Posted by By the time you finish reading this article, a new mode of marketing and promoting your business would have emerged in the industry. The market that we are operating and sustaining in is driven by constant innovation in how customers consume and respond to a brand’s marketing message.
While fulfilling for the customers and users, businesses are left constantly on their toes preparing to adapt the next big marketing trend. In this article, we will try to take the load off of those on the toes entrepreneurs and marketers. We will look into the top marketing trends that are poised to stand tall in the remainder of 2020 and for some further years to come.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Funnel-based marketing
Although you will come across a number of articles online saying that lifecycle marketing is dead with consumers becoming following a non-linear journey. But, in reality, the way marketing fundamentals work – growing awareness, comparing the available options, and getting converted into loyal customers – remains the same. What has changed is platforms and content customers have started using to pass through every stage.
2020 will see businesses integrating the traditional marketing efforts into online marketing strategies from their users point of view.
2. Conversational Marketing
One of the most innovative and definitely long-lasting marketing trends of 2020 is the incorporation of smart speakers, messages, and conversational interfaces in the business marketing strategy. According to Gartner, “Conversational marketing technologies enable interactions between companies and customers that mimic human dialogue and do so at scale. This category is near the Peak of Inflated Expectations phase”.
Technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will continue getting incorporated in the conversational based marketing platforms to make the conversations more human-like and great more value offering than having conversations with a machine.
3. Hyper-personalization
An important mode of improving customer experience is to make everything about an individual customer – not in a generic ‘write name in the marketing message’ way but uber tailored to ‘what you should buy next; way.
The time to come will see marketers digging deeper into personal shopping patterns, search trends, wants, behaviours etc. As of now, in spite of the growing trend, a number of marketers are not personalizing their efforts even after knowing that it is a guaranteed way to improve customer engagement.
Here are some statistics looking into the growing need for hyper-personalization:
- A message on the internet only gets 8 seconds to grab and hold the attention of the users.
- Google estimated that the usage of word ‘best’ in the search results have grown by 80% among mobile users.
- An Accenture study found that 75% consumers are more likely to purchase from somebody whose offerings were personalized on the basis of their individual choices.
4. Incorporation of AR and VR
In the past some years, both augmented reality and virtual reality have become key marketing trends. A number of companies, across industries, have started using the technologies for giving an immersive experience to their customers.
IKEA, for example, has an application which enables users to visualize what a piece of furniture might look like inside their home before they make a purchase. The app is just one example of how AR VR trends are being designed around making the eCommerce sector efficient – the application of the technology is omni-industrial.
5. Shoppable Posts
It is highly unlikely that you know somebody who doesn’t own a single social media platform. So when you consider its ubiquitous nature, it becomes all the more understandable that it has become a very integral part of online marketing.
For businesses that are into selling their products online, social media tends to be an amazing opportunity specially considering how over 72% of Instagram users have bought a product through the app or more than 70% Pinterest users have admitted that they used the platform for finding interesting products.
Statistics like these are an example of how posts pointing at shoppable habits are all in trend are expected to continue being a norm.
6. KYC and Customer Privacy
Multiple instances of Google and Facebook breaches have highlighted that customers data is not safe online. Even after several privacy regulations such as GDPR being in place, data privacy standards have still not gotten better.
However, businesses have started using emerging technologies to solve the issues. Some of the ways they are doing this are through Know Your Customers solutions which are designed to be less intrusive and yet improving security, reducing fraud, and improving the customer insights gathering process from across different channels.
A UK startup, Hooyu is aiding businesses in powering their customer privacy strategies by mixing traditional customer verification methods like database checks with digital footprint analysis, ID document validation, geo-location, and biometrics.
7. Integrity of a Brand
The focus on brand integrity is a fairly new mainstream concept – while active in the background, ethical behaviour of a business has only come on the forefront in recent times. Brand integrity in the present marketing era means customers are expecting businesses to have a voice on inclusivity, climate change, equal pay, and several other key global issues.
The time to come will see brands making ethical internal choices which would become their external brand image. For a brand to be in customers’ wishlist they can no longer afford to operate behind the curtains and have a diplomatic stand on pressing issues.
8. Insights Powered Marketing
Improving the data-driven marketing efforts is one of the key aims of a business – so much so that data analysis is one of the most desired skills that brands look for when hiring people for their digital team –
By understanding customers present and past behaviour and preferences, brands are able to chart their future needs and wants through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. The information, when put to test, helps them in becoming forward-looking and gives them a leg-up from their competition.
Here were the key trends that we expect to be the frontrunners in the marketing world this year and for some time to come. But before you jump on the bandwagon and start making strategies around these time-tested marketing practices, there are some things you need to know.
In order to genuinely benefit from the marketing efforts, you will first have to spend a substantial amount of time in understanding your customers and competitors. You should know what is making the customers act a certain way or why are they choosing your competitors over you or vice versa. Only when you know your customers deeply and understand your lags and benefits over your competitors, you will be able to put in the right marketing strategies in place.
Once you know where you stand and where you have to go to get your customers’ attention, the next best thing to do is understand the intent of your marketing and promotion efforts and then find the best platform to pass the message across and attain your objective.
With both the key elements addressed, the one last thing left to do is partner with a marketing agency that can keep you updated on what’s hot and what’s fad.
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