Top Digital Marketing Trends in 2020 [The Year of COVID-19 Recession]

The nationwide lockdowns and global financial recession caused by COVID-19 make it difficult for businesses from various industries to generate revenue. But the businesses cannot acquire customers and boost sales without running digital marketing campaigns. Many experts believe that the disruptions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic will contribute to boosting digital marketing in 2020.

“The coronavirus crisis may seem like a huge threat to businesses and jobs as well as health, but digital marketing may in fact take a great leap forward as a result of Covid 19.”

DigitalAgencyNetwork.com

But the COVID-19 recession will make many existing digital marketing trends obsolete and create many digital marketing trends. Businesses need to adopt emerging digital marketing trends to remain competitive and profitable during and after the COVID-19 recession.

23 Digital Marketing Trends in 2020 [The Year of COVID-19 Recession]

Interactive Content

While making digital marketing strategies, businesses often focus on creating content that is both relevant and engaging. But digital marketers need to focus now on keeping the content interactive. In addition to providing information to the consumers, the contents must be extremely shareable. The content writers have to focus on creating informative content that acts like click-to-actions. However, the content needs to target customers from varying age groups – generation X, generation Z, and Boomers.

Social Commerce

The nationwide lockdowns make consumers spend more digital media time on social networking platforms. Hence, the popular social networks create these days act as a source of information and a place for commerce. Digital marketers can easily boost digital sales by posting shoppable social media posts and ads. The shoppable content will enable customers to conduct pre-purchase research and place orders without visiting a website. However, businesses need to post shoppable ads and posts on multiple social networking platforms.

Alternative Social Networks

The latest social media statistics suggest that Facebook is still more popular than Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. But more and more people are spending more digital time on social networks like Facebook. Hence, a business can no longer promote social commerce by focusing extensively on Facebook. Hence, niche and alternative social networking platforms become one of the hottest digital marketing trends in 2020. Digital marketers have to focus on both popular and alternative social networks to enhance customer reach and boost sales conversion in the future.

Social Media Stories

Unlike social media posts, social media stories normally disappear after 24 hours. But social media stories are more effective than social media posts in catching the attention of consumers. Digital marketers will leverage social media stories as a robust digital marketing tool in 2020 to accomplish a variety of goals – increasing brand awareness, diverting more traffic to websites, and reaching a wider audience. The social media stories further help them to curtail social media advertising costs significantly.

New-Breed SEO

The search engine algorithm changes make digital marketers change their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy frequently. But the professionals now have to adopt new SEO techniques to improve a website’s search engine visibility and ranking. In addition to posting long-form content, the SEO professional must focus on implementing rich snippets. The rich snippets will help search engines understand the information conveyed by a web page clearly. Also, the searchers can access the rich snippet to collect relevant information without visiting the website.

Voice Search Optimization

While using a search engine, many searchers these days prefer saying the search queries aloud instead of typing the search queries. Hence, digital marketers cannot improve website conversion rates without complementing search engine optimization with voice search optimization. In addition to optimizing the website content for voice search, they need to focus on building voice search-optimized marketplaces. The next-generation digital marketplace will enable searchers to gather product information and place orders by giving voice commands.

Visual Search Optimization

Like voice search, visual search is gaining popularity among new-age searchers. Many searchers these days collect precise information by uploading images instead of typing search queries. Also, Pinterest has already launched visual search tools. Likewise, Google facilitated visual search by launching a visual search engine like Google Lens.  These visual search tools enable searchers to collect information by uploading photos and images. The brands must focus on visual search optimization in 2020 along with search engine optimization and voice search optimization.

Local Search Engine Marketing

The nationwide lockdowns caused by COVID-19 compel consumers to opt for local businesses and service providers. But they still search engines to gather information about local businesses and service providers. Hence, it becomes essential for digital marketers to focus extensively on local search engine marketing. While developing content and optimizing websites, they will promote products and services by targeting local customers. They will use SEO techniques to make the website rank higher on local search engine results.

Real-Time Ad Bidding

The financial recession caused by COVID-19 compels enterprises to curtail digital marketing budgets. Hence, digital marketers need to focus on targeting a more specific audience while bidding for ads. They can leverage artificial intelligence to automate the process of buying ads by targeting a more specific audience. AI technologies further help digital marketers reduce customer acquisition costs and increase conversion rates by implementing real-time ad bidding or programmatic ad buying.

Immersive Technologies

Many enterprises have already started experimenting with immersive technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality (VR). With consumers using AR and VR on a regular basis, digital marketers have to focus on leveraging these immersive technologies to promote three-dimensional thinking. Many marketers believe that AR is more effective than VR in driving sales and improving consumer experience. But digital marketers need to use AR to create real-time ads and VR to make social media more interactive.

Chatbots

Many customers these days prefer interacting with chatbots to get relevant information by asking many questions. In addition to facilitating customer service automation, chatbots will become an integral part of next-generation digital marketing campaigns. Digital marketers will use AI-powered chatbots as a marketing tool to convey real-time and personalized information to consumers and website visitors. They will further leverage chatbots to run digital marketing campaigns 24 hours a day.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the digital marketing trends that will not be impacted by the COVID-19 lockdown and recession hugely. A large percentage of customers will access product videos while conducting pre-purchase research and share the videos of popular brands. Hence, businesses will continue to share information and boost sales conversion by distributing video clips. However, they need to create 360⁰ video content and broadcast live videos, while optimizing the videos for popular search engines.

