The year 2019 is almost coming to an end, and what a year full of growth in digital marketing it has been. This does mean everybody is getting ready for the year of 2020. In this light we summed up 7 trends in digital marketing that are going to take off in 2020.
1. Start Using Alternative Channels
Email is still the most prominent marketing channel to use. But marketing emails are being less and less effective. There are companies that have seen their click rate for emails drop by 9,4% in 2019. This doesn’t mean we won’t be using email anymore, email will still be a prominent tool to use in 2020 and beyond that. What we will need to do in 2020 is making use of the other channels which can increase the marketing performance. A multichannel communication strategy allows you to connect with more leads, as well as stay top of mind with your customers. The next thing is that emails easily get overlooked or lost in the rubble, by using multiple channel you will make sure not to get overlooked. I will sum up some alternative communication channels below.
- Whatsapp Business: WhatsApp Business is a free app available on both Android and iPhone. WhatsApp Business makes connecting and interacting with customers easy by providing tools to automate, sort and quickly respond to messages.
- Chat Bots: This piece of software can interact with users while they are browsing on the website just like live chat tools, but with much more logic inside. Chatbots can communicate in a normal manner with people and are able to answer the frequently asked questions they have. So why hire someone to answer their questions while you can have a personalised service that is way cheaper.
- Web Push Notifications: Web push notifications are messages that are sent through a browser while the users are not on the website. You only have to opt-in to them to start receiving them, they can be send from both mobile and desktop devices. You can learn more about them on our web push notifications page.
2. Make Use of Multichannel Services
The amount of available marketing services is staggering, the average company has between 25 and 91 cloud services. This brings a lot of different problems with it, think about security for a second. That’s why a lot of companies are switching to multichannel services like Hubspot, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Marketo or Frizbit. Here you can take charge of different tools through one dashboard.
So, it’s expected that a lot of companies will be switching to an all-in-one marketing service that provides multichannel. It might be a good option for you too, we summed up some of the benefits for you.
- Less integration effort and time
- Faster page load time
- Less data shared with 3rd parties
- Flexibility on creating multi-channel campaigns
3. Expansion of Digital Marketing
According to the site TheDrum the global digital software industry will grow from $37.48 billion in 2017 to $74.96 billion in 2022 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.9% during the forecast period that is from 2017 to 2022. The worldwide digital ad spending will observe a rise of 17.6%, i.e., up to $333.25 billion in 2019. However, it will keep on rising till 2023 according to Softwaresuggest.
According to a study by the US Small Business Administration, a company should spend 7-8% of its gross revenue on marketing depending on the industry. For the year 2019, 50% of that budget should be dedicated specifically for digital marketing. However, it must increase to 55% in 2020. Criteo states that by the year 2022, close to 87% of marketing budgets will be spent on digital marketing.
Although traditional TV still has the most viewers (43%), online streaming (35%) has risen in popularity in the past five years. To see a higher ROI, a blended strategy for advertising is the best bet. Traditional marketers advertise on both platforms for the best results.
According to emarketer Google is still the number one in digital ads with 36,2% of market share followed by Facebook with 19,2 % of market share.
4. Hyper-personalise Your Messages
Artificial intelligence has brought about the phenomenon hyper-personalisation, which enables more appealing and individualised communication with consumers.
Communication with consumers that is deeply personal and tailored to them is what keeps messages interesting and make consumers want to interact with you.
Hyper-personalised messages enhance the customer experience by tailoring to each individual’s preferences based upon user behaviour. More than simply including the customer’s name in an email, hyper-personalised campaigns utilise real-time data and user behaviour to create the most effective automated, individualised communication strategies. Take a look at the cart abandonment campaign from Frizbit in the picture, here you can see we included the name of the customer, the name of the product, and a picture of the product.
Hyper-personalised messages create a dynamic experience for customers, making them more likely to return to your website and interact with it. Real-time data and user behaviour are used in hyper-personalised marketing efforts to create the most relevant and effective communications with each customer.
5. Make Automation Your Friend
Next to hyper-personalisation, automation is going to play a bigger role next year because far too much time is put into manually created and delivered messages. In order to optimise efficiency and ROI, industries like e-commerce and travel would benefit greatly from automated messages through the high volume of customers. But not only them, a lot of other industries like SaaS, Media and B2B could benefit from them as well.
As automated messages are triggered by user behaviour, always the most relevant users receive it. That’s why both click rates and conversion rates are quite high. It is also time efficient because the messages are triggered automatically with user behaviour. This makes that you only have to set the scenario and template once and that’s it. There is no need to spend more time to write content of the and that’s why automation is time efficient.
6. Give Transparency to Customers
How a company handles the private data of their customers is vital for their success. In 2018, the GDPR policy was more actively enforced to ensure that companies handle customer data transparently.
Coredna also indicates that companies producing transparent and easy-to-digest information are likely to retain around 90% of their customers.
In short, In the future there will be more emphasis on this. Companies will have to give complete transparency of kind of data is shared.
Tips on how to be transparent
- Honest communication to and with customers
- Make sure that selling is not your only goal.
- Respond immediately to concerns
- Share news with your customers
7. Get ready for Voice Searches
More and more people will start using smartphones with voice assistants though the massive growth in technology. Voice assistants can be handy for searching for certain places, reading specific texts loudly, and even sending text messages for you.
Voice search is also essential when using it for your business. It’s helping in the growth of voice search also raises the use of Artificial Intelligence.
Most of the people who are using search engines, use long sentences with specific keywords. In order to optimise the opportunity to be found in voice search results, use longer keywords and complete sentences. Also include any questions that people may ask concerning your products and provide detailed answers.
