Welcome to the future! For years, people have been predicting how innovations in digital media, platforms and technology will shape marketing in 2020. And we can safely say that we are grateful enough to live in an era where technology has advanced to this point of sophistication. These cutting edge examples certainly show how far we have come since.

Shoppable Posts

Almost every business and company has invested a lot into their social media with a purpose of increasing brand awareness and connecting with their audiences. But what has been becoming a popular trend on social media is shopping on social media pages. 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product on the app. Even more surprising, a survey of more than 4,000 Pinterest users found that 70% use Pinterest to find new and interesting products. This in hand represents a tremendous opportunity for businesses to take advantage of. Whether you use Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram, there are now ways for e-commerce stores to create shoppable posts, making it easier for users to shop directly from your post.

Virtual And Augmented Reality

For many years, the technology behind virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) has been advancing at a steady pace.  What is surprising is that despite VR’s early start, AR is expected to surpass VR in popularity. Many big companies have already made use of these technologies. For example, Ikea is using AR that is integrated in an app that allows users to visualize what a piece of furniture would look like in their homes before they decide to make a purchase. It is because of these amazing capabilities that AR and VR are become a top trending marketing tactic. 

Interactive Content

Since content creation is already such a competition in the online space.
Many companies are always trying to make things more interesting for their customers. Today’s customers can be hard to capture just be creating content alone. They are constantly looking for new experiences and more interactivity.
A statistic of 91% of customers are keen on seeking more visual and interactive content. 3 reasons for being so are: 

Interactive content is more engaging and it stands out

Interactive content serves to keep visitors on your page longer

Interactive content is very shareable that allows for awareness to grow

Personalization

2020 is going to be the year of personalized marketing. Consumers are quite adept at tuning out generic ads that have no real connection to them. Accordingly, traditional means of advertising are becoming much less effective. So, what can be done? Personalize it!

In a survey of 1,000 people, 90% remarked that they found personalization appealing. More important for your business is the fact that 80% admitted they’d be more likely to give their business to a company that offered them a personalized experience.

Email lists are an old standby of marketers, and they lend themselves well to personalization. Segmented lists with personalized email blasts have been shown to perform than generic emails sent to an entire list. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.

Google Ads Smart Bidding

Those involved in digital marketing are already familiar with automation, but now Google has announced Google Ads updates that will likely lead to automation and smart bidding becoming the new normal.

Google Ads makes use of machine learning in order to optimize your bids. This gives you several new abilities to help you maximize your conversion, including:

• The ability to choose conversion action at the campaign level
• The ability to set your bids to change automatically when sales start or stop
• The ability to optimize bids over multiple campaigns with a chosen set of conversion actions

While there are a variety of new trends to keep your eye on, that doesn’t mean that all the old methods have become outdated. In fact, there are several marketing trends that have been big in the past and are expected to continue into 2020.

Video Content

Since the invention of the TV, video content has always been very popular in every part of the world. Humans in general are very visual beings and being customers, they respond well to visual content, making video an important digital marketing tool in 2019. It will definitely continue to be important into 2020 and likely beyond that. On a side note, never overlook the idea of live videos. Live video platforms such as Facebook Live and Instagram live are rising in trend as it keeps your audience watching 3 times longer than recorded ones. The daily watch time for Facebook Live videos have quadrupled in a single year, and they produce six times as many interactions as traditional videos.

Whether or not these trends may apply to the lives of most people, one things for sure. If your business doesn’t adapt to the ever changing and evolving technological landscape, it will fall out from the competition. If you’re eager to stay afloat and find out more about digital marketing, we have a page regarding tech trends that will help you beat the competition right here.