Digital marketing is made up of a lot of moving parts – SEO, social media, marketing automation, PPC, and more. New technologies, techniques, and ever-changing Google and Facebook algorithms keep many digital marketing teams on their toes, including ours. As a professional this is the part of our job is to stay up-to-date on the upcoming trends. As we enter a new decade and tech continues to change at a rapid pace, here are the digital marketing trends we’re excited to see more of in future.
Upcoming trends of digital marketing-
(i) Voice search
Voice search is undoubtedly rising in popularity. By 2020 onwards, 50% of all queries will be voice-based according to ComScore. Amazon Alexa is simply named “Alexa” is a virtual assistant AI technology developed by Amazon, first used in the Amazon Echo smart speakers developed by Amazon Lab 126. It is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audio-books, and providing weather, traffic, sports, and other real-time information, such as news. Alexa can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation system. Users are able to extend the Alexa capabilities by installing "skills" (additional functionality developed by third-party vendors, in other settings more commonly called apps such as weather programs and audio features).
“Google Assistant” is an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices. Unlike the company's previous virtual assistant, Google Now, the Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations. Assistant initially debuted in May 2016 as part of Google's messaging app Allo, and its voice-activated speaker Google Home. After a period of exclusivity on the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, it began to be deployed on other Android devices in February 2017, including third-party smartphones and Android Wear (now Wear OS), and was released as a standalone app on the iOS operating system in May 2017.
(ii) Shoppable Posts
Up to now, you know that social media is a huge part of online marketing. What you might not realize is just how many people shop on social. 60% of Instagram users say they discover new products on Instagram and in a survey of over 4,000 Pinterest users, a whopping 70% said Pinterest helps them find new products.
These platforms have taken note of the fact that people are using them to shop and have made it easier for merchants to sell via social media. Over the past few years, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook all have ways for e-commerce stores to create shoppable posts using a native integration that makes it easy to tag and shop products directly in your posts. For online retailers, this is a great way to drive traffic to product pages.
By utilizing social commerce, you’re reaching new customers, reducing the barriers to purchasing, and dramatically shortening the sales funnel. While shoppable posts have been on the rise for the past few years, we expect them to become the norm in 2020.
(iii) Immersive Tech like AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have exploded in popularity over the past few years and are quickly becoming one of the top marketing trends. In the year (2020), it is estimated that approximately 100 million people will use AR to shop online and in-store.
AR is already being used by major companies like IKEA. Using their app and AR, customers can see what a piece of furniture would look like in their space before purchasing (or even setting foot in a store).
(iv) Interactive Content
91% of buyers are looking for more interactive content online and in 2020, content marketing will shift its focus to give the people what they want. Shoppable posts, AR/VR, 360-degree video, quizzes, and polls are just a few examples of interactive content. Interactive content will be one of top marketing trends for a few reasons:
The content is new and original, helping it cut through noise.
It gives visitors a reason to stay on the page.
It’s exceptionally shareable (almost everyone has seen someone share results of a silly quiz like “What kind of cheese are you?”).
The share ability increases your brand awareness.
Interaction is the first choice or people.
(v) Smart bidding in Google advertisements
Automation is nothing new in the digital marketing world, but thanks to recent Google Ads updates announced at Google Marketing Live, we expect automation and smart bidding to become the norm for many PPC account managers.
Google Ads relies on machine learning to optimize your bids so you get the most value out of every conversion. The improvements announced at Google Marketing Live make optimizing your bids better than ever with the ability to choose conversion actions at the campaign level, the ability to optimize your bids across several campaigns with a set of desired conversion actions, and the ability to set bids to automatically change when a sale starts or stops. These improvements will help you maximize your conversions.
(vi) Personalization
Consumers are tired of seeing generic ads that may not have anything to do with them. We change the channel when commercials are on (that’s if we still have cable) and pay extra to music streaming services to avoid ads. Traditional advertising and generic commercials are increasingly ineffective. That’s where personalized advertising comes in.
90% of 1,000 people surveyed said they find personalization appealing and 80% said they’re more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences. Customers are beginning to expect personalization and there are a lot of ways for digital marketers to deliver.
