Digital marketing is everywhere, and the Internet is flooded with content about SEO, digital ads, online customer journeys, and other elements of reaching an online audience. To that end, we reached out to nine digital marketing experts for their takes on the trends that will dominate 2020, and how brands can take advantage of them. Check out their thoughts below!
Q: What digital marketing trend should brands take advantage of in 2020? Why?
1. Provide quality, SEO-driven content.
SEO-driven content marketing will be a huge opportunity for brands who do it well. Based on the data we gathered from our campaigns in the last two years, there is tremendous opportunity to improve brand visibility through content that ranks well organically in search. The key is to improve content quality by answering consumers’ search intent and providing it in a format that helps them easily digest the information. This means using supporting video, images, and properly structuring the information pyramid in the content.
Igor Kholkin
CEO of Avidon Marketing Group
2. Align your content for an omnichannel experience.
Deliver a great omnichannel experience. Consumers are going to interact with your brand in any number of digital spaces, and you’re doing yourself and your brand a disservice if they aren’t aligned. The visual assets and messaging for your marketing campaigns should tell a cohesive story across all channels.
Alexa Nizam
Content Strategist at Lemonlight
3. Pay attention to changes in social media.
Digital marketers should be paying attention to the changes that are slowly coming to the social media space. With powerful monopolies now making decisions for what people can and can’t post on their sites, it’s becoming essential that decentralized networks take their place. This next decade is all about empowering and valuing the users.
Joel Comm
Author, Speaker, and Functional Futurist
4. Provide a fantastic customer experience.
More than any other digital marketing trend, 2020 will be the year of the customer. We’re seeing a massive shift in beliefs about what marketing actually is. It’s no longer about trying to convince people to buy from our company. Instead, the priority has moved towards providing fantastic customer experiences that will keep people coming back for more. In a sense, when you focus on building a positive business culture and providing great service, the marketing almost takes care of itself.
Michael Brenner
CEO at Marketing Insider, Author of Mean People Suck
5. Integrate your strategy and tactics.
We are a B2B technology marketing agency, and as we see more and more companies realize their digital transformation, their marketing and PR are becoming less and less lead in silos. Taking a thoughtfully integrated approach to strategy and tactics is reaping rewards for our clients. So for instance, instead of PR being the gatekeepers of executives’ online time and some corporate social media, marketing departments are getting smarter about including executive communications and employee advocacy as part of an integrated strategy that puts people at the heart of their message dissemination. In an age where trust in media, businesses, and corporations is at a low ebb, 2020 will see more people and not just pixels lead marketing efforts for companies wishing to stand out of the crowd.
Mel Carson
Founder and CEO at Delightful Communications
6. Engage authentically.
Using digital marketing tools to find your tribe and engage with them authentically is not necessarily a TREND – I see it as more of a long term method strategy to build thought leadership in your domain of experience. LinkedIn, for my brand and type of business, provides an amazing platform for sharing my ideas, knowledge, and experiences directly with my audience on a consistent basis.
In order for any of this to work, you have to be authentic and you have to truly be looking to give without expecting in return. The first question I ask writing, posting, sharing is, will this add value to my tribe?
The results are not instantaneous – it’s taken months and even years to nurture my tribe and continue to build my voice and our company’s voice. It takes dedication, creativity, and a willingness to put your true self/business out there for others to see. When you do this, you will find your niche and they will start coming to you for advice and help.
Aaron Levy
Founder and CEO at Raise The Bar, Author of Open, Honest, and Direct
7. Manage user data effectively.
Customer journey mapping, coupled with content will lead to growth & better conversions. Engagement on the right device & at the right time is going to be critical & challenging. After all, its user data that defines the future of marketing. Effectively managing this data would be the mission for most.
Tarun Kumar
Digital Marketing Manager at MoEngage
8. Programmatic advertising will be the future of media buying.
In 2020, a quarter of all digital spend will be programmatic. Programmatic advertising is basically using AI for media buying on digital channels such as social, OTT, mobile apps, video, etc. Digital media planners and buyers prefer programmatic since it puts control in the hands of the marketer by giving more transparency, helping them run targeted campaigns, counterfeiting ad-fraud and running ads in brand-safe environment, automating marketing campaigns, personalizing communication and measuring ROAS accurately.
Arti Prasad
Digital Strategist at MoEngage
9. Go deeper into topics.
A lot of content is still very weak. Beat your content competitors by going deeper into each topic. Before you publish, challenge yourself to answer one more related question, add another example, include a statistic or image or contributor quote. Going bigger correlates with doing better, according to the latest blogging statistics.
Andy Cresodina
Co-Founder and CMO at Orbit Media Studios