Nate Masterson
Table of Contents
Over the last year or so, Instagram changed the marketing game big time. Instagram is quickly catching up to Facebook as the social media site that attracts the most traffic. Instagram has a sleek design and plenty of great ways to market your business. You could use PPC ads, utilize the daily story feature, and take advantage of ad features within a story. If you’re looking for a new way to reach out to your potential customers, Instagram could be it.
Personlization & Influencing
When it comes to marketing trends, some are more prominent than others and will likely dominate the market in the upcoming years.
Personlization
Personalization is an increasing trend in internet marketing and refers to sending out special messages like e-mails targeting individual consumers based on factors like the links they clicked, search terms, and their purchase history. This is present anywhere from Facebook to Netflix which completely personalizes your screen based on your watch history.
Influencer marketing
Another popular trend is called influencer marketing. With the popularization of marketing on Instagram and Youtube in the last few years, an increasing number of so-called “influencers” – popular individuals distinguished in a particular field and sponsored by brands – is present on social media. These people are popular with younger audiences who dominate social media and trust and follow them. In this strategy, focus is shifted from the general market to these individuals – a strategy that is increasingly popular due to its potency and cost-efficiency.
Other trends
Other rising trends in internet marketing include the implementation of AI (artificial intelligence) in tracking and identifying user searches to more precisely target them with offers and blockchain solutions (praised for their safety and transparency).
Mirta Jarnjak
Brooks Manley
Uniqueness of content
The biggest internet marketing trend I see that must be kept top of mind is uniqueness of content. Good content is crucial for internet marketing, but there are countless blogs, articles, and infographics on every subject imaginable. To stand out in 2020, content must be unique and exceedingly valuable to the reader.
For example, “5 Tips for Driving Traffic” probably won’t stand out in today’s landscape. But “3 Case Studies On Unconventional Ways to Increase Your Traffic By 100% This Year (And Exactly How to Do It)” might get some clicks.
Skyscraper articles
There is a big change currently happening in online content marketing towards skyscraper and evergreen type articles rather than basic 500-word blog posts that meet SEO bare minimums.
The Skyscraper Technique [comes from] Brian Dean of backlink.io who recommends the following method:
- Find the top ranking article in your niche.
- Make it much better. So if the top article is a “Top 10” type article, then make it a “Top 50” article, or if it’s a 2015-era article, create a [2020]-era article.
- Use an SEO tool such as SEMRush or Ahrefs to identify which websites gave a backlink to the original article and contact them to inform them you have a similar but improved article.
Emmanuel Frost
Kent Lewis
Voice search
#1 Internet Marketing Trend: Boost visibility and credibility via Voice Search
Digital assistants on mobile devices will continue to dramatically affect the way consumers search in 2018. According to ComScore, 40 percent of adults use voice search once per day. Twenty percent of searches are currently voice-related, which means they are likely to trigger a position 0 result (particularly on devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa). That means local/location-based retailers must rank in the “near me” searches while larger national brands should aim to own answers to common industry questions as thought leadership strategy.
Owing position 0 means you’ve doubled your real estate in select organic searches. Not only that, but on voice-enabled devices like Google Home, position 0 is the ONLY answer/result. That means you are more likely to get a new customer now or in the future.
Home assistant devices
While some existing strategies will continue to be widely used in 2020—including influencer marketing on social platforms, guest blogging, giveaways, and event promotions connected to charitable causes—there are some new approaches that are quickly gaining traction. Foremost, we’ll start to see more use of marketing and advertising on home assistant devices (leveraging the steadily increasing use of Alexa and Siri), as well as within the broader catalog of voice-activated devices in smart homes and offices.
In the same technological vein, influencer marketing will take another form as online and social ‘celebrities’ make regular use of live, streaming videos. And wherever technology allows businesses to create a personal, authentic touch, marketing will follow. We’ve already seen this in the rise of chatbot communications and will see it in other forms as well, as email marketing becomes more sophisticated and websites are developed to anticipate user interest and update in real time to address those interests.
Jeff Steen
Stacy Caprio
Facebook ads
A huge internet marketing trend right now is Facebook ads. Unfortunately, the fact that it is a trend makes it more expensive as more and more companies pour dollars into the platform increasing prices for everyone. It is also less targeted than traditional methods such as Google ads that allow you to target active searchers as opposed to demographics. However, it can be effective in many cases.
Individual communication
Businesses should focus on individual communication. This has becomes the trend since most customers or consumers want personalized, firsthand experience with the brand or service provider. That’s why chatbots are becoming popular these days and should be expected to replace costumer service in the near future.
