Digital marketing trends for 2020

If you are reading this post about the Digital Marketing Trends for 2020 and at the same time you are moving your business forward, you must adapt to the changes that are making digital marketing evolve. Otherwise, you’ll be left out of the competitive online landscape.

As Brian Solis says:

“Every business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit them. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened”.

But make no mistake: We live in an age where marketing technology moves quickly and consumer interests and behaviors are difficult to predict. As marketers, we cannot deny the change of era and hope that the methods of a lifetime will work forever.

Do you want to discover the 41 digital marketing trends for 2020?

Will they help your business not only survive, but thrive in this age of innovation?

1) Artificial Intelligence

If you haven’t already noticed, this 2020 may be the year when many people realize the dominance of artificial intelligence (AI). It is certain to be at the heart of global business and industry in the future; in fact, it is already taking over many simple jobs.

For example, Microsoft and Uber use K5 Knightscope robots to “patrol parking lots and large outdoor areas to predict and prevent crime. The robots can read license plates, detect suspicious activity, and collect data to inform their owners. These R2-D2-type robots can be rented for $7 an hour, which is less than the salary of a human security guard:

Just a couple of years ago, Gartner analysts predicted that by 2020, AI technologies would be ubiquitous in almost all new software products and services – a prediction Harvard Business Review endorsed in early 2019.

 

According to Techgrabyte:

“Artificial intelligence is the biggest business opportunity for companies, industries and nations in the coming decades” and “will increase global GDP by up to 14% by 2030”, meaning that “newcomers to AI will be at a serious competitive disadvantage in the coming years”.

Here are the main reasons why organizations are adopting AI in their businesses:

AI can analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, and use data from social networks and blog posts to help companies understand how customers find their products and services.

An interesting example of AI in practice is that of chatbots (we’ll talk about that later). Mastercard created a Facebook bot, which uses natural language processing software to decipher what the customer wants and respond as if it were a real person.

Within the digital marketing trends for 2020, artificial intelligence will soon be the strength of many services and, at present, we already see it implemented in areas such as:

• Basic communication.
• Products recommendations.
• Content creation.
• Email personalization.
• E-commerce transactions.

Companies adopting AI in 2020 will be able to cut staff costs and accelerate growth, gaining an advantage over their competitors.

2) Chatbots

Chatbots will continue to be an important part of digital marketing in 2020. This Artificial Intelligence-based technology uses instant messaging to chat in real time, day or night, with your customers or web visitors.

The polls show it:

• Chatbots to boost 85% of customer service by 2020.
• The main benefits of chatbots are 24-hour service (64%), instant answers to questions (55%), and answers to simple questions (55%).
• 63% of respondents prefer to send a message to a chatbot to communicate with a company or brand.
• By 2022, Chatbots will help businesses save more than $8 billion a year.
• 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020.

Many customers prefer to interact with chatbots as they respond 24/7, give quick answers, accurately remember your entire purchase history and never lose patience. These virtual assistants provide excellent customer service by meeting customers’ expectations and automating repetitive tasks.

Many brands already use chatbot technology, including the travel brand Lyft or Cabify. You can request a Lyft trip via chat (Facebook Messenger and Slack) or voice (Amazon Echo), and their chatbot will let you know the current location of your driver:

Passengers can use the application to choose the type of trip, make a request, track the car’s location, send their friends an estimate of their arrival time, and make payment.

Other brands that successfully use chatbot technology include Whole Foods Market, Fandango, Sephora, Staples, The Wall Street Journal and Pizza Hut.

Maybe you’re interested in our: Chatbots guide for companies.

3) Conversational Marketing

With all this talk about chatbots, the reality of modern marketing becomes clear: it is more conversational. People want it that way, and that’s why brands are reacting. When consumers have a question, 82% want an “immediate” answer.

Conversational marketing is one of the digital marketing trends for 2020 that facilitates a direct, real-time connection between marketers and customers.

Unlike traditional strategies, this form of marketing is now available through multiple channels, allowing brands to know customers on their own terms – on the devices, platforms and schedules that best suit the customer.

According to David Cancel, founder and CEO of Drift:

“Today’s shoppers expect to find what they’re looking for now, not later. As we prepare for the future, it will be more important than ever for companies to be available through a wide range of channels and to ensure that they communicate in the way that people prefer to communicate”.

