Why is it important to stay up to date with marketing trends?

No matter the size of your business, being up to date with marketing trends is a must if you want to craft a successful marketing plan and grow your company to its full potential. Whether you own a start-up or a small business, it's important to connect with your audience and meet them where they are. 

Every year, marketing experts scan performance indexes, exploring how the market is impacted by consumer demand and feedback, through surveys, polls, and analytics, and their findings shaped into marketing must-watch trends.

We have compiled 10 marketing trends for 2020, with advice on how to make use of them to achieve your marketing goals.

1. Personalization in Marketing

This is by far the biggest marketing idea of the year. In the digital environment, if you really want to connect with your customers, a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is not going to work. That is why personalization, with the support of marketing technology, is positioned to be a big trend this year.

Emails, social media ads and content will become increasingly personal thanks to advanced segmentation methods. Tapping into visitors’ behaviors and interactions on websites is easier now, so it will be simpler to serve them content based on their niche interests.

 2. Email Marketing

Email continues to be a major marketing channel, but it's moving from generic messages to more interesting space with the use of personalization. Since email is the final stage to motivate an action, it is most effectively used alongside remarketing techniques, like retargeting visitors to your website. If you follow up with a promotional message or brand video on your next email, you have more chances to lead the customer to the end line of their customer journey to purchase that certain item or service.

 3. Social Messaging Marketing

While email and social media channels are here to stay, people are increasingly active on instant messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and brands are already banking on that opportunity.

According to Statista, Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion monthly users; while WhatsApp has reached 1.6 billion.

Marketing through Facebook Messenger generates 10 to 80 times more engagement than organic posts on the Facebook News Feed. Uses are many: from staying in touch, to delivering information and assistance, to inviting users to events. And keep an eye on Facebook’s brand new product, Facebook Messenger Rooms, launched in April, and now operational on Instagram, as a new way to bring people together instantly, and another viable platform for brands to include video and interactive content.

 4. Social Media Marketing

Some social media platform users are getting older, like Facebook. Forbes says that 41% of its users are over the age of 65. Younger demographics are living in more visual and innovative channels like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram, on the other hand, with over one billion users, is the preferred platform for the under 30 demographic. And definitely consider YouTube for your video marketing, with 2 billion unique users, it’s the second most visited site after Google.

5. Social Commerce Marketing

With the rise of e-commerce and the growth of social media, shoppable ad posts are actively appearing in people’s feeds.

It grants shoppers the instant gratification of shopping with a click while swiping through their feed. Since Instagram launched Instagram Checkout in 2019, the platform reports that 90% of its one billion users already follow active shopping brands, a great way to stay in touch with potential customers.

6. Content and Context in Marketing

Google is getting smarter and delivering a deeper understanding of online content. And marketers are rethinking the way they tailor content in 2020. The focus is now on brand context and precise targeting.

 7. Interactive Content

More engaging, more memorable, more dynamic, and more fun. That is the direction of any type of content, anything that you can click on, swipe, or interact with. And cutting-edge marketing technology is here to help. This year we’ll see more quizzes and polls, augmented reality ads and 360-degree videos.

8. Visual Search and SEO

VSEO, is the new search user experience: now people can upload an image to conduct a search and get more specific results. Pinterest Lens, Google Lens, CamFind and Bing have already launched visual search tools.

Pinterest debuted Lens in 2017, allowing users to take a photo of an item and find out where to buy it online, search for similar products or view related pinboards. It is a brilliant vehicle to search for highly visual products and services – from fashion, to food, art, beauty and travel.

Meanwhile, the old SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is changing into what the experts call Structure Data SEO. It’s data organized in a standardized format to make it easier for search engines to better understand the content and categorize it.

It can deliver a SEO boost, so your business can rank and appear in that coveted Position Zero, or featured snippet in Google, at the top of the search results – more on this later.

 9. Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing implements marketing across multiple platforms, taking your consumers by the hand your consumers through their purchase journey, for a richer user experience – your website, email, apps, social media. Omnichannel marketing can deliver three times as much engagement as a single-channel plan. 

The key is being able to keep a consistent and personalized voice and understanding the needs and behaviors of your customers, so they keep on coming back to interact with your brand.

10. Brand marketing

Brand marketing is seeing a resurgence in the toolbox kit of marketing tactics. The goal is to build a solid brand, with authority, that consumers feel close to and can trust.

Google is part of the reason this is happening, since it now ranks according to the E.A.T. factor, for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness, driving brands to deliver a richer customer experience through content. Branding is what separates companies from their competition. 

 If you are looking to strengthen your brand, PointSocial can help with all your digital marketing needs, from building and maintaining a website, to blogs and social media campaigns.