Ulysis Cababan
Jenna Erickson
Voice user interface
A huge trend right now in digital marketing is optimizing SEO for VUI’s (voice user interface). While people typically use Siri, Alexa, or Google Home (all VUIs) to find information about time, news, weather, or music, people are starting to use them to find more intelligent answers. For example, someone might ask Alexa to find the best breakfast restaurant near them, and the search engine has to quickly deliver the most accurate and easy-to-find answer.
Voice-based interfaces, like Siri and Alexa, are making brands find a new marketing SEO strategy to ensure that the device can find the correct information, since there is no visual component. Typically, a customer using a voice search is looking for a direct answer, which means that brands need to create content that directly answers conversational questions. Incorporating long-tail keywords in your content will also help with voice search inquiries. An easy way to incorporate this is by including an FAQ section on your website.
Lastly, while Google Home, of course, uses Google’s search engine, Siri and Alexa use Bing, which means that brands should be focusing their SEO on not only Google, but Bing’s search engine as well.
Video, speed, AR/VR
The top three trends I see are:
Video
More video and smart content to improve the user experience, the more personalized the better.
Speed matters
When your site loads, it does not have to just be mobile-friendly but it better be quick, too. Consumers do not like to wait, under 3 seconds max.
AR and VR
When used strategically, AR and VR are a big competitive advantage to accelerate the sales cycle with your customers so use it to help them answer questions and buy.
Paige Arnof-Fenn
Samantha Demers
I’m a Co-Founder of Dream 100 Done For You with experience in internet marketing.
Multi-channel marketing
The trend I am seeing is that most forward-thinking businesses are developing a multi-channel approach to reaching their ideal clients.They are combining their online marketing efforts with offline, good old-fashioned direct mail. This is hands-down the number one way to stand out in the over-saturated online marketing space.
Niche influencers
Big internet marketing trends right now include influencer marketing with micro-influencers. People are starting to see a $7 ROI for every $1 spent when working with influencer marketing and especially in the targeted micro-influencer follower numbers because these influencers have specific niches with passionate followers.
Brands are starting to look at working with more niche and more “real” influencers now than the bigger celebrity or celebrity-like influencers who have 2M followers and have a team working on their blog posts, photos, and hair and make-up daily.
Susana Yee
Andrew Ruditser
SEO, tracking, social, and content
Search Engine Optimization
This internet marketing strategy is used to help our clients’ businesses succeed by increasing their websites’ metrics. Internet marketers are using SEO by creating content that works well with search engines, in hopes of making their website higher up on the search page and getting it in front of their competitors. With a more visible web page, we hope that our clients reach more of an audience and gain more customers.
Tracking market data
One of the most beneficial outcomes of internet marketing is that you can measure your data. With the use of SEO tools, we can track important metrics to see whether our client’s business is succeeding or failing. This includes their website traffic, their ROI, their keywords and more. This is important because you can see which marketing strategies are working for your website and which are not. Once we figure out the problem, we can figure out a solution and track to see what brings our client better results.
Social media marketing
Because social media has become one of our main sources of communication, it is extremely important to make sure you are marketing your company or brand on these social sites. Social media is one of the best ways to market your company because it is cheap and easy. With the use of social media, you can share and communicate with your customers directly through posts, comments, direct message, etc. Because people are constantly scrolling through their social media sites throughout their day, it is also much easier to catch their attention when sharing your content.
Content marketing
Content marketing is important because this is where you attract your audience by sharing information about your brand. It is also important to keep your content unique to catch their attention. What makes you different? Why are you better than your competitors? Here is where you find your purpose as a company/brand and how you make yourself stand out to your customers.
Video content
Marketing via video content is a current trend that has taken over the use of images, and its relevance will still be upheld in the near future. The best thing about the strategy is that it is easily explainable – people are visual creatures, and it’s easier and faster to watch a product review for example, than to read one.
Besides, I think that there is a possibility that soon there will be updates on search engine algorithms due to the tons of different types of content produced. For example, currently, Google bots only scan the text content surrounding a video. However, I think that this will change, and video content will be crawled directly. Apart from this, the live translations will also trend in the near future. My point is- don’t just focus on the YouTube channel. Try to make the most of other opportunities provided by Facebook, Instagram, etc., such as video posts, live broadcasts, and so on.
Oksana Chyketa
David Reischer
.com domains
The rollout of new domain extensions for marketing purposes has failed miserably and marketers now realize that a domain extension that does not end in .com will perform poorly. This marketing trend will continue as internet marketers recognize the importance of a .com domain name when doing business on the Internet.