Ultimately, the primary goal of conversational marketing is to improve the user experience through a feedback-based model that encourages greater engagement and loyalty.

4) Customization

If you want to stand out in 2020, you need to personalize your marketing, and that means personalized content, products, emails and more.

If you’re still not clear, consider these customization statistics:

• 63% of consumers are very annoyed with intrusive generic advertising.
• 80% say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.
• 90% say they find customization attractive.
• Kevin George of EmailMonks states that “personalized and behavioral-based triggered emails are 3 times better than batch and blast emails”.

When you want to study examples of the power of customization, it’s hard to overlook Netflix and Amazon, with their recommended custom products or movie titles. Here are some other companies that are successfully using personalization today:

• EasyJet launched a data-driven email campaign that uses customers’ travel history with the airline to create personalized stories, which then suggest where they would like to travel next. Some 12.5 million unique emails have been sent, with a click rate 25% higher than non-personalised emails.
• Cadbury’s created a custom video campaign that matches the taste of Dairy Milk to users based on their Facebook profile data, including age, interest and location. The campaign generated a 65% increase in clicks and a 33.6% conversion rate, proving that the personal touch works.
• Starbucks uses a game-based mobile application that relies on data such as purchase history and location to be as personal as possible, allows customers to personalize their beverages and encourages their use with its reward system, boosting revenue to $2.56 billion.

5) Vídeo Marketing

Video marketing is one of the most important marketing trends today, if not the most important, and will probably continue to rise over the next 5-10 years. These numbers show the importance of incorporating video into digital marketing strategy in 2020:

• 70% of consumers say they have shared a brand’s video.
• 72% of companies say video has improved their conversion rate.
• 52% of consumers say watching product videos gives them more confidence in their online purchase decisions.
• 65% of executives visit the vendor’s website and 39% call a vendor after watching a video.

Video is by far the most popular way for customers to learn about new products:

One of the problems marketers have faced in recent years is the increasing shift to mobile devices.

Those long sales pages and emails of yesteryear are quickly fading away because they are simply too difficult to read on small mobile screens. However, video can present the same information in a format that works perfectly well regardless of the device.

If your website includes video, you are 50 times more likely (50 times more!) to get organic search results compared to text. Why? Because people find video content more compelling, so Google pushes pages that include video to a higher level in the rankings.

One of the best things about video marketing is that it makes it easy to reformat your content. Imagine that you have recorded a video for your YouTube channel. Instead of posting it on YouTube, you might as well:

• Get it transcribed so you have a text version of the video.
• Post the transcript on your blog under an embedded YouTube video for better ratings.
• Upload the video in with the transcript as subtitles to Facebook (native Facebook videos get a much more shared and engaged impression than YouTube shared videos).
• Convert the transcript into a stand-alone blog article with a short rewrite and add relevant statistics and images.
• Copy the audio only and use it as a podcast episode.
• Use video thumbnails in your email marketing campaigns and the word “video” in the subject lines to increase open rates by 19%.

Here are some other video marketing trends that are gaining more and more traction:

• Live video is particularly popular with a large number of companies who use it for interviews, product demonstrations and behind-the-scenes views of the brand, what life is like in the office, how products are made, company events, etc.
• 1:1 video is when companies or marketers create personalized video messages instead of making phone calls or sending emails. With the decreasing cost of film equipment and high quality cameras on smartphones, this is easier than ever.
• SEO Video. YouTube and other videos are displayed on SERPs, so optimizing videos is increasingly important – such as the use of text overlays and subtitles, in addition to their description, title and file names.
• 360 degree video content. This trend towards a more interactive experience is increasing: just look for the circular symbol in the top left corner to start sliding the moving image left or right while it plays, like this video 360˚ from Hong Kong Airlines (香港航空):

6) Social messaging applications

If you think social messaging apps are just for sending emojis to your friends, take a look at these numbers:

• 1.3 billion monthly users are active on Facebook Messenger.
• 10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger every month.
• WhatsApp has 1.6 billion active users and 55 billion messages are sent every day.
• The top three social messaging applications – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat – have more users combined than Facebook or YouTube.

These statistics show the popularity of social messaging applications, and since people spend more time sending messages to each other, it makes sense to market your company’s products and services to the places where your potential customers are located.

