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The new decade has come with endless new possibilities for emerging marketing trends. Something as traditional as content curation is reshaping so that businesses could maximize their operational efforts. Despite the nature of a trend, the needs of the audience are now consistently evolving.
Is it a good thing? Yes. However, the market has become more competitive to live up to the expectations of the audience. Therefore, the practice of an efficient marketing trend that could help you engage better should be your priority.
Although a multitude of marketing trends are on the horizon, there are a few that deserve your attention the most. The constant change, after all, requires continuous adaptability. And your current marketing strategy has an expiration date. So, it makes sense to opt for long-term marketing strategies that scan the online landscape much better.
The supremacy of social media platforms, however, is not a new phenomenon. What matters the most is how these platforms are modifying people’s perception of a brand and changing the way businesses operate.
Don’t Confuse Digital Transformation with Marketing Transformation
Often, businesses confuse their digital transformation with marketing transformation. The secret lies in the integration of both strategies to achieve structured and optimized communications. However, most of the growing trends businesses face are around digital marketing. Thus, make sure to create a digital transformation plan first.
The underlying purpose of a transformative digital plan allows you to follow a specific roadmap to increase your digital marketing capabilities. Simultaneously, combine your products’ marketing initiatives with digital marketing efforts.
Remember, an active digital transformation strategy allows you to navigate various success factors. Sure, your every digital marketing strategy won’t pan out. Fortunately, you can never run out of new marketing trends and stay ahead in the digital landscape.
Realistically, digital marketing is gradually becoming a hybrid. As a result, there will be numerous digital marketing skills that would require integration. Nonetheless, the future of digital marketing is far from dull. In fact, digital marketers insist that you are living through the infancy of digital marketing. So, expect the upcoming changes to be more exciting and revolutionary.
Optimized Voice Strategy
It is true – most of the people who look for information online prefer search engines. However, the approach to search for content is rapidly changing. What’s increasing is that users are now adapting to voice search apps on their mobile devices, tablets, or separate voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo to find the information online more conveniently.
In fact, voice capabilities will cover more than 50% of the searches by the end of 2020. The idea is to search for information without even looking at your screen is as radical as it gets. So, optimization for voice content search is something you should prepare beforehand.
Today’s globalized online community wants to rely more on Google Home, Apple’s HomePod, and Amazon’s Alexa. The acceptance of voice search-based assistants can usher a new era of how users search for the information in the foreseeable future.
Video Content Will be the King
Deep down, marketers know the power that video content holds over the written content. Now, it doesn’t necessarily make the written content inferior. The constant revival and innovations have turned video content the hottest trend of the century. So long as social media platforms exist, video content will continue to take the spotlight.
A single second of a video can say the same thing as a thousand words. It is the entertaining nature of video marketing that makes it more informative and educational for the audience. Also, you don’t have to make an effort to dive into useful video content. Instead, it should naturally come across to users to learn more about a specific product or service.
More Development in Messaging Apps
Contrary to misguided perception, most of the people use more social messaging apps rather than social media platforms. However, the target market that uses social messaging apps the most is Millennials and Gen Z.
Ironically, there are users now who prefer to utilize social messaging tools such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger than the official app of Facebook. In fact, Facebook’s Messenger app alone has more than 1.2 billion users. As the usage of social media messaging apps grows, the likelihood of increasing customer experience will also improve on the exponential level.
The most exciting facet of the messaging apps, however, is the integration of chatbots that run on artificial intelligence (AI). Subsequently, it allows companies to have better engagement and personalized user experience through customer-oriented conversations.
Responsive Mobile Sites Will Become a Necessity
Contemporarily, the response mechanism of mobile sites is already on the verge of perfection. However, what if you were to find out that it is just the tip of the iceberg? Well, the response time of the new mobile websites will absorb more information than you can imagine.
Besides, an ineffective mobile responsive website leads to loss of organic search results. However, this is not where the story ends. Google specifically instructs that non-responsive mobile websites will face penalties.
Here’s the thing, almost 70% of the users don’t want to return to the mobile website that is not responsive. After that, your users visit your top competitor’s website to look for better information. So, make sure to carry out a mobile-responsive strategy to attain more online users this year.
Social Media Influencers Will Hold More Power
Every brand wants to hire the best social media influencer for the promotion of its products or services. However, the landscape of social media influencers is not just limited to Victoria’s Secret models or renowned Hollywood actors.
Instead, brands can hire macro social media influencers who have millions of active followers that are high in demand. Besides, not every business can afford to pay millions of dollars to expensive celebrities to become their influencer. Therefore, brands are reaching out to persuasive social media influencers to capture the attention of their target market.