Segmented email lists are one of the most popular ways to personalize your online marketing efforts. In fact, personalized email blasts perform three times better than generic emails sent to your entire list. Most email marketing tools, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, and marketing automation tools, like HubSpot and Pardot, make list segmentation simple and easy.
(vii) Social Messaging Apps
Social media apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and WhatsApp aren’t just for messaging friends anymore. These apps are becoming popular ways for businesses to communicate with their customers. In fact, Facebook Messenger sees over 10 billion messages exchanged between individuals and businesses each month. Messaging apps are popular for businesses because customers find it convenient to have direct contact with companies. In addition, it allows for extremely personalized marketing, which we already know people love. Here are a few ways businesses are using messaging apps:
Establishing contact and building relationships.
Educating customers about their business/products.
Boosting sales.
Inviting people to events.
Regaining potential customers.
Providing customer support.
(viii) Visual Search
Visual Search is just what it sounds like – using images instead of keywords in search engines. Already used in beta by Pinterest and Google, a visual search will allow users to take a picture of something they would like to search for (to buy or find similar items) and the uploaded picture will be used to find results. As this technology only grows and improves, even Pinterest’s CEO Ben Silbermann has predicted that “the future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords.”
(ix) Stories on Social Media
When Snapchat was released in 2017, it was the first social media platform to conceive of the “story” – short and sweet picture or video messages that disappear after 24 hours. As the concept of the story has spread in popularity over other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the story is no longer just a phenomenon for millennials. Now companies, large and small, are using them to increase brand awareness and take the opportunity to interact with a younger audience. Try stories on Snapchat, Instagram, and even Facebook.
(x) Employee Engagement
Giving your audience an efficient and courteous customer experience has to start from the ground up – with your employees. As the face of your company, your employees need to be not only knowledgeable of your brand but engaged and happy to be part of it. By engaging them in your brand, you ensure that they want your business to succeed just as much as you do.
Current scenario of digital marketing-
(a) Smarter Chat
Chatbots have been rising in the few recent years and still persists in 2019. According to Grand View Research, 45% of end users prefer to use Chatbots as a major means of communication in customer service.
Chatbots play a critical role in improving the customer experience and allow marketers to better engage with their audience - without really doing much. They offer real-time assistance to the user, dedicated support and proactive interactions where they ask questions to understand the real problem.
For e.g, a visitor landing on a website is contacted via chatbot and asked to request assistance or get more information about the product. After selecting the first option, he will be referred to a representative for help and if he selects the second option, he will be asked a series of automated questions or redirected to their blog or FAQ page.
Another rising trend is Whatsapp Business Messaging, which has become one of the most used messaging apps worldwide according to Statista. Besides, it’s no longer restricted to personal usage; businesses are using the application on a daily basis for their daily activities.
Messaging traffic is expected to double in 2019. This is driven by over the top messaging Over-The-Top or OTT apps, going up from 31 trillion messages in 2014 to over 100 trillion in 2019 globally.
(b) Live Video
Thanks to Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, live content is the fastest growing segment of internet video traffic due to the remarkable waves in the recent 3 years.
Live streaming content is effective because it’s free; takes a short time to produce while it offers a real-time user engagement, and viewers use your content based on your time not theirs.
Moreover, it has the ability to generate greater impressions than posts published in the newsfeed, especially if users choose to post them to their stories.
Live streaming content allows marketers to engage with their leads in a quickest way possible, improve their relationship with followers, reach a broader audience and boost their social channels traffic.
(c) Position “Zero” in SERP
The position #1 is no longer the top spot in search results. Position Zero or “#0” position, the featured snippet of text that appears before the search results, is now the top spot and it’s highly coveted. The featured snippet is called position zero because it is displayed at the top of the SERPs, just after the ads, making it the top organic result.
Not every search result has a featured snippet, but when they do, it is designed to answer a user’s question. Because of this, featured snippets most commonly show up in response to queries that include question terms such as who, what, where, when, why, how, etc. Depending on the type of question, there are three different types of featured snippet formats that can show up in position zero:
Paragraph featured snippets: An answer in the paragraphed form.
