Trends in the digital marketing space change each year. The martech landscape in particular is evolving at a rapid pace. CMOs are betting up to 25% of their overall marketing spend on martech. Read on to know the ten most impactful digital marketing trends of 2020, and how marketers should look to use their marketing technology stack for maximum impact.
1. Predictive Analytics
Today, customers have access to information about products and services from different channels and they use this information before they make purchasing decisions. Many organizations are thus using this intent data to predict buying patterns and devise marketing strategies based on that. For example, what are the best channels to deliver messages, what type of messages should be sent to the target audience, the sequence in which they should be sent and so on. Through data-driven predictive analysis, for instance:
- Hotels can analyse historical trends and predict what days of the year are likely to see a surge in bookings and offer their booking rates, seasonal discounts and so on accordingly
- Retail giants, like Amazon, are able to find out customer preferences and send targeted product recommendations via email, PPC ads and text messages, thereby enhancing the CX
GlobeNewswire has predicted the analytics market size to reach $10.95B in 2022.
2. Bidding for Paid Advertisements
Ad bidding is not new in the digital marketing industry, but 2020 is sure to make it more popular. According to Emarketer, Google and Facebook topped the chart in 2019, and the trend promises to continue this year as well. This year, Google AdWords and Facebook Ads have begun to get more creative with introducing new options, focusing on local and small businesses. They’re offering event based ad support as well. For example, Google recently announced a smarter automated bidding. This is powered by machine learning and the algorithm helps to optimize the chosen performance targets. Automated bidding includes various bid strategies like targeted CPA, targeted ROAS, enhanced CPC, and others.
3. Changes in Online Shopping Experience
Shopping experience online is already seeing a lot of changes in 2020.
- More and more brands have begun to use social media for posting shopping advertisements. This will only grow as integrations between third party apps and ecommerce marketing technologies keep happening. For example, according to Instagram, there are 1 billion active users globally and of this 90% are following shopping brands.
- The nature of shopping posts is also seeing a change – it is now becoming more interactive in nature. This brings down the bounce rates and reduces the sales funnel as well since it provides customers with a more streamlined and smooth shopping experience online.
- Brands are now also using newer messaging channels to reach out to potential customers. For example, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat.
- Voice search is no longer just restricted to speakers like Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana. Brands that sell their products online have started to use voice search more actively. They are turning their catalogues into voice-enabled ones. This is making placing of orders by customers an easier experience as only voice commands are needed.
4. SEO-driven Data
The aim of a search engine is to help users find the information that they are looking for easily. Due to this, Google has been focussing on ‘visual search’ snippets across all their platforms and devices. This is helping users to get their required information faster and also in assessing which website to visit accordingly. This has brought down the bounce rates. Adoption of this has also become simplified and can be done even without the technical knowledge due to the coming in of new plugins for main-stream platforms like WordPress and Shopify.
5. Interactive Emails
Changes are happening in the way emails are being presented to the recipients. 2020 will make emails be more interactive. For example, the usage of Google AMP for Gmail. Interactive emails tempt the users to take more spontaneous actions as it does not waste any time in taking them to another webpage where they can act. Some types of interactive content in emails are surveys, polls, CTA buttons, quizzes, and add-to-calendar events.
6. Templated Campaigns
When a marketing campaign is launched, it involves a number of steps which makes the work time consuming. Thus marketers have begun to use templated campaigns. For example, to run a paid ad campaign there needs to be a landing page, a form, a lead data platform, data consolidation and then its analysis. Instead if consolidated tools are used, the work time and the cost gets reduced, not to mention the fact that content also becomes more relevant. A study by Forrester has predicted that the market for marketing automation is likely to touch $25 billion by 2023.
7. Geo-fencing
Geo-fencing is not a new concept, but 2020 will see it becoming an important trend. In fact, the market is expected to become around $2.4 billion by 2023. Its popularity is due to the fact that it can target customers at their location in real-time. For example:
- The moment customers enter a certain area, they can be sent push notifications about the restaurants in the vicinity.
- Geo-fencing has been very successfully used by a US gas company to mark their gas stations on a map throughout California. Thus, whenever a driver nears one of their gas stations, their logo pops up on the map.
8. Chatbots
Conversational marketing is now popular with customers. This means that when the consumers have a query, they want immediate responses to it. This is why chatbots, which have become popular in the past few years, will remain so in 2020 as well. It helps businesses as it helps to communicate with customers in real-time at all hours of the day. It thus helps to engage with customers more, thus enhancing their CX. Customers, too, prefer chatbots due to the following reasons:
- They respond immediately
- They reply 24/7
- The answers are prompt and accurate
- They don’t lose patience with repeated queries
9. Influencer Marketing
Brands have now begun to use influencers to help grow their brand image. This is a type of word-of-mouth where leaders talk positively about the brand and its products to all those who follow them. This is done on social media sites through blogs, videos, tweets, pictures, and others. Once the word spreads, the customer base of the brand naturally grows.
10. Push Notifications
Push notifications are on the rise this year. Studies have shown that twice the number of people sign up for web push notifications as compared to a newsletter. Many brands have begun to use personalized push notifications which are triggered by behavior. This helps to re-engage those who initially showed interest in the product but then did not revert. These notifications also come with CTAs and images so as to increase the chances of conversion.
Looking Ahead
We are living in a world where consumers’ interests change very quickly and businesses are thus using new digital marketing methods to attract them in new and creative ways everyday. To remain competitive, there is no option but to keep up with the changing trends as many traditional approaches will become obsolete. Use these top 10 trends of 2020 in your business, and you are sure to be a winner in this race.