Conversely, a micro-influencer who has fewer followers than micro followers is not always a wrong choice. Surprisingly, several micro-influencers on social media platforms have better community outreach programs. Businesses with a limited budget should use micro-influencers to achieve robust engagement. However, don’t think of it solely as a tactic to save cost – It’s about making valuable online connections and understanding the needs of the niche audiences.
AI: Listening Social Media Analytics
Social listening refers to the act of checking a specific brand’s mentions to find out what the users, detractors, and promoters are saying on social media platforms. Though for the most part, brands use social listening analytics as a reactive marketing approach to improve communication with users.
And AI technology allows businesses to get all the social listening analytical information. Although this tactile approach may seem dramatic to some brands, it is one of the most proactive methods to determine the market trends and develop a better marketing strategy.
The endgame is to get instantaneous feedback rather than rely on focus groups, customer panels, expensive market research, or send feedback forms. It is, however, imperative to understand that the AI is at the center of it all. AI makes it possible to get feedback from trending spots for businesses.
Increase in Segmented Social Media Strategies
Gone are the days when you could just come up with a single social media marketing strategy for your business and move on to the next marketing effort. Today, you have to segment your social media strategies to garner the trust of the audience.
It is the same tactic that social media influencers use to build long-term trust with the users. Whether you want to increase brand awareness or promote a particular product, a segmented social media strategy simplifies the changes you make over a long period.
Furthermore, it allows you to compare your social media strategies from the previous year with more ease. Sure, the prevalent distrust among Instagram celebrities can hamper the trust. But people are not as skeptical about the endorsements from social media influencers as you think. Therefore, implement tactile and layered social media strategies at every stage.
Less Overdependence on Google Analytics
Although the remarkable features of Google Analytics can help you climb to the top of the search results, the complete dependence on Google Analytics often backfires. In the end, it’s your analytical ability to read data that matters the most.
Concurrently, implement effective SEO practices, utilize Google traffic, curate interesting content, and increase the speed of your site. That said, Google’s algorithm is more complicated than you think. Often, your intuition to make the right decision works. So, don’t depend “too much” on a solution from Google that may or may not be a mistake.
In any case, indulge in the possibility that Google can make a mistake. However, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use Google Analytics to strengthen your online presence. Whether its Google Maps or Google AdWords, you can decrease the possibility of extraneous mistakes and figure out errors in advance.
Alternatively, you can use other channels to increase your overall reach and attain important users to your website. Email marketing, for instance, can become your new best performer. The same rules apply to an investment in potential social media and mobile traffic tools.
Popular Stories Will Garner More Coverage
Currently, Instagram stories, for instance, are more relevant than ever. Millions of users share and post stories as a social media style. However, Instagram and Facebook stories are no longer a novelty. In fact, it takes a lot of effort to generate activity on a story.
Just like Instagram Stories, you can expect a rise in Facebook Stories that can generate as much traffic as the Instagram stories. However, it depends on how you showcase stories and the collection of videos in a short time of 20 seconds. Furthermore, the limited availability of the story renders more attention from the users.
It looks like the Instagram and Facebook stories style will receive more popularity in the upcoming years. The question, however, is how you demonstrate your story in front of the audience to achieve popularity. With more stylized shared stories on Instagram and Facebook, you can expect less content on the main feed.
Niche Markets Will Evolve
It is not the race to reach out to everyone. Instead, it is the race to attain the right users with direct intent. The quality of your engagements determines the quantity of your engagements. The oversaturation of major social media platforms is real for people. Therefore, you need to get rid of posts and noise that are not relevant to the audience.
Niche markets offer you the chance to connect with a highly engaged community. Once you make the primary connection with your niche market, you can begin to learn more about them. The more you find out how these users act and think, the closer relationships you will be able to build for a long time.
Niche social markets are relatively smaller and enable you to concentrate your communication efforts more precisely. Now, you don’t need to stress about learning any Facebook algorithm. The idea is to improve your ability and get your brand content in front of an appropriate audience.
Conversational Marketing Will Become a Standard
Apart from the apparent integration of AI-powered chatbots, automated conversational marketing is opening new doors of communication. Unfortunately, you cannot just draft a script and run a chatbot for conversational marketing. Instead, you need to get various chatbot tools to get instant answers in real-time.
There was a time when conversational marketing was not as evolved as it is today. Contemporary conversational marketing allows visitors to have a tailored user experience that caters to their needs. Furthermore, the companies that create effective conversational marketing in the future will have more engaging conversations.
Live Streaming: TikTok is Not Going Anywhere
TikTok will not face the same fate as Vine did. In fact, the popularity of TikTok will continue to increase in the coming years. As of now, there are up to 800 million monthly active users aged between 16 and 24 on TikTok.
