Online marketing is one of the integral parts of any advertising activity. Creating a strategy and considering a budget, advertisers always add this direction and invest a significant amount of money into it. Due to the development of the Internet and the growing popularity of various devices, digital marketing becomes one of the major advertising options. Let’s look, which trends are likely to prevail in 2020.
Forecasts for 2020
In order to understand, which channels, methods, and technologies will be effective in 2020, it is necessary to analyze the situation in 2018 and 2019. Considering the current trends, we can conclude that the key thing in marketing in recent years is the right choice of a marketing channel.
A marketing channel is a venue, way or source, which is used by a brand for the promotion of a product or service. There are dozens of channels, which are used today. Any of them usually requires either time or money investments. Some of them demand both. Consider popular digital marketing channels, which are used today:
- email marketing
- cold email
- transactional email
- live chat
- opt-in forms & lead magnets
- blogs or other websites
- guest posting
- app advertisements
- Instagram/YouTube/blogs influencers
- streaming ads
- sponsored spots
- podcasting
- social profiles/groups, etc.
The choice of channels depends on the types of your business, features of your audience, and finally, modern trends.
Now we are going to observe, which digital marketing channels are going to work for you in 2020 and why:
- Content marketing. It is one of the “good old” directions, which is still on top. People seem to always pay attention to the content. Customers value useful and high-quality content, which can give them full, interesting, helpful, and relevant information on products/services or their application. The usage of content marketing requires lots of experience due to the necessity to apply special tools and strategies. This marketing trend concerns the creation and distribution of various content including text, videos, images, emails, etc. Your goal as a marketer is to attract a definite type of audience. Moreover, it should be able to convince customers to fulfill a certain action (to buy, to subscribe, to visit a website, to download an app, and so on). Content marketing helps achieve multiple goals if applied in the right way. Besides, this method of advertising is cost-effective. The experts claim that it takes 62% fewer investments compared to any other form of promotion. For the usage of CM, it is important to look closely at your audience and study every feature of your potential customers. You need to understand their needs, desires, tastes, interests, as well as their general characteristics such as gender, age, location, demographics, etc. Thus, you can avoid creating the content they are not interested in. It is recommended to use various forms of content and different platforms to reach the clients (many marketers use self-serve advertising networks to make the process faster and easier).
- SEO optimization and organic search. Any search starts with Google and this fact will unlikely to change for decades. That’s why any marketer should start with learning how to optimize their site to drive more organic traffic. SEO is always connected with content marketing. If you keep optimizing your content, you are likely to have a higher rank on Google or other search engines. The most important thing is the keywords. Fill your content with the relevant words and phrases to let people find you. Another essential moment is your website/landing page. It should be high-functioning and fast-loading. Make sure it delivers the kind of quality content, which your customers are looking for.
- Affiliate marketing. You can increase your audience, raise awareness, and promote your brand paying famous resources with a great number of visitors for the placement of your ads. You can use either a pay-per-click or pay-per-sale model. If you are a newbie in marketing and do not have lots of money, you can create a partnership. There are businesses ready to start an affiliate marketing campaign with you. Such a method presupposes cross-promotion. Besides, affiliate marketing can become a source of an additional profit. Just find a product you are interested in or like and place their ads on your website for a certain fee.