List featured snippets: A numbered or bulleted list.
Table featured snippets: Answer conveyed in the form of a table.
(d) Influencer Marketing
Everything about marketing used to be magic, from concept and strategy to creation and implementation. Sometimes back, it was difficult to find a valuable vendor who could produce and put into service high-quality advertising. Now, it’s never been cheaper, simpler, or more readily available.
To put it plainly- your magic is shrinking. With demand for attention on the rise and overwhelming product options on the market, consumers are beginning to lose sight of who they can trust.
Influencer marketing is fundamentally an approach that companies can get people who already have a social presence talking about their product. It’s also a term for those who start their own business (often in the digital space) and continue to show leadership and authority on a personal level beyond the products they create.
Below are the tips to be a good influencer marketer:
Engagement and get in touch with. Influencers are naturally great in engaging and touch with their audiences, sometimes through a single channel but more likely through multiple channels.
Power, Authority or Influence. Influencers are well known for being the best in their field, so if they genuinely want to promote your product, it’s a good gamble that people will definitely want to take.
Need to know how to close: Most influencers are real entrepreneurs and are great at establishing a firm hold on people at all phases of the buyer journey- including the conversion scenario of purchasing. They’re great at convincing people, and that’s a good choice of a person to have on your side when it comes to selling products!
(e) Page speed
It means how quickly users can see and interact with the content served by your website. From 2018, Google reversed its search directions by switching to the mobile-first index, i.e. it uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. It is now expected from the mobile version of a site to load as fast, if not faster, than switch to desktop version. That makes mobile SEO crucial if you want to be sure that you’re visible to your audience anywhere and anytime. Precisely saying, your website speed has a major impact on SEO rankings on desktop and mobile, along with paid ads on Google, impacting quality score, and, most importantly, overall (UX) user experience and conversion.
Website speed and SEO ranking- Mobile first index searching emphasizes direct impact on site speed on client web SEO ranking and organic traffic. Approximately 3 or 4 seconds or less as reasonable page loading time is expected. Of course, it depends on the type of industry you are in. But still once you exceed the 3 or 4 second load time, we start to see less optimal rankings as well as poor user experience. So, you need to be aware of the loading time of your website for better search ranking.
User experience and conversion impacts from Site speed- User experience affects Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid search, & paid social, that’s why site speed plays direct and crucial role at user experience. Decisively slow website will have low conversion rate, high bounce rate and a low number of page views per visit:
Conversion rate is defined by the number of visitors to a website and showing interest as you desire i.e. make a purchase, clicking a contact number, submitting a form, etc.
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who navigate to away from the site after viewing only one page.
A page view is a visit to a page on your website.
Website speed and Paid Search- When strategizing Pay per Click (PPC) and site speed, it comes along to balancing the most affordable and cost-effective rate for your keyword bids. The quality score determines your CPC (cost per click) and where you show up on the SERP (search engine results page). A low site speed or quality score makes it hard to rank in the top two positions on the SERP and depending on how competitive the keywords are; you may not even show up in any of the top spots. With a low enough quality score, your ads won’t show up at all. So, there you have it, quality score impacts on PPC in a big way.
Site speed and Social media Ads- Almost like Google, Facebook is also in favour of higher site speed when prioritizing advertisements. Facebook tries to display the best results to suit your interests. In August 2017, Facebook had an algorithmic change that prioritized user experience, factoring in site speed. As discussed, faster site speed equals better user experience. Facebook announced that your ads would now either be prioritized, or not, based on speed and user experience.
(f) User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content (UGC), is any content that has been created and published by unpaid contributors. Often, those contributors are fans who promote a brand instead of the brand promoting themselves. UCG can be content of any type, including blogs, website pages, images, social media posts, and testimonials. Content marketers are increasingly incorporating UGC campaigns as part of their content marketing strategy due to the benefits UGC provides. These include: increasing social followers, expanding social reach, increasing sales, boosting authenticity/credibility, building SEO value, building customer trust, strengthening brand/customer relationships.