What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing has been one of the main part of marketing that uses online and internet technologies and devices like desktop, mobile and digital media platforms to promote a business, product or service. It has been extensively used by marketers to grow businesses in 2020. It has the following components which are used by marketers in combination to deploy a digital marketing strategy. They are search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, automation and influencer marketing. Before we talk about digital marketing trends, let’s talk about some of its importance.
Importance of Digital Marketing and Digital Marketing Trends
According to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/12/16/100-stats-on-digital-transformation-and-customer-experience/#60053a1b3bf3), 70% of businesses are doing digital marketing with effective strategies in place and increasing their ROI and sales. Therefore, it is important to know about the importance of digital marketing.
Reach right people at right time:
According to a report by Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/), 4.57 billion people were active internet users by July 2020. With this numbers, all the marketers out there promoting their product or service can target these people. It’s become important for every one of us to check social media, buy products online and even check about every small and big things online.
With the advent of internet in every possible geo locations, it has become possible for marketers to target these people with right promotional ads at the right time with interest based targeting which is only possible in digital media.
With the help of digital marketing trends which will be discussed in the next section of this blog. It has become possible to be on the platform which your audience is using the most. To establish an online presence which will not only help you sell your product but for your customer to find you and purchase from you.
Each and every competitor out there is doing it:
If you are thinking that why digital marketing is important, then the solution or answer to your question is that each and every competitor of yours is already doing it. They know the importance of it therefore, they are inclined towards search engine optimization, search engine marketing and social media marketing.
The reason to extensively use all three platforms is to drive traffic from organic as well as paid channels. Social media marketing includes running Facebook and Instagram ads to promote your product or service. If you are not doing any of these activities then you are lagging big time and losing all those customers which could have been yours. It’s important to stay ahead of the game to beat all your competitors. Now, with latest digital marketing trends it has become essential to deploy all the above mention strategies with these trends altogether.
Target real audience:
Targeting in digital marketing has been more precise now than ever. Earlier when marketing was done through traditional methods like billboards, radio or newspapers. It was difficult to determine demographics of your audience like age, gender, income location etc. But with latest digital marketing trends you can do targeting based on age, interest, behavior and income groups even.
For example: you are a company dealing in cosmetic products for women for age group 18-60. Then, you can just show your ads to all the women who are between 18 to 60, interested in cosmetics and shopping. If you want to run your ad in India but not in Africa or America you can even do that. You can reach your target audience so that the buying intention of the person viewing your ad is more. Hence, more conversion rate. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_marketing)
Analytics and Conversion rate optimization:
All the online marketing campaigns gives you analytics and metrics that shows how successful your marketing campaign was. Isn’t it amazing? You can monitor each and every one of your customer whether they bought your product after seeing your Instagram ads or Google ads or Facebook Ads.
But this doesn’t happen in the case of traditional marketing where in you cannot ask each and every one of your customer coming to your departmental store whether they saw your television advertisement or newspaper advertisement.
You can easily optimize your marketing campaign which are performing well or which are not performing well. You can see on which hour of the day your customers are most active on social media. You can invest more during that time to show more of your ads and increase ROI quickly.
Conversion rate optimization is when you oversee your running campaign and do changes in it based on the results it has been giving you for the past few days. This has been so effective that marketers are able to save up to 20-30% of their advertising budget just by doing conversion rate optimization.
Digital marketing trends has become so important while doing conversion rate optimization that it has been one of the most important cornerstone for every marketer to keep up with these trends and increase performance of their existing marketing campaigns.
Increased ROI:
All the online media have great ROI because you can monitor everything. It is said that for every one dollar you invest in email marketing you would get a return of 38 dollars. That’s a great figure and it’s not in the case of email marketing only.
If you optimize your ads and content properly, your advertisement cost also reduce by 20-30%. Traditional methods like billboards or newspaper advertisement used to cost in millions for a single month where in online platforms, it just costs somewhere around half of that with greater targeting like we learnt in point number 3.
10 Digital Marketing Trends which are most popular among Marketers
Earlier brands were focusing more on their website and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
But, with new discoveries and advancement in technologies it has become utmost need of the hour, to focus on digital marketing trends that are changing the way companies work and manufacture their products in 2020.
