5 Digital Marketing Trends For 2020

It's always important to stay on top of the latest digital marketing trends. 2020 promises to bring even greater innovation, so don't get left behind.

In this article we'll give you our top 5 digital marketing trends for the coming year. Everything from increased automation, personalisation and the rise of voice (or not?).

1. Customer Experience And The Importance Of Retention

CMOs have long known that it costs a lot more to find and win a customer than it does to keep him. Yet retention has often been overlooked compared to the more glamourous tasks of advertising and sales.

In 2020, retention will be back in focus.

By focusing on the entire customer journey (rather than stopping at the checkout) companies will see their acquisition costs fall. And happy customers can lead to more sales anyway (via advocacy, testimonials and reviews).

Smart companies will also use (big) data to identify customer issues and increase retention rates.

2. The Rise (Or Fall?) Of Voice Search

It seems like every one of these lists for the last 10 years has featured some variant of "XXXX will be the year of voice search".

So how about 2020? Is this the year voice search takes over? Or the year it goes the way of MySpace, Google Glass and virtual reality headsets?

The answer is... a bit of both! The key is to identify what voice search is good for, and what it isn't. Voice is great for getting quick, unambiguous answers to simple questions when you've got your hands full:

• Hey Google, what's the capital of Argentina?
• Hey Siri, what is 500g in ounces?

However, it's less useful in other areas. How many times have you tried to turn the volume down on a movie, or skip to a particular point in a YouTube video (when it would be far easier with a good old-fashioned mouse or remote control)?

3. The End Of Black And Grey Hat SEO

Stop trying to "game" Google. Google is smarter than you. And Google only cares about making a world-class search product (it makes around $40b per QUARTER from its search function).

SEO is not dead. Not by a long way. There will always be a need for great web content. And you should always ensure your pages are well optimised in terms of appropriate headings, titles and snippets (which make things easier and more useful for readers).

But the days of murky practices like "link building" and "keyword stuffing" are long dead. Google isn't stupid. If there was a loophole to game SEO, it would have been closed ages ago.

Just focus on writing engaging, authoritative content laid out in a user friendly way.

4. A Return To Humanity

The tech revolution hasn’t been all positive; we’ve moved too far away from “humanity”

People are fed up with chatbots and automated helpdesks, when all they want is to speak to a human being. And they are fed up with reading soulless, over-optimised, AI-driven marketing copy on everything from blogs to product descriptions to social media profiles.

The future of content marketing in 2020 is back-to-basics. Writing like a human being rather than a content farm or an automated text generator. And writing for human beings rather than for search engines or web scrapers.

Copy writers who can write in a personal, authentic, human voice will be the ones to stand out in 2020.

5. Transparency, Integrity & Values

2020 will see a return to "old fashioned" principles like integrity and a profound respect for the customer.

Customers are waking up to concerns over privacy and the use of data. They expect more than just a pro forma GDPR policy pop-up.

The best way to put them at ease is to be completely transparent. Let them know exactly how you plan to use their data (if at all). If they have any queries, answer them directly (rather than just directing them to an FAQs page). Put the customer first, in everything you do.

If you'd like to discuss how we approach digital marketing for our clients, please get in touch.