Digital marketing is an ever-evolving industry, with new trends and developments popping up almost every year. As a digital marketer, it is your duty to make sure that your marketing campaign keeps in step with the latest in your industry. This will ensure that your marketing strategies remain competitive and effective in the face of fierce competition.
While having working marketing strategies is a great way to start the year, it is also one reason some companies fail in performing the needed updates to remain relevant. Their previous successes become a dead weight that keeps them from moving forward. This should not be the case.
It is worth noting that the face of digital marketing has changed more rapidly and drastically during the previous decade than in the last 50 years. From email marketing to artificial intelligence (AI), techniques have jumped ahead, leaving anyone afraid to get and use the latest innovation in the industry.
Trends to Watch Out this 2020
In this Internet-connected day and age, it shouldn’t surprise any of us if the strategies that were once deemed inefficient are now slowly becoming mainstream thanks to ongoing research and development. Many digital trends that were once considered as science fiction are now functioning in the real world.
Even if you have a working digital marketing strategy, make sure to check the latest tech advancements because the ones that have been working in the past may not work as well this coming year. Here are just some of the latest technology updates and strategies that you can incorporate in your marketing campaign:
The Rise of Artificial Intelligence
Gone are the days when AI was only a gimmick that marketers used to pique interest from customers. Today, its features and capabilities are undoubtedly topnotch, allowing any business to compete and stay relevant in any industry. As new abilities are added to AI, it will soon take over simple job tasks and eventually replace human aid in the future.
Some of the niches wherein AI will definitely play a significant role next year include:
- Customer service and relations
- Email customization
- Process automation
- E-commerce transactions
More Personalized and Targeted Content
In digital marketing, content is used in a variety of ways, but all of them share one goal—provide essential information for the audience. In recent years, content has been consistently released solely for the sake of promotion. But while this technique has worked for many years, it is slowly losing momentum.
In order to keep content fresh in the eyes of prospective customers, it should be prepared not only for the sole purpose of selling but also to genuinely provide essential help for their needs. Even email marketing should now be more personalized, and that’s not just using the recipient’s first name to add the “personal touch.”
The idea is that, through your content, you should be able to offer solutions and answers to problems people never knew existed. Knowing these solutions will slowly build a lasting company-consumer relationship that goes beyond a single transaction.
Use Social Media More
You should have understood by now how powerful social media is to anyone who knows how to use it well. We have seen virtually unknown personalities turn into celebrities in just a matter of weeks—and in some cases, days. Their secret? Knowing what content to create and when to create it. Social media marketing is a popular platform to be noticed, whether you’re a startup or an established company.
Try to create other forms of content—don’t just focus on written content like blogs. There’s video marketing, influencer marketing, and even marketing using social messaging apps. Using these other forms of social media marketing will help your business reach a broader audience while providing vital information about your company and the products and services you offer.
Mobile Revolution
It’s not hard to believe that a massive chunk of your online audience uses their mobile phones to access the content you create today. Whether these are viewed through your social media accounts, website, or blog, the point is that your mobile viewers are still increasing by the day.
In relation to this, it definitely will definitely help if you build a more mobile-optimized website or blog. For an Internet user looking for answers, nothing is more irritating than a website that is unresponsive and difficult to navigate.
Statistics show that 55% of emails today are opened on a smartphone, compared to laptop computers. This means that you should also keep your emails mobile-friendly because if they’re not easy to read on a mobile device, chances are they won’t be read at all.
Keep Updated with the Latest
Just because you already have a digital marketing campaign going does not mean you can remain contented and stick with what you know. There will always be changes in the marketing industry, taking place almost every day. As a marketer, you should remain updated with the latest trends in the business.
Use notification tools such as Google Alerts to notify you of content that matches your preferred topics or niches. You may also use hashtags when doing quick searches on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to narrow down results. In doing so, you’ll get ideas for fresh content that can possibly help your business gain more momentum.
As we move towards the end of the year, it is crucial to be prepared for the changes in the digital marketing space. As mentioned earlier, technological advancements nowadays are achieved in just a matter of weeks and months. Because of this, there’s no place for complacency in digital marketing—you need always to be on the lookout.
You can’t just use a marketing strategy and hope that its efficiency will last a lifetime. Time will come when you will need to adapt your strategy and programs to what’s on-trend to stay competitive. As long as you are keeping yourself informed with the latest and you’re willing to incorporate these innovations into your campaign, then you’ll have no problems.
Keely is an Online PR Specialist at Spiralytics. She is a young, energetic professional who enhances her company’s voice and presence through online and offline channels. Keely considers writing as one of her hobbies. She can combine creative thinking with performance analytics that drives traffic and awareness across various industry verticals.