Visual search
While voice search gets all the attention these days (thanks to advances in smart home technology and mobile assistants like Siri), visual search is poised to see record growth this year. With visual search, consumers can simply take a picture with their smartphone and upload it to a search engine like Pinterest to quickly find that product for purchase online, or find products to compliment a general aesthetic they are going for.
Pinterest has really pioneered this form of search, but Google will be close behind, with its already vast index of images. What internet marketers, and especially e-commerce retailers, can take away from this trend is the importance of integrating high-quality product images throughout their website and making those images pinable on Pinterest and indexable for Google. This will open up a much higher potential reach for searches of their products.
The online marketing community has been all abuzz about how lengthy voice searches are compared to traditional search, BUT, as they say, a picture is worth 1000 words!
Natalia Wulfe
Sadi Khan
I am the Internet Marketing Manager at RunRepeat.com, the biggest source of sports shoe reviews on the web. With more than a decade’s experience in online marketing, I believe staying in tune with all the latest marketing trends and developments is the only way to survive and thrive in today’s world.
Local, smart speakers, mobile, chat bots
I believe the following trends will shape the future of internet marketing in the year 2020.
Local search will grow
According to a recent report by Google, there is a whopping 150% growth in “near me” searches on Google. These are users searching for local businesses, restaurants, gas stations, etc. near their locations. Dress-related local searches saw 600% growth and automotive-related “near me” searches received 200% growth. Almost 50% of all searches on Google have local intent.
In the coming year, we will see more local businesses realizing the importance of turning towards local search optimization.
Smart speakers and voice search will take the center stage
Another type of search that is quickly gaining ground is voice search. A couple of years ago, ComScore predicted that 50% of all searches will be voice search by year 2020. It is turning out to be true as voice search grows bigger and bigger. A Brightlocal study suggests that 53% of people owning smart speakers perform voice searches on a daily basis. In the coming years, we will see voice search and devices like smart speakers taking the center stage.
Mobile-first will no longer be an option
Mobile first is not a new trend, but 2020 will be the year when mobile-first approach becomes mainstream. Google has finally rolled out mobile-first indexing, so mobile friendliness and speed optimization is no longer an option. It is an absolute must.
Online businesses and websites need to adapt or lose their rankings to competitors with more mobile-friendly websites.
Chat-bots and social media diversification
Facebook continues to face challenges like privacy laws and the loss of users. Plus, the recent algorithm changes have seriously affected the engagement rate for business pages. It is still the biggest social media platform, with YouTube not far behind.
What’s most interesting in social media space is the growing popularity of chatting or messaging apps like FB messenger, WeChat, and WhatsApp. 2020 will see more and more business communicating and serving their customers directly through chat-bots.
AI, voice, influencers
AI-focused Lead Sorting, Filtering, and Progression
We have already seen what AI can do to build effective and intelligent lead qualification systems. In the coming time, we will see AI coming of age with crucial information being extracted from the pits of customer-touchpoint interactions, which happen all the time via website, social, and third-party websites. Marketing automation software is changing the landscape of how leads are increasingly being converted into customers based on insightful data analytics, and how this space evolves is exciting and worth watching.
Voice search SEO on Personal Digital Assistants
With the mass adoption of and love for personal digital assistants, home and voice search SEO will cause massive disruption in the way marketers do SEO now. As people’s expectations of rapid search results are delivered as soon as they utter the word, what remains to be seen is how the industry caters to them with crisp, easily-digestible, and structured snippets of information.
Targeted Influencer Marketing
There are different influencers in the market, and the key differentiator would be who suits your demands for the right audience. There are nano to micro to macro-influencers serving different demographics and generating different trust levels. Businesses must understand how to target the right influencers to get to the right audience.
Ketan Kapoor
Gregory Golinski
Video marketing
A big trend is video marketing becoming more and more important. YouTube is the second greatest search engine in the world after Google, after all, and 80% of the world’s internet traffic will be video by 2021, according to a study by Cisco.
Businesses will need to produce high-quality videos and distribute them online to be able to compete.
Employer Branding with Social Media Company Career Pages
Many companies are utilizing social media and effective career pages as part of their marketing strategy. Successful branding campaigns are becoming more popular on Facebook and Instagram, reaching current and prospective employees alike.
Social media is the most popular way for companies to promote their brand and used this to their advantage to create a culture of company pride. These employer branding campaigns communicate the employment experience by sharing employee testimonials and profiles from staff members across the globe.
In addition to establishing themselves as an employer of choice, these efforts have also translated into additional sales, as more and more people are interested in taking their business to a conscientious and transparent company.
Samuel Meyers
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