The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content. Apr 19, 2020 Xherald — The digital marketing industry is of such interest to young professionals because it is in the process of constant change. If your company or you, as a specialist, are lagging behind […]
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Apr 19, 2020 Xherald — The digital marketing industry is of such interest to young professionals because it is in the process of constant change. If your company or you, as a specialist, are lagging behind new trends, in a couple of months your knowledge will be hopelessly outdated. It will also have a negative effect on your company and brand, which begins to be associated with outdated trends. And if you, for example, the head of a company, may not know about all digital marketing trends, then your users know.
2020 has already become a test for all of humanity, due to the pandemic of the coronavirus. However, even in this situation, new trends appear, which we will discuss in the article. Apart from them, some old trends are still relevant, like chatbots or an emphasis on video marketing.
Social Network Sales
You all remember this old issue – how to get your subscribers in social networks to go to the site and make purchases? As of 2020, this is no longer a problem. The thing is that the development of social networks has reached the point where sales can be carried out in the social networks themselves, without going to any additional resources.
This is not something truly new, but it began its rapid development after the introduction of Instagram Checkout in 2019. Therefore, do not be surprised that everyone now wants to get new followers on Instagram. As of 2020, this method of sales has gained its fans, in view of the fact that it equally suits both sellers and buyers.
Statistics also say that this social commerce is working, so there is not a single reason why something can change in 2020.
Influencers are still a trend
With the rapid growth of social networks as advertising platforms, in the 2010s the trend for influencer marketing began to roll the tides. Influential people with a large number of subscribers personally advertised goods and services to those who trust their opinion. In recent years, this method has only strengthened its effect. The situation has reached the point today: big influencers are no longer ordinary bloggers with whom you can communicate directly. Now, they have agents, price lists and more. And their services are quite expensive.
Big business continues to work with such people, while smaller entrepreneurs are unlikely to compete with them. Therefore, they are turning to smaller influencers, and this is the trend for 2020. You can call it micro-influencer marketing. Such people usually occupy narrower niches and are quite popular in their segment. At the same time, they do not have several million subscribers and are not overloaded with advertising offers. Such accounts usually have around 40,000 subscribers and, according to some studies, are a much more profitable investment for a small and medium business.
AR and VR
Technological progress leaves no one untouched. Virtual and augmented reality is no longer news, but this industry is only just beginning to gain momentum. Valve was given a big leap in popularity by Valve, releasing its Half-Life Alux in March of 2020. People still don’t know for sure what opportunities these technologies will give to humanity. But today it’s clear that these are the technologies of the future, in which it is worth investing tomorrow.
Studies say that by 2020, about 70% of enterprises will experiment with BP or AR. Both technologies bring personal marketing to an unimaginable level. Personalized advertising right in the apartment of a potential buyer? Do not say that it is impossible!
Content is still an essential part of marketing
Yes, no marketing campaign can be imagined without content, although in a sense, priorities have also changed here. Quality still remains the main criterion for good content marketing, but the target audience correct identification is becoming a more important indicator of success. Google more than ever appreciates high-quality and properly targeted unique content.
The latest updates from Google can be described by several main points. The search engine evaluates sites that have good download speed, quality and professionally-written native-spoken content, and quality links from other trustworthy resources. SEO optimization is still a good way out for companies that do not have the ability to run targeted advertising on Google, but putting your site on the top only with SEO is much harder today.
The analysis of behavioral factors and emotions of consumers reaches a new level
Regardless of the type of marketing research and type of methodologies used, consumers’ perceptions of interacting with a product or service, their thoughts and emotions, remain the main secret for entrepreneurs and marketers. Feedback forms of various kinds, such as comments, reviews, or testimonials give some approximate understanding of the public’s mood, but they are not an accurate behavioral analysis of the user.
Fortunately, technological progress is a real helper here, with machine learning and neural networks are beginning to be applied. A new term is introduced here, social listening, which can be explained as actions aimed at analyzing the real emotions of users from interacting with products and services. Such an analysis is usually performed by a set of tools that collect a large array of data, for example, from social networks. Further, a deep analysis is carried out. Here is an example for you, the user can leave a completely negative review on the product’s website, but in their social networks, they can mention in the comments that the product wasn’t so bad as a whole, but specific details did not work. By paying attention to these points, the manufacturer can improve the situation for the direct user.
Neural networks, that analyze what people write are used to carry out such a task. For a more accurate understanding of our communication, machine learning specialists teach neural networks how people communicate and in what terms they express their emotions. And if it seems to you that this is a prospect of the not distant future, then here are a few tools that can already conduct a similar analysis right now – click here.
Conclusion
The digital marketing industry has never been as fun as it is today. Truly, technological progress introduces new rules of the game and forces you to discard old, time-tested techniques. However, even in this situation, unshakable things remain, such as content marketing.
What else we would like to say is that new technologies must be treated carefully. Not all people are equally enthusiastic about the fact that their behavior on social networks will be monitored and analyzed with third-party tools, without their knowledge. Also, high technologies such as VR and AR should be used with the utmost care and only after rigorous testing. Our main thought: you can use technology in digital marketing, but you must do it adequately and with full awareness of your responsibility to people.
