Everyone today, from clients to employers, be it people working from their urban offices or remote locations, has become tech-savvy. It is only fair that we change our marketing techniques for the better. Below are few of the most promising online marketing trends for 2020 which the marketing agencies swear by:  

1.   Influencer Marketing

With the range of products offered within a single niche today, social media marketing companies in India have started to look beyond celebrity endorsements. Social media has provided a platform to individual content creators, helping them produce content that appeals to a particular set of audience. The size of their audience online is a determining factor in the success of these content creators. These highly popular influencers engage an impressive number of viewers through their innovative posts and videos. Influencer marketing can generate many viable leads, especially from the younger generation who are predominant users of social media.

2.   Social Messaging Apps

Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, etc., are used in everyday life by millions around the world. With today’s marketing scene that allows businesses to thrive simultaneously, using these platforms to your advantage should be higher up on your list of marketing strategies; especially if your business revolves around e-commerce or online shopping.

Creating bots on an app like Facebook Messenger will allow you to reach your customers quicker. It can also provide pre-programmed information to your customers quickly, helping them conduct their purchases faster. Another great use of messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat is that they allow a smooth and secure gateway for making payments. Using these platforms’ ability to integrate with bots (Facebook Messenger has more than 300,000 developed bots) with no added optimization required from your side can help your business immensely. Concrete benefits that you can achieve include quicker registrations, collection of real contact data, and higher engagement rates.

3.   Social Commerce

Social commerce is when social media platforms are used to create a more personalized and targeted in-app shopping experience for its customers. Posts and advertisements on social media platforms redirect the potential customer to the business’ online store. Greater engagement on social media platforms results in higher search engine ranking and has proven to draw traffic to your website. Sharing business links through social media is an excellent way of increasing website traffic. Additionally, your business benefits from user engagement from likes, shares, comments, etc. 

Let’s take Bewakoof, for example. Bewakoof is a Mumbai-based lifestyle and fashion brand that makes trendy and distinctive clothing for the Indian youth. Bewakoof’s Instagram feed gives the user an experience of a digital shopping window. The images on their Instagram feed are aesthetically pleasing and clickable, encouraging potential customers to navigate to the website to quickly make a purchase.

4.   SERP Position Zero

Traffic gained through search engines like Google has long-term benefits, costs way less than other marketing strategies and ensures better lead generation. With more and more people using ad blockers today, ads might no longer be as efficient a marketing strategy as they once were. Because of this, SEO and SERP position zero cannot be overlooked.

Position Zero (P0) refers to the first Google search result that appears above others. This featured snippet provides answers directly on the page itself, sparing the user the need to click on any link. Moreover, position zero aims to take up as much space as possible, pushing other competitors further down the page. This ensures a higher click-through rate (CTR) for your brand. With a spike in Voice search engine optimization (VSEO) because of devices like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, conducting internet searches off-screen seems to be on the rise. Since the user can’t skim through the contents of the result page in person, the article displayed in position zero is usually the one that gets chosen.

5.   Interactive Content

Will a potential customer have a second look and click on a conventional, unconvincing, and non-interactive dry post or message on their feed? Doesn’t seem likely. Interactive content facilitates active participation instead of merely scrolling and also leads customers into the sales funnel at the same time. An interactive content experience efficiently converts passive audiences into active customers. These interactive contents include quizzes, infographics, polls, whitepapers, assessments and calculators. Such participatory content with a higher degree of user engagement makes the overall experience more interesting. A notable example is Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed creates highly interactive quizzes on a variety of topics that are so engaging, almost 96% of users complete them. With an engaging interactive content experience, your business will have the potential to go viral on social media.

6.   Omnichannel Marketing

More than 86% of the customers today switch between different channels. Given the magnitude of platforms offered today, no user wants to stay on one platform for any longer than necessary. Create your brand’s presence across multiple online and offline channels like website, app, social media, email, WhatsApp, offline stores, etc. The key is to create a unified shopping experience by seamlessly aligning channels. The word ‘seamless’ is essential to ensure random visitors have an experience that converts them to active customers.

7.   Augmented Analytics

Marketing communication and strategy can only be effective when you have a real-time view of your customer’s individual needs and behavior. Fortunately, this is the age of Big Data which analyses complex and mammoth datasets based on user interaction. Big Data is driven by algorithms drawing contextual messages based on content the user has interacted with. The biggest online players like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Spotify, and YouTube have tapped into this potential of Big Data successfully to flourish in today’s market. Created on the basis of user behavior, augmented analytics mixes the results with the profile of the user and presents optimized products and contents

8.  Voice Search

As ComScore rightly predicted, 50% of the searches in 2020 are voice searches. As discussed before, Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have now become pillars of voice search in the tech world. Utilizing voice search as a marketing tool can give an upper edge over text-based and traditional searches that require manual input as they take way less time than the latter. It is hence more convenient for users to resort to voice search in 2020. Another added advantage to voice search is its use of Big Data techniques that provide further insight into the profile and pattern of interaction of the users. This helps in optimizing your business’s marketing tools and content.

9.   Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is an automated way to buy and sell online advertisements in real-time using AI without the need of human negotiations. Automated purchase of ads facilitates in targeting the most viable audience for the brand. Real-time bidding is one of the major types of efficient programmatic advertising. This marketing tool optimizes your marketing campaign and identifies the most promising leads. Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and even Google ads can help you spread the word and reach your potential customers.

10.   Augmented Reality

Grab your customer’s fancies with the captivating tech miracle that is Augmented Reality (AR), the newest online marketing solution. AR allows customers to have personalized interactions with products and content by simply tapping into their mobile phones, alluring them to your brand. The life-like experience of online products using AR not only fascinates the customers but also solidifies their confidence in the product. An emerging marketing tool, AR is setting to revolutionize the concept of e-commerce. Capitalizing this technology will effectively boost sales while ensuring that your customers keep returning because of the unique user experience. 

A popular example of AR is the Pokémon Go app, which was launched around 2016 and captivated users with its unique gaming experience that used AR.

So, there you have it! These are the top 10 digital marketing trends you would be wise to take seriously to be able to stay in competition with your peers in 2020. It is important to remember that the keyword for digital marketing has always been ‘change’ and it’ll continue to be so in the coming years.

Which one of these digital marketing trends is your new favorite? Are there other trends that you know? Do share it with us in the comments section below!