Marketing ideas

12 Digital Marketing Trends Shaping Business In 2020 (with case studies)

The year 2020 is full of technological advancements – Artificial Intelligence, data-driven marketing, and much more. With new tools and technologies emerging every year, marketers can choose from a plethora of options across digital marketing to connect to a new audience and promote their products.

According to Emarketer’s survey, by 2020 digital ad spending will be 50% of total advertising. The statistics prove that there is a shift from the traditional medium of marketing to digital platforms.

In this digital era, it is easier to share information and connect than before with new tools and technologies every year. The digital transformation is affecting every business and marketers and to keep up with the competition, you have to keep up with the trends. 

In this article, we have compiled the 12 most important digital marketing trends in 2020. Most companies are capitalizing on the trends and reaping the benefits with the right strategy and planning.

• Chatbots: Hiring an individual to communicate with your visitors can be expensive but chatbots save costs by answering questions quickly in real-time day or night. Here are some key findings:
  • By 2022, chatbots will help businesses save $8 billion annually.
  • By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed by chatbots.
  • Top benefits of chatbots are 24-hour service (64%), instant responses(55%) and answers to simple questions(55%).

Many renowned brands like Whole Foods Market, Staples, Mastercard, Pizza Hut and more are using chatbot technology successfully. 

For example, you will get many makeup tutorials, product reviews on Kik if you chat with Sephora.

• Use of Private Messaging Apps: Companies are now shifting their focus on the integration of private messaging apps to improve overall customer experience. In 2018, we saw the launch of Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business API which provided businesses with tools to deliver customer support. Many companies are planning to monetize messaging apps. For example, Facebook will soon monetize WhatsApp with ads in the ‘Status’ tab followed by Messenger Ads.

• Content Marketing rules SEO: Google rolled out some major updates to its search algorithm. Google’s BERT update is designed to understand the natural language people use in their queries. What does BERT mean for you? If your website is poorly written or is unclear, your rankings may decrease. Therefore your content should be well-researched, clear and organized in a logical manner. In fact, statistics prove Content Marketing rakes in conversion rates 6x higher than other methods – Content Marketing Institute. This proves ‘Content is King’.

• Personalization: Say Good-Bye to generic ads. If you want to stand out amidst the competition, you need to personalize your marketing – personalized email, content, products and more. It is the future of digital marketing. Here are a few facts:
  • 90 % of online advertisers will start using personalization by 2020 – Gartner
  • 80 % are more likely to do business with a company if they offer personalized experiences 
  • Personalized, triggered emails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast emails.- Email Monks

It is an ultimate tool for increasing conversions and so marketers are leveraging it to improve their marketing efforts. The primary reason for personalized marketing is to reach out to your target audience by collecting their user data from surveys or studies and create more relevant campaigns based on their buying habits and behavior. Let us study the example of Cadbury who created a personalized video campaign based that matches Dairy Milk flavor based on their Facebook profile data. The campaign generated 65% click-through rates and a 33.6% conversion rate.

• Voice Search: ‘Hey Alexa, where is the Thai restaurant around me?” Siri and Alexa are now household names and positively responded by consumers. Over time, you will see more people using smartphones with voice assistants. Here’s why:
  • By 2020, 50% of searches will be voice searches 
  • By 2020, 30% of all searches will be without a screen.
  • By 2022, voice shopping is set to jump to $40billion.

• The goal of Voice engine optimization (VEO) is to optimize your content to be on the top results in the user’s query. Therefore, use longer keywords and complete sentences, set a conversational tone and provide structured content. VEO is quickly advancing, so now the choice is up to you whether to join early adopters or be left behind.

• Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: By 2020, many are going to adapt to AI. It is the future of the digital industry. As the name suggests, it refers to robots or machines who can work like humans. Chatbots and Voice assistants are examples of AI. For example, Microsoft and Uber use Knightscope K5 robots to ‘patrol parking’, and prevent crime. The robots can read license plates, report activities and collect data to report to their owners.

• Social eCommerce: Social media is not only to chat, browse, and share but a complete marketplace with native shoppable features. Instagram takes lead-charge. 80% of young shoppers make impulsive buying decisions online which is why social eCommerce has vast potential. 70% of enthusiasts explore Instagram for trendy items. Brands have experienced success with Instagram’s shopping features and an increase in revenue. Instagram stories are equally popular with consumers with a high level of engagement. Even Pinterest allows a variety of shopping features and Snapchat enables select accounts to open a store within the app. Tik-Tok has added a new feature where it permits its users to add links to e-commerce sites to their profile biography.  If you haven’t started then now it is a good time to start and make a mark for yourself.

• Video Content: A high resolution and quality video can catch eyeballs quickly. Here the numbers are speaking:
  • 87% use video as their marketing tool.
  • 83% of corporations claim that video content has increased their conversions.
  • 65% of users visit the site and 39% call the seller after viewing.

Video content is the most effective tool to engage directly with the customers and attracts attention, increase web traffic, convert into leads and improve customer experience.

Some video marketing trends are:

• Live Video: Popular with a large number of businesses who use it for interviews, personalized stories, product demo or behind the scene glimpses.
• 1:1 Videos: Marketers create more personalized video messages rather than phone calls or emails.
• Video SEO: Youtube videos and other videos appear in the SERPS and so video optimization is becoming important.
• 360-degree video: This interactive marketing trend is on the rise. Take a look at the HongKong Airlines video

• Transparency: Research indicates that consumers demand easy to understand and transparent information from brands. 94% of consumers are likely to be loyal to the brand if they offer transparency. The enforcement of GDPR policy in 2018 ensured companies handle data privacy and transparency and if not complied can have a negative impact on the business.

• Augmented Reality v/s Virtual Reality: By 2022, 70% will be experimenting with immersive technologies – Gartner. VR gets everyone excited with its sci-fi ideas and noises, AR is much applicable from a marketing point of view.  AR outperforms VR in market share. More companies are adopting technology to increase sales and customer experience.

Let’s understand the example of IKEA. It has its AR app ‘IKEA Place’ which allows you to test IKEA’s furniture virtually by taking a picture of your room on the phone.

• Headless Commerce: A new term coined in 2019 and Heads-on Shopping is the face of Headless Commerce. This empowers differently-abled people to make their purchases by simply nodding their heads. Using the latest iPhone X’s neural engine and AR kit, it converts the signals received from the front camera into 3D facing. Select, Add to the cart and Pay. Simple! Technically it involves the separation of front-end and backend of your site for uninterrupted content delivery, personalization, and modifications.

• Influencer Marketing: The most popular word of mouth marketing that focuses on influencers like celebrities,  Instagram or YouTube personalities. Influencer Marketing is more relatable than corporate advertising.
  • 63 % of consumers trust influencers’ opinions more than the brand than what the brand says about themselves.
  • 58 % of consumers have bought a product in the past six months on influencer’s recommendations.

AI is affecting Influencer marketing as it is in the process to identify with the right influencer who has better engagement, few fake followers and can give good ROI. it is influencing influencers marketing in the following ways:

Wrapping up

2020, year of technological advancements -AI-powered devices, content revolution, audio, and visual forms. If you are operating a business, you should know the digital marketing trends and embrace the new tools and technologies to get an edge over competitors. Start personalizing your products, use social media to answer questions, implement voice and video search and maintain transparency. Change is an integral part of digital marketing and the only constant.