2020 Marketing Trends and Predictions

1. 2020 Marketing Trends and Predictions New Year is right around the corner… From a marketing standpoint, are you excited to know where we are heading into in 2020? Technology is evolving every day at a rapid pace. With the advancements in technology, customer expectations are also increasing. Marketing focuses on developing a healthy relationship with customers and satisfying their needs. As a marketer, it is vital for you to keep up with the emerging and continuing trends. What are these trends? How it is going to impact your marketing plans? Here is a list of top marketing trends and predictions for 2020. 1. Less dependency on Google Analytics In the website world, Google Analytics is a great tool that helps you to track and report site traffic. Everyone uses Google Analytics since it’s free. It takes a lot of hard work to analyse the site traffic and all the marketers don’t have that kind of time. Like Google analytics, with time, new updated tools and software are emerging, and Analytics has become a conventional method of data analysis. New marketing terms like upsells, down-sell, repeat purchases, and even checkout bumps are seen now. On top of that, there are many ways you can

2. generate revenue for your online business like partnerships, affiliate marketing, or webinars. This has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that have a connection to the central database and make better-informed decisions. This is a big push into business intelligence. Thus in 2020 companies will adopt more and more business intelligence solutions. Like Google Data studio to pass in all the data into one place and retrieve it at any time to get better insights of consumers and increase sales. This is a bit difficult to perform with Google Analytics. 2. Voice Search Optimization Voice search has become an essential part of our everyday lives. It will continue to be an influencing factor on brands creating content and marketing themselves online. As per the article by Rebecca Sentance published on eConsultancy, the number of voice searches in 2018 was close to 13%. That has increased to about 24% in 2019? In 2020, as per Comscore 50% of searches will be voice search. People are habitual to have a dialogue with their mobiles. They are using voice assistants Siri, Alexa, and Google Voice research for any question or information on the internet. As per research by PwC, 61% of consumers in the age group (25-64) have already used voice devices and intend to use more in the future. If you want to be in voice search results then your result has to be in position 0. If you are at position 0 and have the rich snippet then you will be the voice search result for a certain query. 3. Focus on Customer Experience Marketing beliefs have changed now. You need not convince people to buy any product. The growth of online content has empowered customers. As a result, they are learning about products and doing their own research. The focus has changed towards the customer experience. Provide a fabulous customer experience so that people will come back for more. When you pay attention to building a positive business culture and provide great service to your customers, marketing deals with itself.

3. Researchers predict that customer experience is an important factor that will overtake price and product as the top differentiator. These are the six customer experience trends you need to be aware of to beat your competition. 1.Up-to-date technology 2.Personalization 3.An easy mobile experience 4.Brand Image 5.Design Consider customer experience in every aspect of your marketing strategy so you can keep more customers and attract new ones. 4. Conversion through Personalization Personalization converts more of your visitors into customers. Thus personalization is the future of marketing as it grabs the attention of your customers. With the increased data collection and advanced technology, you can attract more customers and match their expectations. As per the Epsilons survey, 80% of consumers want to do business with a brand providing a personalized experience. As per Accenture, 75% of consumers are most likely to buy from a company that knows their name, sale history and recommends based on your preferences. For example: Let’s assume, you have searched some items in Amazon or Flipkart. Based on your recent searches, you can get suggestions for products and if you find it useful you can buy them. Thus personalize messages forge a real connection between the brand and the target market and boost conversions. To personalize your products as per buyer persona, showcase them on top of the websites or ads, and convert them. We will see rapid growth in personalized marketing in 2020. 5. Visuals in Content People prefer visual content more than the textual form. This is likely to continue in 2020. It’s far easier to remember visual information than plain text because human processes visuals were 60,000 times faster than text. This is seen by the growth of image-focused platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.

4. 62% of millennials are more interested in visual search than any other technology. That’s why companies are investing in visual search technology. Over the years there will be more demand for dynamic interactive images in all segments. Among new generation adults, visual social media reigns the top place. You tube is the most used platform among youngsters. More marketers will take advantage of dynamic, custom, branded imagery for their content. Thus visuals in the content are going to get more interesting in 2020. 6. AI-Based Automation AI is one of the fastest moving industries and its use has grown significantly in the last few years. Businesses have increased the use of AI-powered technology and automation for their marketing efforts. If you want to do well, you have to leverage AI and automation to power customer insights in 2020. Things that were inconceivable a few years back like voice search, smart assistants, chatbots, etc. are all possible with AI. Thus the need for AI applications has grown up and businesses will invest in technologies to help them speed up the data science process. Use the AI- technology to enhance your marketing team, increase their efficiency, and saving time but not replace the real people behind them. Because the human aspect of marketing is still more important today. AI does SEO for you, predict and drive revenue, personalize the content at the right time, send marketing messages to each contact. Predictive analysis coupled with AI helps brands to identify their audience and customers. So doesn’t delay anymore start using AI and automate the things for better marketing else you will be out of the competition. 7. SERP Position Zero and Featured Snippets SEO is the most important aspect of digital marketing and will continue to be so in 2020. With time, there is a major shift in the SEO industry. Now ranking in no. 1 is not the aim, instead, the top spot in SERP is now position zero, a featured snippet of text appearing above the search results.

5. So your focus should be to achieve this prime position. The advantage of this is users need not click the website for more information. It appears at the top of the page, before the organic listings. So put efforts to achieve position zero, you will have a huge advantage over your competitors. Many SEO companies may offer this service over the next year. 8. Live Video Live videos hook your viewers three times longer than pre-recorded videos. Live videos engage people instantly and thus increase the chances of getting your content noticed. It increases the interaction six times more than the traditional videos. The live video industry is expected to grow by $70 billion by 2021. Live videos offer your audiences an authentic experience (79%) and also give a personal touch to digital marketing campaigns (63%). Live videos attract viewers such that they don’t want to miss out on the event and join to see it live in real-time. Live videos grab the attention of viewers on social media like Facebook and Instagram. With the data shown above, you should include live streaming in your video marketing strategy in the coming years. Conclusion The topics discussed above are Marketing Trends and Predictions of 2020. Some of these are not so popular now, but expected to grow in 2020. Few trends anticipated are already true and few will come true after some time. Start acting today and plan your 2020 marketing strategy. A clear plan of your goals will help you to beat your competition. Remember that most of these trends rely on quality content. So quality content is the base of all marketing channels. If you want to drive traffic to your site, contact xenia consulting, a leading digital marketing agency in Pune. Share your views & thoughts on which of these marketing trends will come true in 2020.