As we kick off a new year in digital marketing, new trends are emerging. Whether you’re a small business owner of a digital marketing agency or a social media manager at a local firm , it’s important to stay on top of the latest trends to ensure a successful year ahead. Virtually every business engages in digital marketing in some way, shape, or form. Here’s how you can make sure you have a killer digital marketing strategy for the upcoming year.
What Is Digital Marketing and Why Is It Important?
Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. When a business leverages digital channels to connect with their target audience, this is referred to as digital marketing. There are many digital outlets for businesses to promote their products or services, including the following:
- Websites
- Search Engines
- Video Marketing
- Landing Pages
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
Why should your business care about digital marketing? Simple—we live in a digital age. Your customers are online, and if you’re just using traditional marketing tactics like print ads, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to reach potential customers. Plus, with digital marketing, you can use tools like Google Analytics to monitor the success and ROI of your campaigns.
How to Improve Your Lead Generation Strategy With Digital Marketing
The digital age has changed the way we do business. Whether they are browsing the web or scrolling through their social feed, customers are always online. It’s important for businesses to keep up with the demands of prospects by building a stellar online presence. The following are great lead generation tactics to incorporate into your digital marketing strategy:
- Content Marketing. Developing a content strategy and regularly publishing high-quality content will help you tremendously in acquiring new business. Publishing thought leadership pieces, blog posts, and other types of content helps you gain credibility and establish trust with readers. Engaging readers may turn them into customers; in fact, 47 percent of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO Services). Having a nice website is one thing, but having a conversion-focused website is another. Optimizing your website and following SEO best practices will ensure that your business is found online more than your competitors, helping you to generate leads.
- Leverage Paid Social. In addition to your website, social media presents another huge opportunity for marketers to connect with potential customers. In order to generate leads on social media, you must invest time and effort into building an engaged audience. To gain a following, you may need to leverage paid social ads on Facebook, Linked, Instagram, etc.
Looking Back at Digital Marketing Trends in 2019
As we look ahead into 2020, it’s also important to look back at the last year and review what happened. Digital marketing changes are always evolving, and some of the trends from 2019 will carry into 2020.
Content Is Still King
Content has been an important component of digital marketing for years now, and 2019 was no exception. It was more apparent than ever in 2019 that literally any business can benefit from content marketing. With the right digital strategy in place that supports SEO and the talented writers to write high-quality pieces of educational content, there is no limit to what businesses can achieve with content marketing.
Not only is consistent, high-quality content, an important factor in search engine ranking, it also makes you a credible source for information. Potential customers are more likely to trust you if they can see how much knowledge you have on various topics in your particular industry.
Email Marketing and Automation
If you are a B2B marketer, having a process for cold calling can change the face of your business. If this process involves email automation? Even better. Using rules-based automation, you can improve the relevance, timing, and personalization of your emails to prospects. Plus, your sales team can focus on what they do best—talking on the phone. Automation takes the worry and guesswork out of sales and helps you stay top of mind with potential customers.
The Power of Data-Driven Marketing
Big data analysis was huge in 2019. Using predictive analysis in digital marketing often requires a larger budget, but the use of these tools and insights can help marketers to identify patterns in their different strategies. They can see how a campaign contributes to conversions, consumer behavior, regional preferences, creative preferences, and more. This is beneficial because then marketers can use their findings to improve the customer experience and increase conversions.
LinkedIn Grew in Importance
For B2B marketers, LinkedIn’s importance grew even more in 2019. There are 562 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide across LinkedIn, this makes LinkedIn a great place to connect with other business executives who could be potential customers for your business. Social media experts can lend their efforts to help you connect with the right people across LinkedIn. Growing your network will help you generate more leads and increase ROI.
Digital Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2020
While 2019 was an important year in digital marketing, 2020 will be filled with even more changes that have the potential to impact your business. Here are some of the digital marketing trends you won’t want to ignore in 2020.
Conversational Marketing
Today, customers are busy and want answers to their questions quickly. For this reason, conversational marketing is becoming more important for marketers who want to increase their conversion rates. Advanced technology has made it possible for marketers to use conversational marketing to drive conversions and improve engagement. If you don’t have a live support or chatbot feature on your site yet, it should be on your to-do list for 2020.
Interactive Content Marketing
It’s no surprise that in 2020, content still reigns supreme. But, as time goes on, customer experience is becoming more and more important. What are you incorporating into your content to engage readers? To make your content more interactive, you can use videos, infographics, call to actions, quizzes, and more. If you want your content to be remembered by users, make sure you’re getting creative in 2020.
Voice Search
Voice search has already been introduced to the market, but it will continue to grow and become even more prominent in 2020. Voice shows no signs of slowing down, and it will have a major influence on how brands create content and market themselves online. For example, the Tide Stain Remover skill (available on Alexa) provides users with detailed, step-by-step voice instructions on removing over 200 types of stains.
Even if your brand isn’t ready for smart speaker advertising, it’s important that your content is optimized for voice search. Voice searchers ask for what they’re looking for differently than web searchers. You don’t type the same way that you speak. People who are talking use longer, more conversational search queries. Altering your content to serve the needs of voice searches will help you stay relevant as voice search becomes more prominent.
Key Digital Marketing Trends From 2020
Things didn’t exactly go according to plan in 2020. Many companies put their ambitious digital marketing plans on the back burner when the COVID-19 pandemic hit because it was more important to stay afloat than to grow. However, as the months went by, it became clear that digital marketing was one of the best ways to connect with quarantined consumers. Browsing a company’s website became the new way to “visit” their business, and connecting with consumers on social media became more important than ever.
The pandemic changed how consumers and businesses buy, and those changes may persist far into the future. One of the biggest takeaways from 2020 is that digital marketing is a vital sales method for businesses, and learning how to meet consumers’ needs is invaluable. The companies that catered content to their clients’ needs and quickly responded to their queries succeeded the most in 2020.
What To Expect in 2021
The global pandemic may have set us back in 2020, but that doesn’t mean 2021 can’t be a year of growth. As we continue to navigate an unprecedented global crisis, many companies seek new ways to engage with consumers digitally. Here are some of the trends you can look forward to in 2021:
- A focus on high-quality content: Search engines care less about keywords in 2021 and more about high-quality content. Companies should focus on what users need from them and release content accordingly.
- Increased personalization: Consumers don’t want to feel like just another sale. They want a personalized experience tailored to their needs. Digital marketers are picking up on this trend and using analytics to deliver custom marketing experiences.
- Chatbots and conversational marketing: If you take too long to answer a potential customer’s question, they might turn to a competitor. Consumers want quick resolution, and chatbots make that possible.
- Automation: As technology becomes more advanced, digital marketers are automating more and more tasks.
- Short-form videos: Video-sharing platforms are all the rage, and social media platforms are focusing more on short-form videos. Many marketers are capitalizing on this trend by using short videos as a marketing tool.
Keep Up With Digital Marketing Trends to Attract Qualified Leads
Now is the time to start planning your digital marketing strategy if you haven’t already. If you are ignoring some of the most important digital marketing trends, you could be missing out on huge lead generation opportunities. With a clear plan and set goals in place, you can achieve great things with digital marketing this year.
Are you ready to generate more traffic and attract qualified leads with digital marketing? Look to the experts at Abstrakt Marketing Group. Contact us today to learn more about our services.
