Change is inevitable. Progress is optional. — Tony Robbins
Digital marketers are aware that change in this field is constant and rapid. Having a clear marketing plan with specific goals is critical to gain an edge over your competition in 2020. How can you do this? By expanding your understanding and implementation of existing and upcoming digital marketing trends. Clearly, technology and visualization will continue to advance at a steady clip, so incorporating these into your strategies is a must. At the same time, be sure to continue building your content and more personalized (and humanized) experiences that consumers are demanding. Below is a closer look at the top 5 digital marketing strategies in 2020.
Content Remains King
It’s no surprise that content will continue to dominate digital marketing. Nearly every other marketing trend and strategy relies in some way on having a solid base of content that is relevant, educational, and authoritative. A steady stream of new, quality content is essential for inbound marketing as it allows businesses to gain access to leads through search engine optimization (SEO) and then build audience trust. Of course, reviewing and updating old content is also a key strategy and can be an easy win. As highly ranked web page search hits decay, refreshing these pages with simple updates or tweaks, or simply changing the date of articles, can breathe new life into them. Both old and new content comes in a variety of formats including blogs, videos, infographics, white papers, Ebooks, social media posts, and much more.
Customer Experience (CX)
Customer experience (CX) has become one of the hottest buzzwords in marketing. Around 7 in 10 consumers surveyed believe that CX is a significant factor in making purchasing decisions; however, only around 5 in 10 say that most companies actually provide a great experience. Can you say “opportunity”? Providing fantastic customer service keeps people coming back for more. This involves building a positive business culture, with satisfied, friendly, and well-trained employees. From a digital marketing perspective, it involves the ease of website navigation, optimization for mobile devices, interactive features like videos or chat, personalization, and much more.
Personalization
Consumers are bombarded with marketing messages day in and day out. As a result, they begin tuning out these messages, which means traditional, impersonal advertising has become less effective. With a personalization strategy (which has become a reality due to due advancements in technology), companies are no longer limited to pulling their leads’ first names into eNewsletters. Instead, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) that takes into account data collected from websites or social media platforms, companies can hyper-personalize content or product/service recommendations.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) & Featured Snippets
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains a highly relevant aspect of digital marketing. However, we are seeing a large-scale shift in consumer behavior, particularly with the growth of mobile and voice search. People are on the move and searching faster than ever for information. With featured snippets providing just enough information, there’s often no longer the need to click through to a website. So, while the “position zero” (top result on a search engine results pages) is still highly coveted, optimizing the content showing in the snippets will impact the click-through rate to your webpages.
Voice Search
With the advent and proliferation of Google Voice, Alexa, smart speakers and other smart devices, voice search is here to stay and will make a major impact on content and digital marketing. For most of us, voice search currently feels quite primitive. For instance, we may be able to ask Alexa to play a song, find a restaurant, tell us the time, or talk about the weather. This is changing. It will quickly become more sophisticated and transactional. Some marketers are instructing customers on how to search for them using voice. For instance, “Ask Alexa to turn on HBO GO.” Forward-thinking companies will optimize content for voice search, which uses more conversational queries.
Visualization and Visual Search Technology
Even with the explosion of voice search, visualization remains highly relevant, so don’t neglect visual content, meaning images, infographics, and — of course — video (including live/streaming video). These media relay information quickly and can help your message be absorbed more easily, with video by far the most popular channel for consumers to learn about products and services. A technology to watch in 2020 is visual search, which companies like Google and Pinterest are now heavily investing in.
Digital marketing strategies are continually evolving. Smarty Pantz Marketing uses these and other strategies to help grow our clients’ businesses because ultimately it’s all about results and increasing revenue. If you have any questions, call us at (954) 406-7160 or visit www.smartypantzmarketing.com. Please also follow us on Facebook.
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Sources:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/01/07/best-marketing-strategies
https://marketinginsidergroup.com/marketing-strategy/2020-marketing-trends-you-need-to-know/
https://www.singlegrain.com/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-trends-2020/