Vlogs

At present, many customers prefer video blogs to short films and explainer videos to access information in a direct and personal way. Unlike product and explainer videos, vlogs form a more direct and personal connection with the audience. The massive popularity of vlogs makes them a popular digital marketing tool to form and sustain customer relationships. More and more businesses will post vlogs in 2020 to engage customers and convey the desired message in a personalized way. Many businesses will form relationships with customers by live-streaming events and showing behind-the-scene aspects.

Personalized and Interactive Emails

As an effective digital marketing channel, emails have been helping businesses to drive sales conversions. But the businesses can no longer boost sales by sending newsletters and plain-text emails to customers. They need to focus on keeping recipients interested and engaged by sending personalized emails. Also, they need to persuade recipients to click on a link or take the desired action by replacing plain-text links with stylish buttons and stunning visuals.

Direct Messaging

With consumers using instant messaging apps to access information and resolve issues, it is time for digital marketers to increase conversion rates by sending direct messages (DM). They further need to leverage the options provided by popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook to enable customers to switch from direct messages to telephonic conversations.  They can further persuade customers to place orders using DM as a channel for sending coupon codes and exclusive deals to customers.

Influencer Marketing

A significant percentage of consumers trust influencers’ opinions and messages more than the content distributed by brands. Hence, businesses will promote their brands and products through the word-of-mouth of influencers. They will collaborate with bloggers, vloggers, YouTubers, and social media celebrities instead of running ads featuring movie stars. Many digital marketers will leverage AI to find and collaborate with the right influencer with genuine followers across social networks.

Content Marketing

In addition to reducing digital marketing costs, content marketing helps businesses to generate more leads. Hence, content marketing will remain one of the top digital marketing trends in 2020. Small businesses and startups will include blogs on their websites to generate more leads. They will need to have a content strategy and content calendar as per their budget. Here are some interesting ways to generate interesting blog post ideas for creating a great content calendar. Likewise, established businesses will focus on creating well-researched content and updating their existing blogs to attract new customers and build customer relationships. The high-quality content will help businesses to drive both search engine and social media conversions.

Long Form Content

While creating and publishing content, the business has to target both search engines and their audiences. Major search engines these days encourage digital marketers and content creators to generate long-form content. A business can divert search engine traffic to its website and generate more backlinks only by posting blogs or articles that are over 3000 words long. While creating content, bloggers or content writers must explain various concepts and topics elaborately. Likewise, they will spend more time on creating content that attracts search engine traffic, increases social media sharing, and reduced website bounce rate.

User Generated Content

Businesses cannot attract millennials and next-generation consumers without leveraging user-generated content (UGC). They will persuade existing customers to create and share content by offering discounts and incentives. Digital marketers can easily create brand awareness and influence consumers’ buying decisions by including relevant hashtags in the UGC. However, digital marketers will focus on persuading users or consumers to create content in a variety of formats – images, videos, blog posts, testimonials, reviews, and blog comments.

Streaming Video Ads

“Netflix has seen subscriber numbers surge this year, as lockdowns around the world keep people at home where they want to be entertained.”

BBC.com

The surge in demand for streaming creates opportunities for digital marketers to engage consumers through streaming video ads. But they cannot keep the consumers engaged without creating innovative video ads. Digital marketers will find it challenging to create video ads for popular streaming platforms. They have to experiment with various scripts, styles, and tones to create streaming video ads that persuade customers to take the desired action.

Privacy Marketing

“Seventy-six percent of consumers would share their information to receive personalized offers based on location, like discounts from retailers.”

BusinessInsider.com

But consumers focus extensively on the security of their personal data while sharing the information with businesses and service providers. Often data breaches and security attacks make businesses pay hefty penalties and lose the trust of customers. In addition to addressing the privacy and data security concerns of consumers, digital marketers will focus on earning the trust of customers.

Empathy Based Marketing

Many brands already leverage empathy-based marketing or empathetic marketing to boost campaign conversion rates by connecting with and engaging customers in an authentic way. The approach makes digital marketing empathetic in a number of ways – understanding the customers, listening to the customers, and creating relevant offers. It does not require decision-makers to focus on specific marketing channels. Instead, the approach requires them to customize the campaigns by understanding the needs, expectations, and pain points of customers.

You can check out this article about emotional marketing for more information.

Seamless Omni-channel Marketing

No business can survive the COVID-19 recession without integrating multiple digital marketing channels – apps, blogs, social media, search engines, and emails. They need to focus on connecting and communicating with customers at many touchpoints. But the digital marketers cannot keep consumer experience consistent across multiple marketing channels without delivering the desired message seamlessly. The businesses will leverage AI technologies and invest in sophisticated SaaS tools to integrate multiple digital marketing channels seamlessly.

Digital marketing trends change from time to time. But the global financial recession caused by COVID-19 will create new digital marketing trends in 2020. Entrepreneurs and digital marketers cannot survive the recession without adopting emerging digital marketing trends proactively. However, they must keep their digital marketing strategies dynamic to experiment with the top digital marketing trends in 2020.