As we’re rolling towards the mid of 2020, here are a few questions you might be asking yourself:
Am I using the right digital marketing strategies this year?
Which online marketing trends should I be focusing on in 2020?
Which areas of digital marketing should I be investing on?
If you aren’t asking these questions yet, it’s time that you do. Here’s why. Considering how competitive the marketing landscape has become and how frequently consumer behaviours change, you should put your money on marketing strategies that will deliver value.
No room for guesses
In the age of innovation, you can no longer expect the same digital marketing tactics of yesteryears to work and hope that educated guesses will help you succeed.
In order to thrive and survive, you must keep your eyes on the changing trends and how the world of digital marketing is evolving.
Related Article– 5 Steps to Make Sure Your Digital Marketing strategy is Results Driven
For example, according to a survey by Marketo, customer lifetime value will displace lead generation to become the top metric for measuring the success of marketing campaigns in 2025. This means, forward thinking companies will switch gears to make customer relationships a priority.
So, if you want to stay competitive and make your mark in the long-term, you have to think beyond lead generation. You have to think about customer loyalty and how to get people to come back to your product/service again and again.
That said, let’s look at 10 digital marketing strategies that deserve your attention in 2020.
1. Use influencers
Influencer marketing has been around for a while. With consumers putting a huge emphasis on trust and expertise over celeb factors and marketing bling, the trend has shifted in the favour of micro-influencers such as bloggers and YouTubers.
These influencers are experts in their niche and are looked upon as trustworthy by their followers. Apart from trust, relevance is another significant benefit of using an influencer for running a campaign. Because most influencers work within a chosen niche such as technology, beauty, fashion, food, etc., it’s easier to engage someone who appeals to your target audience. This ensures that there’s no disconnect between your brand and messaging.
2. Build community
For the past few years, it’s been getting harder to rack up organic reach on social media. But the pay-to-play model is not for everyone. Not all businesses have the money to run paid social media ad campaigns.
This is where building social media communities can come in handy. These communities bring together people to interact with each other on some shared interests. For instance, if you’re a sports tee brand, creating a community around fitness and outdoor activities can help you engage with your target audience on a one-on-one level.
The key is to remain responsive and active in your community and encourage the flow of dialogue between community members. In order to achieve success with communities, there should be a community manager to closely monitor activities, resolve issues, and answer queries.
Related Article– 5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers
3. Create podcast
Podcasts have been popular for a while now. But if you’ve just been using podcasts as an avenue to publish your content and connect with your audience, it’s no longer enough. You must include programmatic audio in your marketing mix. This will allow you to place ads automatically in the audio content.
4. Focus more on videos
Video has become marketers’ favourite over the last few years. 87% of marketers use video as a part of their digital marketing strategy, while 54% consumers want to see more videos from the brands they support. Clearly, video’s popularity as a marketing tool shows no signs of slowing down.
Therefore, it’s time to put more focus on video content. YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram remain three top platforms for video advertising, where you’ll have the maximum scope to gain your customers’ attention. For this, you must create compelling video stories and promote them in a non-intrusive manner, giving viewers the option to opt-in and be in control of their online viewing experience.
5. Explore new social media platforms
Of course, you’re posting content on your social media pages already. But what can you do differently this year?
A great way to reap even more benefits from social media marketing is to expand your reach on channels apart from those you use on a regular basis. Depending on where your audience is likely to flock more, choose a different channel this year and build your presence on it. This means if you use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for your business, try leveraging Snapchat or Pinterest along with your usual channels.
6. Mobile-friendly emails
More emails are read on mobile than ever. So why not make use of the device’s popularity to push your brand’s email campaigns to the inbox of your customers. Today, if your email marketing isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing out on a ton of opportunities.
Although there’s no cut-and-dried design template that one must follow across all platforms or devices, you can achieve a single design that works well on different screens by paying attention to best practice techniques and implementing clean and minimalistic design that emphasizes on user experience. Don’t stuff your emails with too much information, keep the CTAs easily visible, and maintain the content hierarchy.
Remember, the success of your email marketing campaigns stands on your content, so make sure that the message you’re sending across through emails is well-crafted and nothing less than compelling.
Related Article– 7 Steps List Building Formula | Email Marketing List
7. Focus on augmented reality and virtual reality
Brands have already been experimenting with AR/VR technology to offer an immersive experience to users. This year, AR/VR will receive an even bigger push with its forecasted market size hitting close to USD 571.42 billion.
From AR filters on social media platforms to AR/VR based apps, there are many ways to implement this technology in your strategy. Provide a near-real feel of your products through AR/VR or give users a virtual tour of your products — these technologies allow you to engage customers more immersively.
8. Create content for all platforms
You might be creating a ton of content by now. But in 2020, it’s time to scrutinize which content formats you’re using, where you’re publishing them, and how to take your content marketing initiatives to the next level.
For instance, if you’ve been mainly focusing on creating blogs for your company website, don’t limit yourself to text content only. Include infographics, videos, podcasts as well as animated gifs and other rich media content to enhance the appeal and engagement factor of your content. You should mix different formats and topics to make sure your content stands out from your competitors.
9. Understand the position zero and aim for that
“What is Position Zero (P0)? Position Zero (P0) refers to the first Google search result that appears above organic SEO listings. Also known as a featured snippet, P0 aims to directly answer searchers’ questions, without needing to click the search result link.”
Related Article– Proven SEO Strategy for All Kind of Businesses
Now that you know what position zero is, let’s understand how to get there.
- Focus on creating content around queries such as what, why, when, where, who, and how
- Pay attention to your headlines and include query-based words in them
- Create how-to content or the type of content that offers instructions
- Prefer a listed format of content
- Create content around frequently asked questions in your industry
10. Create content for all the levels of your funnel
If your content isn’t doing its job of keeping users hooked on to your website despite ranking highly on search engine results, your focus on the funnel might be out of balance. This means, you might be spending hours on top-of-the-funnel content but failing to give as much time or focus to the middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel content.
Related Article– 11 Step Content Creation Strategy To Convert Your Contacts To Contracts
If that’s the case, you must spread your content creation efforts across all levels of your funnel. So instead of creating just top-of-the-funnel content, dedicate time into creating more in-depth content that will help generate conversions. The world of digital marketing changes at a rapid pace. In order to be effective, your digital marketing strategies need to be flexible and adaptable with the changes. Implementing these 10 strategies will enable you to give your business the desired visibility and boost on SERPs.
Put these strategies into practice, measure how they are performing, make necessary tweaks, and monitor progress — done well, this can be your formula for digital marketing success in 2020.
Also, Read