The world today has become very competitive, and almost all businesses are in cutthroat competition with their rivals. The Internet has turned the world into a global village, and it has exposed people to a variety of other options. Naturally, companies selling their products and services have to make them accessible, desirable and stand out from others. For this purpose, they rely heavily on marketing. Marketing is all about connecting with your target audience at the right time. Since in today’s world, people tend to spend most of their time online, companies try to catch their attention on the Internet.
Digital marketing includes any marketing that is done online. Email marketing, social media blogging, or sending Whatsapp marketing messages all come under digital marketing. Ever since the number of Internet users has started growing, marketers have shifted their primary focus towards digital marketing and grooming themselves with value-adding digital marketing courses. Technology continues to grow at the speed of light, and every other day with the use of technology, new strategies of digital marketing comes forward.
Marketers have to stay on their toes and keep experimenting with their trends. Digital marketing has become a booming profession, and many universities are offering courses and degrees in it. Digital marketing agencies can be hired to get a product or service marketed. There is one thing about trends, and that is, they are always changing. Some may stay a little longer than others, but eventually, with time trends change. This era is fast-paced, and everything is moving way faster than before. Consumers’ interests and behaviors have become very hard to predict. They may appreciate a trend one day, and the next, they are already bored with it. Marketing trends that were successful in 2019 are no longer useful, and new trends have replaced them. Some of the digital marketing trends of 2020 are listed below.
Customer Experience
There is a saying in business that customer is always right. 2020 will be a year where customers will dominate, and hence the priority will be on providing the best customer experience. This year marketers are more focused on delivering such experience that will make them their loyal clients. It is about building a positive business culture and providing exceptional service. This includes testimonials of customers in the form of videos, voiceovers, or written text, which have been a loyal customer for years and are satisfied with the services.
Artificial Intelligence
This concept is still new to many businesses. However, it has been apparent that artificial intelligence will be at the heart of global industries. This can be used to analyze consumer behavior and help to collect data to estimate consumers’ inclination. Artificial Intelligence help in cutting staff cost as through it many tasks that were performed by a human can be done through it. With human hiring, there have been numerous issues and always a margin of error; however, artificial intelligence is programmed, and hence results are still according to the instructions. Chatbot, programmatic advertising both are based on artificial intelligence and are a great way to keep consumers engaged.
Visualization
Visuals have a stronger impact than voiceovers. When you watch a video or a picture, you are using more than one sense, which affects you much more profoundly. Visuals that include plain text and some doodling capture and hold the attention of viewers for a longer duration. It is because of the stimulation of the human brain, too, as our brain processes visual 60,000 faster than text. Besides, people tend to forget heard and read content, visible stays in memory. A video that has voice, visuals, and text all three components leaves its impact on the viewer.
Conversational Marketing
An ancient rule of marketing is that people always respond to an advertisement that is similar to their life experiences. In this digital era, everyone gets engaged in an online conversation. This conversational marketing has already doing rounds. Two people are shown having a random discussion through texts, and a service or product is marketed through their discussion. Some companies indulge in facilitating their users through texts and hence enhance their customer experience.
Personalization
A general trait of humans is that they feel happy when someone gives them value, and they feel appreciated. When people get an email in which their first names address them, they open it. The database is used to search users’ history, and then they make stories about users. When a user receives stories that are specifically for them, they feel appreciated. A different algorithm is used to access a user’s data history, but this strategy has proven to be a successful one.
Influencer Marketing
Word-of-mouth has been an ancient trend in marketing, and this year, it is making a strong comeback. Consumers use a digital platform to spread their experience of using a specific product or a particular service. A person may try a new product and upload a picture of it. His friends, trusting his words, would also be willing to try the same. Some brands pay celebrities to upload their products and reach all of the celebrities’ followers. This trend has gained massive popularity, and celebrities’ rates for uploading a single picture are sky-high. Blogging is also a type of influencer marketing, where bloggers help their followers by telling them how to use a particular product to promote a brand. Bloggers tend to use Instagram these days to promote themselves. They intend to get automatic likes for IG which helps to grow authentic followers.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a very vast subject, which is ever-evolving. There are no hard and fast rules here, and creativity is of utmost importance here. It is all about reaching a larger audience at the right time, through the Internet. However, some traditional trends, like customer experience and content marketing, are going to stay, but digital marketing has taken over these trends as well. They are also integrated with digital marketing and help businesses market their products in a better way. The main takeaway is to stay abreast of discoveries in the field of technology and design new and innovative trends. Internet users have proliferated in recent years, and the numbers in insanely increasing. Digital marketers need to realize that change is the law of life, and the use of the same old trends will not help their product, and they will stay behind in the competition. Digital marketing is a fast-growing and fast-evolving industry and those marketers who look ahead find success in their ventures.
