2020 promises to offer exciting new developments in the field of digital marketing. Many trends will be extensions or outgrowths of current advertising strategies. Here are 7 key trends to keep your eye on:
1. Shoppable Social Media
Social media posts that are linked to company-specific landing pages are already a hot trend in digital marketing, and will only get hotter in the years to come. This marketing strategy leverages the popularity of social media platforms into a greatly shortened buyer's funnel, which transitions from brand awareness to the purchase stage almost instantaneously.
2. VR and AR
Virtual reality and augmented reality can grab consumers' attention like no other experience. Look out for more companies to generate content around virtual tours, 3D panoramas, and half-real, half-simulated digital environments.
3. Conversational Marketing
Many companies are already implementing some combination of chatbots and live agents to fulfill customer needs, whether simple, automatable requests or more complicated queries. Conversational marketing will continue to grow more sophisticated as companies seek ways to convert site visitors into valued customers.
4. Community Marketing
Digital marketers are well aware of the power of Facebook and other social media sites to foster meaningful discourse and build relationships. Community marketing takes advantage of this effect, and helps businesses to establish an engaging, non-intrusive brand presence within social groups. It's hard to get much more organic than community marketing!
5. Continued Growth of Video
Video marketing offers engagement and conversion rates that leave other forms of advertising in the dust. You can be assured that marketers will continue to leverage visual ads to grow their consumer base across all platforms.
6. Continued Growth of Voice Search
Some experts predict that by the end of 2020 at least half of all Google search queries will be voice searches. Companies will continue to develop voice search-friendly content, through the use of conversational, long-tail keywords, and FAQ-style articles, to name just a couple of tactics.
7. Experience Marketing
More and more consumers are searching out unique and appealing experiences, both online and off. In fact, many consumers cite experience as a more important factor in their purchase decisions than cost or quality! Expect to see companies take further strides in crafting a holistic experience marketing strategy to capture consumer attention, woo new consumers to their side, and strengthen the loyalty of current customers by giving them something to remember (and brag to their social networks about).
If you'd like to learn more about how to leverage these digital marketing trends to your company's advantage, drop us a line today!