As a newly graduate pursuing a career in the advertising and marketing industries, I’ve found a newfound love for the digital segment of the industry. Now when I say digital, you may think of social media or digital advertising but it goes beyond that. Innovation has led the industry to develop and utilize tools like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), content marketing, social media marketing and even my personal favorite, user interface and experience design (UI/UX). As practitioners in 2020, the digital marketing industry needs to invest in continuous research to predict any opportunities or trends that may be surfacing.
One major advantage the digital industry holds against all is the ability to continue operations during COVID-19 and even aid with services like Zoom or food/grocery delivery. This happens to be the first pandemic where the population has stable internet connectivity to continue their lives from home. Now the professionals at the Grazitti Interactive team predicted five trends organizations should capitalize and gain experience from during lockdown to maximize success.
Let’s review how these trends can aid businesses in not just staying afloat, but succeeding through 2020:
#1. INTERACTIVE CONTENT: Marketers are stating interactive content proves to be 93% more effective (23% more than static content) in ad success and retention. Some examples of this include 360-degree videos as seen on Facebook, shoppable posts promoting direct purchase through social media platforms, and quizzes/polls as available on Instagram stories or Twitter.
#2. AR/VR: This form of immersive technology is seen prominently on gaming platforms and even social media, through filters. Currently, AR/VR is still being experimented with in several organizations; companies utilizing this include Playstation VR, Oculus and Google Cardboard.
#3. NEW-BREED SEO: This trend refers to further developing SEO. Search organizations and several digital platforms are consistently updating their algorithms affecting search results. To continuously increase the conversion rate, it becomes important for the professionals to step in and implement proper research to stay on top of developing the most effective algorithm.
#4. SOCIAL COMMERCE: Marketers newly introduced the idea of merging eCommerce and social media to use social media platforms to directly shop for products. This is done through shoppable stories/posts, social commerce plugins/apps and social media advertising posts with CTAs to the product website.
#5. SMART BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS: Bidding on the Google platform for advertising through PPC was initially done manually. In 2020, it is expected for this to become automated.
As summarized by Social Media Today’s article, the sudden increased dependency we’ve placed on the internet will lead to several new trends emerging by the end of 2020. As marketing professionals, it becomes our job to go beyond daily operations to discover and plan for the future. These trends help us understand how to recruit and train our workforce so we don’t fall behind.