Top 10 trends in digital marketing for 2020

The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. To be one step ahead of your competitors, we present you the 10 best digital marketing trends for 2020.

In 2020, we will see new trends in marketing, along with some older but still effective ones:

Chat bots - personal support without human intervention. The technology of 2020 breathes new life into chatbots, making them more used and popular than years ago.

Voice Search - As more people use digital assistants such as Alexa or Siri, SEO now relies on voice search with keywords based on how people talk to each other without writing.

Video Marketing - Authoring videos are becoming more accessible for realization and every year we witness more and more successful and ambitious branded videos online.

Taking into account the existing ones, we present you the new trends in digital marketing for 2020:

1. Publications with products for purchase (social trade)

For a long time, businesses have been trying to get their social media followers to visit their online stores. You don't need it now.

Social commerce allows you to purchase products directly from posts or ads on social networks, where you do not need to leave the site or application. These social media posts, through which consumers can shop, are not entirely new in themselves. In 2019, Instagram Checkout was launched and quickly attracted attention with its e-commerce functionality.

And why not? The products posted on social networks make sense, as 54% of people on social networks use them to research products before buying. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for consumers by creating as few steps as possible to make the purchase, so you sell directly on social networks and reduce the chances of losing the sale.

You no longer need to be a big e-commerce brand. As you sell your products, even just a few branded items, by allowing transactions through social media, you can see a higher return on your marketing investment.

If you have a Shopify store, you'll see how easy it is to link your Instagram or Snapchat account and sell there. You may need to create a store on another platform, such as Facebook. You should also check out Pinterest, this is one of the first channels offering posts through which you can sell directly on a social network.

2. Direct messages:

In an attempt to get closer to their customers, brands use direct messages - DMs. As a means of streamlining customer service and sales support, instant messaging is becoming one of the hottest trends in digital marketing in 2020.

Through messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook Messenger, or through private messaging on social networks like Twitter or Instagram, brands build stronger connections with their customers. These platforms offer the perfect combination of text convenience with the immediacy of a phone call, all in a casual environment that the user already knows from talking to friends.

In building relationships, brands have found that instant messaging is effective in connecting with the customer, whether they are addressing complaints, accepting sales orders, or simply discussing issues.

This approach works very well when you provoke users to write you messages by giving them your user chat name and perhaps offering them exclusive offers or a promo code.

3. Micro influencers

For several years now, influencer marketing has been a trend in digital marketing. It is not enough to simply send a free sample to the influencers in the hope that they will review it. There are tables with price lists depending on the goods offered and the influence of the influencer. The influence of social networks is already a commodity, and quite expensive.

Instead of competing with global brands for the most famous influencers, small and medium-sized companies prefer to work with small and medium-sized influencers.

Micro-influencer is a term we come across more and more lately. Refers to average celebrities in narrower niches - popular enough to be influential and keep in touch with their followers while not being overwhelmed with sponsorship offers.

In addition to being more affordable, micro influencers often have a better engagement with their Internet followers than their more popular counterparts. Because they have fewer followers, they can devote more personal time to each of them. In addition, it is easier for them to specialize in a niche as micro influencers, as they often represent the niches themselves.

A study by Adweek revealed how effective micro-influencers are. Accounts with about 30,000 followers have a 60% higher engagement, while their impact is 6-7 times more profitable than that of the top influencers with more followers.

4. Improved and interactive e-mail letters

Email still holds high positions in digital marketing, as the return on investment from e-mail marketing in February 2019 is 3,200%. However, other experts note that the position of this technology is declining or stagnant. Instead of abandoning this fruitful channel, digital marketers are reviving it.

Recently, we have seen a rapid decline in plain text emails and newsletters. In their place appeared emails with perfect designs that look like they were taken out of a web designer's portfolio. As before, in 2020, marketing uses emails that look and function like web pages - including click buttons and other interaction elements.

These sophisticated designs achieve more than good results, they improve conversions. Readers are more likely to click on stylized buttons with accompanying images than to follow plain text links.

Nowadays, even the use of e-mail templates based on web pages is not enough. You need to put in the extra effort and pick up amazing graphics and UX-oriented elements. Given the above-mentioned return on investment, it is worth making sure that your emails are as attractive and beautiful as possible.

5. Analysis of moods online

Through communication, in addition to sharing one's own views, one tries to understand what others think. Despite hundreds of thousands of years of biological progress, there is still room for improvement in understanding others. Only a few years after the advent of machine learning technology, we are already making progress.

