As a marketer, I am constantly researching trends, to understand the world of marketing, and there’s a lot. So, here’s my take on my favourite top six trends in 2020.
We all know that technology is massive in the marketing space today. Surprisingly, a lot of companies find it extremely difficult to transition to technology and digitisation or they place emphasis in the wrong places. It’s the new start-ups coming in with strong digital strategies that are gaining market share. We call this Digital Darwinism.
“Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behaviour when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened.” – Brian Solis
And so, with this Digital Darwinism we have to adapt. The methods of marketing are constantly changing, so here are some marketing tools to take into consideration for 2020.
1. The foundation
Let’s be honest, in any marketing environment, your brand foundations need to be great because that’s the initial attraction. Every marketer needs to think about the why. How are you helping people and adding value and why are you doing it? You need to understand and work towards your business goals. Once you’ve got these in place, make sure your technology is up-to-date, focus on personalising your brand, create an easy mobile experience, always have a consistent brand image, and be creative because this all adds up to the overall customer experience.
2. Customer experience
In amongst the digital age, people crave being individualised and having that human interaction. With digital we are able to know about peoples behaviours, what they like, where they go, their social circles, what they browse and look at and their interests.
Your competitive advantage is making your customer feel special so that they keep coming back because everyone else is trying to get it right as well. You can no longer tell people how great you are. Consumers figure it out for themselves. The differentiator is that when they do decide to use your product, you know who they are, you give them great service and you respond to them if they ever need you.
So mix your digital with the personal touch – send individualised messages, respond to them quickly and know who you’re talking to. Make sure that the sales and marketing teams work closely together so that you can create this seamless experience.
The main ingredients here are efficiency, knowledge and helpfulness.
3. Your brand ambassadors start at work
This is a step that lots of companies miss out on. It sounds about right that the main mission is getting sales but the most powerful way to do this is by investing in your employer experience. They need to want to make your business succeed as much as you do. So how do you create this? Knowledge, culture and their happiness. Make sure your employees are knowledgeable about the products and services that you offer. They need to know and live the values and culture. Focus on employee engagement because if they are happy, it will shine through and create great brand experience. They need to be your most important customers because they will be your voice through social media, word of mouth and client interaction.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being seen in more and more places. We can see that AI is taking over a few simple jobs already with a few apps, chatbots, user interaction and enhanced customisation through real-time data. This is also where the personal touch comes into play and this is how people keep their customers happy. For example, if we order food online, we need to know at what stage the food is at and when it will be ready. We need to see if there is time delay and we want to know why. If there are any problems or we want to rate the great service, this needs to be available and an immediate response just makes the experience that much better.
For marketers, AI is taking over the more statistical and data-driven work so that we can focus more on strategy, creativity and human interaction. Bots are definitely not taking over, they are just changing and enhancing the way we work.
5. Video marketing
People are 85% more likely to convert after watching a video about your brand. It’s a very powerful tool and is more likely to be shared than articles. If we look at any technique to try and convince a client or consumer, you’d much rather watch a three minute video about the company than go through another PowerPoint presentation or business proposal.
Less is more! Clients and customers will ask the questions that they want to know. People are also using mobile more so video is easy to consume on any platform as opposed to a big file or a longwinded email.
P.S Google ranks video higher than text.
6. Influencer marketing
This is hugely powerful – why? You’re attracting people through people that they relate to. Influencers have a huge, niche following. This immediately creates trust and it grows your audience. People want authenticity because we’re all bombarded with information all day long so we choose what we want to look at and who we want to listen to or follow. Thanks to our friend AI, the process is being made easier for brands to link up with the right influencers to market them and it’s doing this by eliminating spam and fake bots, facial recognition and determining influencer performance.
To sum this all up and make sense of our world today, in 2020 and as we go on, visual representation of your brand is so important because 65% of us are visual learners. Our brain processes visuals 60 000 times faster than text. So next time you’re putting together your marketing strategy or campaign, take a moment to go over these six marketing trends.
Written by : Nicola Fenn
Founder and Owner of The Reality Is Marketing Consulting