Brands today face quite a challenge due to the Coronavirus pandemic, especially now that lockdown and other risk factors have forced companies and brands to create a more digital approach to conducting business. However, just because the Coronavirus pandemic has slowed down sales and made it a bit difficult to do your operations doesn’t mean factors such as marketing and branding have to be affected. In fact, now’s the perfect time to apply some of the best and rising digital marketing trends in 2020 that your marketing team should consider. Remember, just because your brand faces a slowdown doesn’t mean you have to stop working on it. Here are some of the most promising digital marketing trends in 2020 you should consider applying to your brand:
Take note of context and user intent when creating content.
One of the most effective digital marketing strategies today is to do organic link building, which essentially means making sure you create and nurture links in natural and “organic” methods. This means providing content that focuses on context and concepts instead of just spamming topics and keywords in your pieces. When you create content – be it blogs or multimedia – make sure topics you cover and content you create provides value to your brand and directly tackles user concerns. This is also why a link building agency will most likely advise their clients to focus on making meaningful content so their link building will be done more naturally, and just boosted with methods such as blogger outreach.
- Given the release of the BERT algorithm for Google, search engines have become much better when it comes to analyzing the content of blogs. Thanks to AI advancements, search engines have become more adept when analyzing language in content. This means your blogs have to be more intuitive and more inclined to reader interest and user intent. Otherwise, your search engine score might suffer. Remember, take note of the context of your pieces, and how your topic relates to other concepts in your niche. This makes your pieces more long-lasting and relevant to your niche, especially in the eyes of search engines.
- It’s important to note that more than 75-percent of people online read blogs regularly, but 43-percent of blog readers also tend to skim through them. This means the challenge for content marketers is to make sure they create not just relevant content, but also entertaining and engaging content that can capture the interest of their readers. This means using relevant statistics, and making sure your content will be something they can use while exploring your industry.
Take advantage of social media platforms to maximize your reach to your users.
Aside from your content and website offerings, make sure you maximize current social media trends to capitalize on your content’s reach. Knowing the best platforms to use to post your content can be a huge plus in making sure your brand reaches exactly who you want to target. Not to mention, with a global population of 3.8-billion users, social media is a great way to find the right communities and online forums that may be interested in your industry and your particular topic.
- Take note of what’s happening in popular social media platforms, too. For instance, Facebook has had a bad rep after 2018’s huge data breach news. And while Facebook is still strong with its 2.38-billion users, you may want to consider making sure your content is released in other platforms as well. If you want to aim for a younger audience, much of Instagram’s user base is under 30. And if you want to make quirky and fast-paced content, consider using TikTok and Twitter.
- Aside from knowing where to post your content, make sure your social media channels are also targeting the right audience with the right kind of content. For instance, make sure your posts can reach audiences in online forums and communities in your social media platforms. If possible, try to form connections with brands and websites that actively post in their social media as well, that way your guest post will also take advantage of their existing reach. To make it easy to monitor competitor brands and see what trends your audience is responding positively to, media monitoring tools are essential to watch relevant keywords that are important for your business.
Take note of rising technologies you can apply to your website and brand, such as chatbot and voice assistants.
If you want to make your customer experience in your website and brand as unique as possible, you can apply technologies such as chatbots and voice assistants to your platforms. This is a great way of providing continuous service and assistance to customers, even if your staff aren’t available to assist them. Not only does this increase self-service ratings of your brand, but also makes it seem to your customers that you’ve taken the extra mile to assist them.
- Chatbots are software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that serves as digital “assistants” of visitors to your particular platform. Most chatbots appear in websites as a form of an aide that can redirect customers to particular sections of the website, should they be unable to find it. Oftentimes, brands and other companies also deploy chatbots into their own applications, or in messaging apps such as Messenger and WeChat. In fact, in WeChat, chatbots are mini-apps of their own, allowing you to avail services and purchase products within the messaging app.
- Voice assistants will be more common in websites, and voice-supported website components will be more popular thanks to mobile assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Google. Given that a lot of users have become more reliant on verbal interaction with their gadgets, we need to catch up with other brands making a way for these voice assistants to look for services in your website much faster. If you can find a way to install a voice assistant app in your website, this is great as it can make your brand appear more human and “available” for your customers.
Digital Marketing in 2020: Get Your Branding That Boost
With the above trends in mind, it helps to remember that you’re in the perfect position to take advantage of audiences and customers relying on digital services in order to expose your brand to them. The above trends, when applied properly, can help your brand get that much-needed advantage to dominate your particular niche. Not only that, but these best practices can help you attract the customers you want to target, and even help position your brand to be a trendsetter and a trailblazer in your industry.
If you have other suggestions and tips to what rising digital marketing trends we need to look at, just share them in the comments! And if you want to discuss some points we’ve mentioned, please do mention them so we can have a great discussion!