A new year, a new batch of trends to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. From digital marketing methods to video content on the rise, these are the trends to incorporate into your brand’s marketing plan for 2020!
1. The Dynamic Duo of Artificial Intelligence and Marketing
Robots are officially taking over! Ok, not exactly. However, artificial intelligence is certainly helping businesses in all industries level up their marketing in useful ways. Here are some of the ways that AI can benefit your brand’s marketing strategy in 2020:
Predicting Customer Behavior
AI has the ability to use resources like the Propensity model to locate and identify prospective leads and customer characteristics. Based on this data, marketers can predict how their existing audiences will act based on certain marketing materials and actions. This data can also help build your customer target audience as well as flesh out major marketing campaign objects to ensure your sales and marketing teams are following the proper leads.
Selecting Content Topics
Finding the perfect blog post, campaign idea, or PR pitch topic doesn’t have to be a complicated process thanks to AI. You can review topics that have worked well in the past with intelligent tools to get to the bottom of what your audience connects with the most and what they will click on to read. Use AI to make data-driven content decisions across platforms.
Scheduling Email Marketing
AI has helped businesses across the globe with discovering the best time for email blast send-outs, determining a frequency plan for their email campaigns, and A/B testing for email subjects and CTAs. These are just a few similar ways AI has improved email marketing significantly and will continue to do so going into 2020.
2. Transparent Content and Operations
Transparency has become a huge buzz word over the past few months and certainly is picking up steam for 2020. Transparency is not only important for ensuring your content is GDPR compliant, but it also invites customers into your process. By sharing behind the scenes and incorporating your mission into your marketing, more and more customers will begin to resonate with your brand and become avid fans.
Share Your Mission
Zappos is a great example of transparency in business through their content marketing and social sharing revolving around their team and environmental responsibility mission. By opening up about these topics and their company, it became a huge engagement tool for connecting with their audience.
Transparent Influencers
This transparency practice should also overflow into your influencer marketing. Through sponsored posts and #ad Instagram stories, allowing your brand partners to be clear about the things they like about your products, company, etc. in a way that feels natural and organic to them can really help attract your true audience. Disclosure also helps audiences feel like their chosen influencer is being honest about their connections.
3. Agile Digital Marketing Methods
No longer are the days of planning your marketing strategy a year in advance. Trends are changing so significantly in a shorter period of time, that more and more brands are using shorter timelines for their marketing plans – and they have the right idea.
Keep Up With The Updates
One thing we can always count on is technology is constantly changing and evolving, so your marketing plan should too. Engagement techniques are always changing and your business needs to be in line with those updates as they come along.
Shift When Necessary
To keep up with the changing landscape of digital marketing, your business needs to adapt, communicate and change up whenever necessary. What worked in 2019, more than likely isn’t going to be effective in 2020. Or what campaigns and resources you implement in the first quarter of 2020 may need to be shifted come the end of February. Be prepared!
Don’t Be Afraid of Change
This area of your marketing plan is where you and your team need to be the most productive and up to date with what trends are being used and working for other brands or competitors. Don’t be left behind because you are too stuck in your old ways. Be comfortable with change if it allows your company to grow!
4. Influencer Marketing Becomes a Marketing Staple
If you haven’t already incorporated influencer marketing into your overall business plan, 2020 would be the year to get on this trend. More and more brands will be combining their influencer marketing efforts into their marketing ecosystem, creating a well-rounded plan.
Invest In The Right Tools
Utilizing the proper tools for your influencer campaigns is a must to make sure your ROI is there. For data-driven campaigns, Sideqik is a great resource to compile the results from your influencer campaign, along with making sure you are selecting the right partners for your brand.
Keep It Small
A shift you will begin to see in 2020 is the movement from the mega- and macro-influencers to the smaller micro- and nano-influencer. These types of influencers can still have a great impact on your campaigns with a smaller price tag on your budget.
5. Increase in Video Content
According to a survey by Visual Objects, YouTube is the most-visited website age 18 to 24, otherwise known as “Generation Z.” Gen Z turns to YouTube to learn new things, relieve stress and unwind along with entertain themselves. The YouTube community is broad and expansive in nature allowing for multiple niches and groups to be represented.
Gen Z Doesn’t Mind Brand Deals in Video
Along with those various groups, most popular YouTubers feature sponsored content or brand deals in their videos. Gen Z is familiar with this type of marketing and isn’t deterred from content that includes this. Keeping this in mind, if your ideal customer demographic is represented in Gen Z, you will want to consider including video content into your marketing plan or potentially partnering with YouTube influencers.
6. Leveled Up SEO
Along with any major topic in the digital marketing space, SEO is another major component that is seeing changes in 2020. Now more than ever should your company invest in SEO practices that can extend your searchability and online reach.
Use Keywords Often
Do your best to optimize your content with rich keywords and quality content. Page descriptions are also a must-have for your website. While SEO practices may be simple, anything you can do to get higher on those search engines, the better.
Plus with Google’s introduction of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT for short), keywords and snippets have more weight than ever for your website.
7. Extra Attention to Customer Retention
Keeping customers coming back and happy with your brand should be incorporated into your 2020 marketing plan as well. Retention will become a new focus for marketers with more brands turning to subscription models and niche products. Keeping repeat customers coming back for more will be the latest frontier to conquer for brand marketing teams.
Look For The Loyal Ones
Customers are the ones in control when it comes to your company’s success, so the more loyal of a customer you can build, the better! Utilizing multiple channel sources for customer connection will allow you to discover which platform is best for you. Don’t be afraid to leverage AI during this process.
A new year means new trends to try. Let 2020 be the best year yet for your digital marketing plan–by paying attention to the trends at hand and making them your own for your business success.
Ready to add influencer marketing to your 2020 marketing strategy? Chat with our demo team about how Sideqik can streamline the process and prove your ROI.
Nancy Rothman
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