The analysis of the moods of the practice is an analysis of the reactions of consumers and customers to the product or service. Online reviews and posts are not always black and white "like / dislike." In the middle there is a large area in which different user opinions fall. Maybe the consumer likes the product as a whole, but one feature bothers him. Maybe the product is good, just not what he expected.

The analysis usually includes tools and algorithms for data collection, so you can evaluate the success of your brand online. This is not a new trend in digital marketing, but new technology is making it more popular than ever. Advances in language processing allow computers to understand the meaning of what people say online, including decoding the use of jargon and emoji.

Brand analysis tools for consumers, such as Critical Mention, Repustate or Lexalytics, reveal what people really think about your brand. You can then use this data to refine not only your products, but also your sales, marketing, social media and content strategies.

6. Alternative and niche social networks

Despite optimism about Facebook's latest revenue, the steady decline in both user growth and public opinion has shaken confidence in the platform's dominance. Similarly, Twitter has seen a similar setback in growth, leading to a drop in sales.

To be clear, both Twitter and Facebook advertising will remain useful marketing tools in 2020 and beyond.

There is interest in alternative social networks. If you can start developing your presence on these "secondary" platforms right now, it is very likely that your efforts will be rewarded in a few years.

Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, Medium and Reddit are becoming new favorites preferred by online retailers lately. Facebook has been attracting young users for years, and brands targeting the market under 30 are flocking to youth-oriented sites and apps.

New and smaller social networks may not reach the giants in terms of number of users, but that's not a bad thing. If you are a niche brand, more specialized platforms are better for reaching your target users.

7. Programmer advertising

Just like in mood analysis, don't send someone to do the robot's work. AI and machine learning algorithms are designed to make your job easier, and that includes optimizing your online advertising campaigns.

Ad publishing, media purchasing, performance tracking, and customer targeting can be managed by software. Not only are the results better, but "assigning" these tasks to a bot frees up time on your schedule to handle more important tasks. This is automation in the best sense of the word.

Software such as Adobe Marketing Cloud or SmartyAds can help you with online advertising. Real-time bidding can be stressful and time consuming, just like finding the right advertising channels. Deleting these tasks to an automated system may be best for both you and your business.

8. Optimize for Featured Snippets in Google

One of the reasons digital marketing trends are changing so fast is because the platforms on which it depends are changing rapidly.

As search engines evolve and become smarter, marketers need to adapt. More and more search queries contain snippets that are positioned on the first page and receive many more clicks than other search results. That is why it is essential to keep them in mind when creating digital marketing content and to optimize each piece of the Featured Snippets format using clear and well-structured content.

Google is trying to improve the quality of our content, so we need to take these changes into account and adjust our website to modern SEO techniques.

For marketers in 2020, it is more important than ever to create extremely high-quality content that covers topics carefully, is well structured and easy to understand. We need to write about people and search engines and make sure we don't ignore one or the other.

9. Video blogging

With the continued success of YouTube, Instagram Stories and Snapchat, video blogs are more popular than ever. Unlike other types of videos such as explanatory videos or short films, video blogs are more personal and direct. Vloggers talk directly to the viewer, in the style of PewDiePie, creating a more personal and direct connection - obviously a great benefit for traders who are trying to build more sustainable relationships with their customers.

Through deposits, you can broadcast live special events that not everyone has access to, such as a business conference or music concert. You can also post other content that your customers would like to see anyway, such as celebrity interviews.

10. Communication with Generation Z

Marketers in 2020 welcome the newest group of consumers - the so-called. Generation Z. Those born after 2000 are now 18 years old and start working en masse. Some sources even claim that Generation Z will account for 40% of all online users in 2020.

Among other things, marketing for Z-Generation means a sharp reversal in the way you format your content.

If you have targeted your ad to the Z-generation, we offer you a short list of features to keep in mind:

Authenticity - Growing up in the age of the Internet, Generation Z is very sensitive to authenticity and can smell fake for miles, so bet on transparency.

Confidentiality - Privacy is important to Generation Z, so you will earn more if you keep it confidential than using it against them.

Diversity - young people appreciate the diversity reflected in the videos and images they see online.

Sense of humor - The humor of the Z-generation is often described as "absurd", so if you can't figure it out, hire someone who understands it.

Marketers note similarities between Generation Z and Millennials, but as the market opens up to Generation Z over the next few years, expect the differences to become clearer.

Are you ready for digital marketing in 2020?

The upcoming trends in digital marketing in 2020 are paradoxical. Digital marketing seems to be moving towards more personal relationships in more targeted niches, but these connections rely heavily on automation and new technologies. At its core, digital marketing remains the same - people get what they want, when and where they want it - and technology in 2020 is simply opening new doors to provide it.