Here are the 10 digital marketing trends that are reshaping the way companies work:
Facebook is not the only platform:
Facebook has lost its popularity over years. It’s no longer the only dominating platform of social media. With platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest. Youth has shifted their focus from Facebook to these platforms. It’s essential for every marketer to focus on this digital marketing trend that has been reshaping many digital marketing strategies. It is necessary to focus on every platform. What if tomorrow there is no Facebook?
In that case, you should already have a good presence on other platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn. It is important to keep up with this trend.
Instagram is most popular among millennials:
Instagram has gained a lot of traction among young kids, adults and millennials who want new interface with great experience which Instagram was able to provide. All the Facebook’s user base has been shifting to Instagram making it the most popular and trending platform.
A lot of brands are taking advantage of this digital marketing trend to market on this platform and increase their brand awareness.
Extensive use of Chatbots:
Chatbots will dominate how to interact with customers seamlessly. They provide automation which can be used to solve customers’ queries and frequently asked questions. They are able to reduce workload on marketers because they can provide fast and quick interaction with the customer. Marketers can even make use of these chatbots to automate their email and lead generation process, where chatbot will take care of generating lead and emails from the customers.
They are also used extensively in providing description about a product or service or even giving an automated mail to customer whenever they purchase a product. That’s why they are the most important digital marketing trend in 2020.
Video is most important digital marketing trend:
Video has become one of the most important part and parcel of a marketing campaign. It has been found that approximately 72% of people loves to see video over carousels or images. Therefore, video marketing has become a necessity instead of an option.
Content is still King:
Content is your salesperson, it tells your customer about your brand, business and product. Businesses who will ignore content will lose big time. Content marketing is the most important digital marketing trend as Google also gives it the most preference.
Google loves websites that provide updated, accurate and detailed content. Therefore, having trustworthy content will give you more preference while doing SEO.
Personalization matters:
Consumers love personalization and personalized content. 7 out of 10 consumers says they prefer personalized content and products on websites and prefer brands that do this. Email marketing personalization has become cornerstone of every marketing campaign as it increases the user’s experience when they are addressed with their name in the emails they receive.
Users prefers when they see ads about products in which they are more interested in. This increases the conversion rates.
Dynamic content is the new digital marketing trend:
Dynamic content like 360 degree videos, suggestions on the basis of previous watch history, augmented reality products and games are choices of consumers after COVID-19. They are more consumer centric with the approach to enhance consumer experience up to 10 times than static content.
Voice interaction is the new normal after COVID-19:
The most fun loving digital marketing trend that has helped a lot of consumers in easing their work during lockdown and COVID-19 is the voice interaction devices like: Siri, Google and Alexa. These smart devices has enabled users to listen music, watch movies and even order food, groceries and other products by voice command.
Message marketing is going to be the most effective marketing strategy:
Companies are making use of message marketing in a very effective way. Sending a message to a person’s social media account inbox has more chances of getting an engagement as compared to an ad being displayed in their feed. Feed ads only gets an impression where a chance of customer clicking and viewing that ad will be less.
But, if you send a personalized ad directly into the inbox of Facebook messenger of LinkedIn in-mail then open rate will be as huge as 80%. In the next 2-3 years message marketing will get most of the marketing budget because of its efficiency.
Omni channel is Vital:
Omni channel has gained a lot of popularity over the years. It means marketing across various platforms simultaneously which results in more brand awareness in the mind of consumer and increase conversion rates. It involves marketing through emails, app push notifications, blogging, social media ads, PPC ads and much more.
It has been the most effective approach to keep your consumers aware of your brand’s presence in the market. Customer satisfaction, experience and retention all are higher when you are doing Omni channel marketing. This has been one of the major change and a new digital marketing trend which is actually considered by companies.
Conclusion
It is important to follow up with the current trends that are reshaping the way companies promote their products or services and do business. If you don’t realize the importance of digital marketing trends then you will be losing a lot of business and customers.
Online platforms has a lot of potential which can be used by marketers to increase the product awareness and sales. Therefore, use every marketing channel out there, do a thorough research of your competitor, make use of every metrics to optimize your marketing strategies and keep up with the digital marketing trends to be successful in your field.