Where will digital marketing be in a year from now?

Where will digital marketing be in a year from now?

Persuasive communication and the means in which messages are delivered has come a long way, advancing with each passing year.  In the last 10 years alone we have seen trends come, evolve and acclimatized to what the consumer has responded to. Effective marketers have adapted a mindset which must constantly ask, how best they can serve their customers and how they can appeal to them because, the customer and their emotions are, or should be, the focal point of any successful marketing strategy. To predict what trends will build momentum into the next year, we need to look at the ones which have already captivated the audiences they reach while influencing them to commit to an action.

Online presence as a necessity, not a luxury

With everything online and at our fingertips, it’s pushed smaller organizations that may not have had an online presence to look into developing one.  A year from now will see companies vying for a spot at the top because that is where you’d find the best-ranked websites.  If it’s been a challenge before, it will not be getting any easier going forward.  Why?  Because companies have woken up to the fact that having an impressive online presence is more a necessity than it is a luxury. 

Within the scheme of building a presence online, is blogging which has become apart of an SEO strategy because it allows for higher ranking higher by adding keywords that searchers enter into Google. Information that is unique to anything that is already out there is essential.  SEO tools like Ubersuggest and SEMRush have been created to assist digital marketers in their endeavours to reach the top.  How?  Tools like these answer the questions every digital marketing team needs to be answering.  They do the arduous job of collating the stats that are either harming or helping your marketing efforts.  Things like backlinks, keywords and website ranking, are the kinds of stats that are game changers in content creation.   Where everyone’s eyes were opened in the last 5 years to the revelation that “Content is King,” in the next year, we will see how marketers will use that revelation to develop the kind of content that trumps the competition. We currently already see this in motion.  SEO tools that are able to generate keywords that the competition uses allow you to be able to compete at their level. 

Personalized marketing to the 9’s

We see it already as some brands get it right much quicker than others.  This is the aspect to marketing which could either make a customer feel like a nameless person in the crowd, or an individual; because whether you care to admit it or not, everyone wants to feel special.  There is, therefore, added value in positioning your marketing to speak to the customer as if they were the only customer in the world because that evokes a human connection that fosters trust and loyalty over time which then will translate to conversions.  In action, it’s more than an email with the name of the customer you’re emailing, but rather finding ways to answer the questions that customers need to be answered, to provide entirely personalized customer service.  This is not an easy feat to achieve and according to a report done by ascend2, it is trickier than content marketing, SEO and email marketing. Why?  Because it’s about sending out the right kind of message to the right audience, at the optimal time they are able to receive it, on the preferred device or platform they want to receive it on.

A brand that is pioneering the way in behavioural targeting, is Amazon.  With the impressive amount of data at their disposal, they are able to deliver data-powered messages in real-time.  So where other brands may send an email about their product offerings and sales, Amazon has at its fingertips, powerful algorithms that personalize your homepage with tailor-made product recommendations that are based on your search history and purchase record.

Seeing that 86% of customers say that personalized marketing has more impact on what they purchase and a quarter who say that personalization influences their purchasing decisions (according to a survey by Infosys); it’s safe to say that in the next year brands will be aiming to perfect their own personalization efforts.

Video marketing

Facebook has dominated the social media scene, there is no doubt about that.  Their reach by far is and will be ever-increasing if they continue to appeal to the needs of their vast audiences.  However, video apps are on the rise. 

Tik Toc, a video app launched in 2014 by Alex Zhu and Lulu Yang, formally named Music.ly metamorphosed into a global phenomenon; available in 150 countries with 1 billion users. Attracting as well as creating influencers worldwide with a target audience between the ages of 13 – 30;  its 15-second video and musical appeal, has increased follower engagement growing the app’s popularity exponentially.  It is a new and innovative way to share content, and because it appeals to the senses of sound and sight it has a stronger and more personal emotional connection potential. It is said that their demographic age will age upwards soon. Their vision is to create something that is simple, imitable and suspenseful and from 2020 to 2021 we will see companies using this platform to do just that with their own brands.

A well-known company that has incorporated a Tik Tok strategy into its digital marketing ventures is Chipotle.  Chipotle is an American fast, casual restaurant with a Mexican theme with chains around the world.  In Aug 2019 their #GuacDance challenge urged followers and fans to showcase their dance moves dedicated to avocado’s resulting in a whopping 250 000 video submissions and 430 million video starts – this in only ….wait for it ….6 days!  Stats which made it the highest performing branded challenge in the US – proving that a solid well-thought-out Tik Tok campaign can leave an indelible impact.

Staying relevant and on-trend should be every organization’s digital marketing team’s plan of action.  Staying ahead of the trends, however, catapults you into a league of your own. 

Here at JDC, we are committed to providing you with the necessary tools you and your business need to set you up for online success.  When you speak, we listen, and deliver top-quality digital marketing services so that you don’t have to worry about the nitty-gritty involved in the industry, allowing you to focus on whatever you need to so that we can secure a return on your digital investment.