Digital marketing is constantly evolving, which means it’s a good idea for businesses and marketers to keep an eye on new trends that emerge and grow. That’s why we made a top five list of digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2020.
- Video Marketing
Videos are a very versatile way to reach audiences on various platforms, from posting them on social media channels to including them on your company’s website. Plus, videos can range from a number of topics, such as focusing on products or services, educating viewers or giving step-by-step instruction. There are many platforms that have even improved their video tools to make it easier for uploading and sharing with audiences. In fact, one- to three-minute videos are incredibly popular on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram and receive lots of quality engagement.
One thing to remember with videos, however, is adding captions to describe the video and narrate what is being said by individuals in the video. Around 85% of videos are actually viewed without sound, like when someone is browsing Facebook while at work or school. Because of this, viewers are more likely to watch a video that includes captions. Also, having text blocks within the video itself makes the content more dynamic for viewers.
- SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has yet to decrease in its importance throughout the past decade. If anything, SEO is more important now as more and more consumers are active online. There are many aspects of SEO that are also very cost effective for businesses. It doesn’t cost much, or anything at all, to improve or use keywords when optimizing online content like landing pages and blogs. Some very important things to keep in mind for 2020 are:
- Secure websites (https) are a must for consumer privacy and online safety.
- ‘Featured Snippets,’ the preview text that Google populates from high-ranking content at the top of a results page, are incredibly important for Google searches and ranking. Making content easy to search for and including quality long-tail keywords will help boost your content’s ranking by letting the algorithm read it and pull parts for the snippets.
- Optimizing websites for voice search is becoming a big deal as many consumers ask Alexa or Siri. This goes hand-in-hand with including alt-text and detailed descriptions on the back end, which will help your website be ADA-compliant as well.
- Mobile optimization is more important than ever, with most online searches taking place on a smartphone or tablet. Also, if the content isn’t easily accessible on other devices, the overall search engine ranking goes down.
- Quality content will always perform better than the quantity of content.
- Artificial intelligence is becoming the norm with search engine algorithms. As a way to get past black hat SEO techniques, search engines have updated and created new and advanced AI to find and separate high-quality content from low-quality spam.
- Social Media Marketing
Social media has become a major part of any digital marketing strategy. From sharing videos and product information to helping with e-commerce sales, having your company available on a platform is a must. However, the biggest thing to keep in mind when being on social media is whether or not you can reach your target audience on the platform. This is how you can determine the channels your business should be on, which is one of the most challenging parts of social media marketing.
Sharing content on social media is also the perfect way to repurpose well-performing content and drive more traffic to your website. Many channels are also set up to help with online shopping, and consumers can even buy products from a brand without ever leaving the platform.
Furthermore, being active on social media can improve your SEO efforts and help your ranking on Google. Plus, channels like Facebook are a major source of reviews for consumers and are a great way to interact with your audience.
- Consumer Interactions
A major component to having an online presence and growing online sales and awareness is how your company interacts with consumers. Engaging with your audience is always important, however, immediate action has now become expected. For instance, around 42% of consumers expect a response within five seconds, and about 36% of consumers expect a response within five minutes.
And beyond responding and communicating with customers, creating unique and personalized content for your audience encourages them to interact with your company. More and more consumers are also looking for brands that participate with the community to create a real and relatable experience, even though it’s not in-person.
Though, one of the biggest aspects to keep in mind is consumer privacy. This has been a very controversial topic that has made headlines over the past few years, and it goes past just keeping a customer’s payment information safe and secure. Consumers want to know they are being respected by businesses online and that companies aren’t sharing private information of any kind.
- E-Commerce
Online shopping has become increasingly popular in recent years, with more and more businesses giving deals and free shipping to increase online sales. Even with Black Friday deals, stores are promoting online shopping offers more than ever. For example, with the rise of shopping sites like Amazon and Wish, shoppers no longer have to deal with waiting in busy lines or fighting for products at a store. Online shopping provides retailers with more opportunities to sell items and consumers with a faster, more streamlined buying process. This is why optimizing your business’ e-commerce store is so important; incorporating SEO best practices and detailed product descriptions with photos are effective ways to help consumers find your products and ultimately increase your online sales.
2020 is sure to be a big year for digital marketing. There are many facets that will see continued growth and advancement that can easily change the marketing game. This is why it’s imperative for companies to stay on top of new trends. If your business needs help keeping up with the ever-changing online market, contact our knowledgeable team at 920-632-7648.
Sources:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/03/08/video-marketing-statistics
‘2019 State of Conversational Marketing’ by Drift
