Marketing Trends 2020

It’s finally 2020  and we’re very excited for the amazing changes that this new century has to offer. The year has begun just as fast as 2019 ended, and we’re still reeling off some of last year’s victories! Although the year is already speeding along, we took some time looking at what great changes this new year, nay century has in store for the marketing sphere.

 

The conversation has just began

Conversation is all around us- especially when platforms like Facebook and Hello Peter are specially optimised to facilitate them. Consumer conversation will definitely become the focus of all marketing efforts- whether it’s through AI or dialogue driven commentary.

This provides brands with the opportunity to create a two-way conversation with their consumers. Creating a brilliant conversational market approach is truly the core of any inbound marketing strategy!  This doesn’t mean you should halt any traditional or paid media, it simply suggests that you should slightly change the way you approach your objectives.

The personal touch- the one person segment

The marketing industry was turned on its head during the 2010’s. Never before have we been able to access an in-depth understanding of not only our target audience, but the individual characteristics of each person’s behavioural patterns. Big data has played a ginormous part in making this segmentation possible. Long gone are the days where personalisation only meant first name customisation.

Big data gives us the opportunity to perfectly time and nurture meaningful dialogue between a brand and its specific consumer base.  80% of consumers state that they will rather spend their money on a brand who provides them with a specialised experience. 79% of consumers even reported that they will only engage with an offer if its been personalised due to a previous touchpoint with a brand.

 

 

The 2020 consumers are rejecting the generic corresponding and marketing message approach- they want highly tailored touchpoints that makes them feel like they are the most important part of the business cycle. This means that no matter how large or minute a brand, there’s no way of escaping this one-segment approach. Email personalisation is one of the key market areas where this factor creeps in. Personalised emails deliver up to 6 times higher transaction rates than its unpersonalised-counterparts, and this is one of the top trends in marketing for 2020.

 

“Okay Google”

A few years back, talking to your phone and asking them to search something would definitely have made some heads turn. Thanks to amazing work from thought leaders, consumers have been presented with a new form of searching for information- the virtual assistant.

With a whopping 119 million smart speakers circulating only in the US, it’s no wonder that tens of this way of searching for information has become mainstream.  In 2018, Apple reported that over 500 million devices across the world have used Siri.

“Voice commerce” is truly one of the focus areas that will take shape in the next 5 to 10 years. Juniper research studies have found that this type of search will yield sales of up to $80 billion per year by as yearly as 2023.

Optimising your website for voice search is one of the most important technical factors that’s going to affect your SEO efforts this new century. Although this form of search has been around for a few years, Google’s Hummingbird update has truly revolutionised the efficiency and results of Google Voice, and if your website isn’t optimised for these searches, your SEO efforts might become null and void.

So, what does this all mean for your brand?

Although tasked with many (many) challenges, the future is looking pretty bright! The new decade brings with it many changes in the digital marketing sphere, all challenging the way we communicate with consumers. It’s your decision- do you adapt? Or die?