2019 has come to a close and as the New Year begins to unfold, we should start thinking about how to get ahead online and make the most out of 2020.
What sort of new digital marketing ideas and methods will be embraced throughout the year?
Here we discuss the top 7 digital marketing trends we believe are going to help you stand out in 2020.
There isn’t much point in offering products your customers aren’t interested in. Before spending your money on digital marketing, make sure to research - or refresh your previous findings on - your industry to know who you’re selling to and what they want.
For digital marketing success, knowing how and where to reach your market is key and you can find out in a number of ways.
See what your customers are looking at on social media, what’s trending right now, and what your competitors are creating that is bringing them a lot of attention.
Make sure the content you’re developing will talk to the people you want to reach.
Artificial intelligence is starting to become more prominent within the digital space, but customers don’t want to interact with robots 24/7 - they want to get to know your company, too.
As automation begins to grow in the online world, it’s important to keep strong connections with your customers. Sending out generic emails to a long list of people won’t make the cut in 2020.
You have to be a whole lot more personal to meet the mark.
Having personalized newsletters based on a particular customer’s history with your company will outshine any generic email.
Try segmenting your email list into different categories. Find out what your customers are drawn to, what their behaviors on your site are like, and personalize each email to make them relate to your company more. This will make your customers feel like they are being treated as an individual rather than another number.
Personalized communication will solidify a customer’s loyalty to you and your company. If they don’t think you are truly catering to their needs and requirements, they’ll quickly switch to another business who is better suited.
This is why all your communication with an individual customer should be tailored to suit their preferences and wants. To do this you need to learn more about your target market, which will help you grow your customer base and drive up your sales.
Just like with customer newsletters, you need to keep the flow of personalization throughout the customer’s time with your company.
It’s not a good idea to bring a customer onboard and forget about them as soon as they’ve made a purchase. You want them to keep coming back for more.
During the sale, make sure to have automatic emails sent to them if they have abandoned their cart. They might be having second thoughts about purchasing a product and the abandoned cart email you send could give them the push to return.
After the sale has been completed, don't forget to send follow up emails. You can ask about the product or service purchased and ask to leave a review.
You can also follow up with an email suggesting other products of interest. These emails should be personalized to fit what the consumer was looking at on your site and what they bought.
You better believe it is!
Unique, original, and engaging content shows off all the knowledge and expertise you have in your industry, helping to attract potential customers to your company. It also makes your website a lot more attractive for search engines - helping you improve your search engine optimization organically.
Fresh new content will always be needed - and you should never stop producing quality content for your website. 2020 will be no different. But, there will be less focus on quantity and more interest in quality.
When creating your 2020 content strategy, we suggest trialing more diverse forms of content to engage your audience. Now, we’re not saying forget about long-form content and blogging - these will always be important to build a strong presence on search engines.
What we do suggest is to not just post something for the sake of posting it. Make sure that what you’re contributing will have a positive effect on your brand and not become saturated with negative engagement.
You don’t want to end up annoying your audience with sub-par blog posts and boring pieces of content. Take the time to diversify your content and find out what really piques the interest of your audience.
In 2019 there were almost 223 million Americans on social media and despite a few scandals, this number is going to grow in the future.
Many companies leave their social media profiles to collect dust. This can actually be quite damaging to your company as most consumers expect you to have some form of active social media.
Social media marketing is an excellent way of grabbing the attention of new customers and seeing how the rest of the industry works online. Simply having a social media account isn’t good enough. You need to keep it up to date and make sure it is optimized appropriately for your audience.
A solid social media strategy can help you generate better brand awareness. It will help you solidify your position within your niche and help you become recognizable with customers.
When it comes to new and upcoming things to watch out for in regard to social media, keep an eye on the use of ‘stories’.
Snapchat originally came out with the concept of “My Story” and both Instagram and Facebook followed in their footsteps soon after.
Stories are a way of showing your audience a message, but only for a short period of time. It makes amazing use of the FOMO (fear of missing out) sales technique - which is perfect for helping your website generate more sales in a short amount of time.
Benefits of using Stories on your social media profiles include:
The best social media platform for using Stories effectively is Instagram. With Instagram stories you can use FAQ systems, polls, product highlights, countdowns, and so much more. These will all help to create FOMO within your audience and increase the amount of traffic that goes onto your website.
After creating your customer personas you’re probably wondering what to do next. How do you get the most out of them for your marketing strategy?
The answer is simple, create audience segments.
Audience segmentation is designed to divide your database of customers into subgroups, and then target them with content that will appeal to their likes and dislikes.
Using your customer personas, you should have a good idea of what your audience groups find interesting and what makes them click ‘sign up’ or ‘buy’.
Over the last couple of years, there has been a steady increase in the number of bots that we talk to on the internet. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, chatbots are more sophisticated than they used to be. Modern chatbots can now handle requests from customers and produce pre-set advice on command.
In 2020, AI technology will continue to grow and improve - thanks to new algorithms. They will be incorporated into most websites as customer service agents, which will allow customer service to not only be a lot faster and efficient, but also be available 24/7.
If you’re interested in learning more about any of the trends we’ve covered in this blog, we’d love to hear from you.
Using this year’s digital marketing trends can dramatically increase the traffic on your website - so if you want to rapidly increase your appointments in 2020, book a free 30 minute consultation with us today!
Want to talk more about how we can help you? Click the button below to book a time to talk with us, or give us a call at 916.608.8913
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