
•   52% of consumers claim that by watching product videos, online purchase decisions are taken confidently by them 
•   65% of executives reach the marketer’s website and 39% make a call to a vendor after seeing a video

People want to choose a video to learn about the products or the service because they remember 20% of whatever they hear, 30% of whatever they see, but 70% of whatever they see and hear so video is the best choice as compared to only text or only audio.

Different Marketing trends which are more attractive are,

•   Live streaming video: When digital marketing and influencer marketing are combined it makes live streaming a powerful trend. Influencers who have a great knowledge of the particular niche talk directly to the audience.
•   1:1 video: Phone calls and emails are the old trends, creating a personalized video is a good way to attract the audience by creating a one to one environment. This is an easy method as we have high-quality mobile cameras with us.
•   Video SEO: Video optimization is a must, as search engines display YouTube and other videos in the result pages.

5) Voice search and smart speakers

Hey, Alexa, switch off the lights!

Hey, Siri play news on today’s weather. 

These effortless searches via voice have made things easier. The verbal interaction between the user and these smart devices will be on the rise in 2020 also. 

Studies say that 

•   By the end of the year 2020, 50% of all the searches will be via voice
•   55% of houses in America will have smart speakers by the year 2020
•   72% of people having the smart devices claim that the devices are being used as a part of daily routines for turning off the light or fan
•   There is a growth of 9.36 million units to 26.1 million units in Global smart speaker shipments
•   There is a rise in voice shopping and experts say that there will be a growth in revenue from $2 billion to $40 billion in 2022

PayPal, Nestle, Domino’s are the few companies that already have included the voice search in their marketing strategies.

•   Domino’s: Pizza lovers get the opportunity to order whatever they want without picking up the phone or placing the order online
•   PayPal: Using Siri it is possible to send money to anyone

6) Programmatic Advertisement

AI and machine learning are used to automate ad placements, ad-buying, performance tracking, etc so that marketers can concentrate on more important things and to target a more specific audience.

According to eMarketer, programmatic advertising will be used in 86.2% of digital display ads in the U.S.

How does Programmatic Advertising works?

•   Someone clicks on the webpage
•   The website owner or the publisher of the page puts up the ad impression for the auction (SSP- Supply-side platform)
•   The auction will be held among the advertisers who will be competing to get the ad impression (DSP- Demand-side platform)
•   Ad impression will be won by the one who bids the highest value
•   The ad will be given to the prospective user on the website
•   The user clicks on the ad and advertisers convert them into sale and profits

7) Augmented Reality and Immersive technologies

Virtual reality (VR) presents the real world into a virtual completely, Augmented Reality (AR) is a mix of the real and virtual world. Immersive technologies will be used in experiments in 70% of enterprises.

VR creates lots of noise and makes people excited by sci-fi ideas, AR can be easily implemented in marketing strategies. Experts say that AR will continue to be dominating over VR in 2020. Many brands are using AR to give an enhanced experience to the consumers and also to increase sales.

IKEA place is an AR app by IKEA Furniture firm, this allows the visitors to capture the photo of a room by using an iOS camera to test drive their furniture in it. Visitors can move around and try out the different places to see how will it look at different angles.

Experts say, there is tremendous growth in the AR app. These apps attract customers by giving businesses a different edge.

8) Good content still matters in 2020

Content is king in digital marketing. It remains to be king in 2020 also. Effective content improves your visibility online. Effective, powerful, and crisp content is the only formula that you can make use of to make the visitors stay in for reading the main course. According to the users only tend to read 20% of the content on an average website. This leaves you with the pressure of impressing anyone who reaches your website within the stipulated time you have before they hit the back button.

The quality of content matters, but now importance is given to the context and targeting. Search engines are trying to develop ways to understand the online content, making the marketers think carefully about the target market and how can they create the content precisely in 2020. BERT algorithm is one such development.

BERT (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers) is an algorithm by google that helps search engines to understand the context of the words in users’ search query. It can read the text left-to-right and right-to-left as well

Google advises that rather than running behind the new SEO trends, create good content, get useful links, and ensure your website has good speed.

9) Featured snippet /SERP zero position:

We see featured snippets at zero position which is just above organic search results. This gives a brief answer to the search query.

Featured snippets are generated by using content pages that are available in a particular search result. This creates the pressure to position our content on the first page of search engine results to get featured at position zero. 

By the researches, 30% of internet searches will happen with no interference of screen, and hence 40.7% of voice search answers are from a featured snippet. As the snippets are at the top and give you enough information without having to click a link hence, making it important to optimize the website content for featured snippets. Featured snippets increase the visibility on result pages and also helps in website branding. 

Tip: While working on featured snippets concentrate more on question-based search. Take help of “people also ask” section

We should create the featured snippet which is clickable. This increases the chance of visitors towards your website. In the below example, “more items” will appear at the end of list-making the visitors click on it.

So, if you have planned to make your featured snippet list with 7 points, making it more than that.

10) Advertising through IoT

Even though the marketers spend lots of money and time on advertising they don’t get fruitful results sometimes. 100% click-through-rate from ads? Is it possible?

Yes, it is possible with IoT. In the future it is expected that advertising will be aligned with the customer’s behaviors, interests, and purchase history. 

For example: In your smart home when bulb dies suddenly, this smart connected home will notify you that you need to replace the bulb now. Not only this but it also sends a digital coupon for the bulb to the smartphone.

Most of the devices today are smart, be it a wristwatch or a car, the IoT is getting connected more. So, the marketers can use the data from these connected devices to know what the customer’s lifestyle is, possibly what is running on the customer’s mind. Using this information, the IoT generates patterns in product usage, helping the digital marketers to know the demand forecasting. This gives marketers a clear insight to promote their product.

IoT also helps in automating the advertising process with no much effort and cost

IoT is implemented by many brands, for example, Johnnie Walker drinks company 

They have used IoT to know if the bottle is opened and to track where is it in the supply chain, this is made possible with the electronic sensors built-in within the blue label bottle.

11) Blockchain Technology 

Blockchain Technology is widely used in the digital marketing world. Blockchain provides direct communication between brands and consumers by eliminating the need for a middle man. This creates transparency and ensures efficiency. 

How Blockchain works???

How can Blockchain improve Digital Marketing?

• Deals with fake factors

We see many fake followers, likes, sometimes fake products also. This makes marketers think about spending money on advertising. With blockchain it is possible to know whether the money invested is going to the target audience, as marketers deal with publishers directly, and not with third parties.

• By ads without a middle man

As a business, we want to ensure that the ads we are buying are from a trusted website. For this we had to pay a certain amount of money to get it verified. But Blockchain removes this process and verification is done automatically. 

12) Social Commerce and Shoppable Posts

Social media platforms are the best way to promote your brand, businesses, and drive visitors to your website or online store. E-commerce and social media are used together to improve sales.

Social commerce allows you to buy products through social ads or posts, for this you may not have to leave the app also. 54% of people use social media to know about the product. Social commerce makes the purchase steps easy by decreasing the possibility of sales abandonment. 

Brands believe that social commerce may decrease the risk of customers leaving the purchase in the middle as they may be redirected to any unknown stores and maybe, they will also be asked to sign-in.

Instagram launched Instagram Checkout in 2019 for ecommerce shopping, which allows the user to purchase directly through the Instagram app. 90% of the Instagram users follow the active shopping brands, and visit the brand profile daily basis.