Companies, however, can make the most out of this momentum and learn the societal and cultural insights of Generation Z. Social media marketers understand that progressive brands can adapt and capitalize on TikTok. The collaborative nature of the TikTok is what makes the social platform so fascinating to the young generation.
Micro-Moments Will Become a Thing
It’s the small things that count when it comes to digital marketing. From your content strategy to analytical usage, your search for the micro-moments that make up your entire online strategic presence. Google views micro-moments when users learn or do something, purchase a product, or find a location from their smartphones.
Besides, more people use their smartphones for instant interactions than ever. Your marketing strategy in the future should be to focus on how a diverse group of people creates and engages in micro-moments. It could be as simple as a voice command or a comment on Facebook.
Essentially, micro-moments allow you to increase your attention span and help you minimize budget costs. The idea is to invest your valuable time and efforts in marketing matters that are relevant.
Marketing: It Will be ALL about Generation Z
You can expect Gen Z to account for around 40% of the collective consumer market by the end of 2020. Gen Z is the age group from 13 to 22 years old. The hypoconnectivity, eco-friendly, politically aware, and opinionated natured are some of the traits of Gen Z. Today, a large chunk of today’s social media platforms revolve around Gen Z users.
Whether its LGBTQ activism or mental health concerns, Gen Z is always at the center to highlight the issues. Therefore, companies shouldn’t overlook the attributes of the next-generation consumers that would continue to grow in the future. You should have a more expressive site and social media platforms to gain the attention of Gen Z.
Brands Will Focus More on Building Trust and Privacy
As the new age of technological advancement starts in marketing trends, more regulations will take place. The wise thing would be to be consistent and honest with regulators and customers about different aspects of your business. In fact, a culture of honesty can help you build long-term relationships.
With data analytics and connected technology, companies should have better digital security systems in place to ensure the privacy of the users. You should expect the future of marketing trends will revolve around trust. Yes, there will always be a myriad of existential threats to your business.
But the wisdom lies in protecting the safety of your users’ information from possible online vulnerabilities. Throughout the world, trust has become a primary motivator to evaluate a brand’s online marketing efforts. Therefore, avoid unethical PR stunts, unreliable deployment of AI, and illegal data accumulation that can besmirch your online image.
Automation and Heightened Customer Participation
With the help of big data, brands want to utilize AI to determine audiences, create an optimal user experience, and optimize performance. However, a heightened form of customer participation often results in complicated scenarios.
Apart from AI trustworthiness, you need to design around the relevance of the content rather than personalization. It is a subtle difference but has the power to make all the difference in the eyes of the customers.
For example, you can provide your customers with incentivized items like discounts, free services, and products to encourage a certain degree of customer participation. However, you may not realize it, but some of your offerings may come across as invasive to the customers.
You should view algorithms as a source of recommendations and create offerings based on the demographics of the audience. Nonetheless, the suggestions from AI can help you differentiate between a wide array of demographics.
Also, don’t have a reluctant approach to encourage participation. Instead, take your time to understand the users to offer non-invasive incentives. Practically, you should have a two-way dynamic engagement approach and try to align your product or service life cycle with a consumer journey.
In hindsight, customer participation comes down to convincing your consumer to be the new brand advocate. You can use AI to avoid any discriminatory bias and ensure transparency across your marketing efforts.
A Need for a Reliable Partner: Hive Art Media
Running social media campaigns can be frustrating. Typically, even the most professional social media users get stuck in a wide variety of parameters. Virtually, the paradigm of digital marketing no longer adapts to traditional approaches. With the advent of new marketing trends, you will need a reliable partner on your side to make the result-oriented decisions.
Whether you want to conduct social media ad campaigns on Facebook or want to integrate a new digital analytical tool into your system, Hive Art Media can take care of the most complex digital marketing tasks effortlessly. Now is not the time to step back but move ahead of your competitors, and Hive Art Media can help you climb that digital marketing ladder.
Conclusion
Whether it’s continuous evolvement of social media platforms or digital marketing tools, the emergence of new algorithm updates will undoubtedly reshape how you interact online. In fact, the pandemic crisis might boost the implementation of recent marketing trends and set a new precedent altogether.
Nonetheless, businesses need to keep an eye open to intriguing new marketing trends. As the window of targeted customers shrinks, the need to grow and evolve on new marketing trends has become of utmost importance. The implementation of the right decision at the right time could restore the tarnished digital image of your business.
Besides, the sentiment around social media platforms and the influence of celebrities will further bridge the gap of collaboration. In essence, a progressive approach would ensure developmental growth and create a personalized experience for the audience.The global market forces are ready to accept the challenges and opportunities of new social media marketing and analytical trends. The good news is that you don’t have to bear this burden on your own. Follow us to remain competitive in the market and mark your name in the online realm.