Social messaging applications can be very useful for sending messages to customers directly, as they allow for personalization and add value to the user experience. In addition, people expect companies to have a presence in messaging applications because it is a direct and easy way to interact with them. Indeed:

• 63% of customers are more likely to return to the company’s website that has live chat.

Reasons for your brand to use messaging applications include:

• Cultivate contact.
• Delivering information.
• Boosting sales.
• Involving people in events.
• Recovering leads.
• Providing support and assistance.

7) Voice Search and Smart Speakers

The growing use of voice search has caused companies to rethink their digital marketing strategies in 2020.

Consider these numbers:

• 50% of all searches will be by voice by 2020.
• 55% of all American households will have a smart speaker by 2022.
• 72% of people with voice-activated speakers say their devices are used as part of their daily routines.
• Voice purchases are expected to increase to $40 billion by 2022, up from $2 billion today.
• Global shipments of smart speakers have almost tripled between Q1 2018 and Q2 2019, from 9.36 million units to 26.1 million units.

In general, people expect to use voice search much more in the future:

Voice search plays an important role in providing all the relevant information people are looking for through audio content. AI is getting smarter and the number of mistakes made by voice assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google has been greatly reduced.

As the Institute of Digital Marketing says:

“Adopting a voice search strategy is not only about staying relevant, but also about creating a unique and optimized customer experience that fosters relationships and builds brand loyalty”.

Many brands are already including voice search in their digital marketing strategies to effectively deliver value-based content to their customers:

• Tequila Patrón helps consumers access personalized cocktail recipes.
• Domino’s allows pizza lovers to order from the comfort of their sofa without having to pick up the phone or even order online.
• PayPal users can use Siri to send money to friends, family, or businesses.
• Nestle created a skill that provides voice instructions while cooking.
• Campbell’s has a skill that helps hungry consumers choose and cook recipes.

 

Google Assistant has 2,000 “actions” and Alexa has 30,000 “skills”, which are functions that allow these voice assistants to react very specifically to user commands and queries.

And keep in mind that not only will more companies produce audio content in the hope of gaining brand awareness, but ads are likely to be on the way in the future. That means that Alexa will answer your question along with a “word from your sponsor”.

For all voice technology, remember to write in a conversational tone, focus on getting highlights on Google, and think of keywords that people will say rather than write.

Speech search optimization is a great way to spread brand awareness, but how is that going to translate into sales? Well, in this 2020, we’ll see more businesses trying to tap into this potential, experimenting with new ideas to use smart speakers as a lucrative channel to drive sales.

Right now, Jetson is one of the first companies in the voice commerce space, allowing people to use their voice devices to make purchases.

Voice search is not another channel to force messaging and sales, but rather marketers must develop a unique approach to consumer interaction. This channel must be part of a broader and more connected brand experience.

8) Browser Push Notifications

Push notifications are increasing, with 85% of online stores being used by 2019. According to statistics:

• At least twice as many people sign up for push notifications on the web as for a newsletter.
• Only the top 10% of email marketers can achieve a newsletter subscription rate that matches the performance of the web push.
• 6.4 hours is the average time that passes before the recipient opens a newsletter. In the case of web push, the recipient will see the message immediately.

Updates to general data protection regulations (GDPR) and stricter filters have diminished the power of email marketing. In addition, younger audiences prioritize other methods of communication and prefer to deal with fewer points of contact when it comes to brands.

As part of the drive to capture users across multiple channels, browser push notifications are something more and more brands will adopt in this 2020 – and they are becoming more sophisticated and personalized. In fact, the use of personalized push notifications increases conversions:

• 7% open rate for segmented push messaging compared to 3% open rate for generic broadcast messages.
• 54% of users convert from a segmented push notification, compared to only 15% for broadcast messages.

Behavior-activated notifications are being used to re-engage people who have shown interest but have not converted, and to recover income from abandoned shopping carts:

MISSING IMAGE!!!

Notifications can even include images and CTAs to maximize conversion rates

9) Content marketing still dominates SEO

In November 2019, Google introduced some important updates to its search algorithm. The updates include the new BERT system, designed to help Google in its efforts to understand the natural language that users use in their search queries.

John Mueller’s advice from Google is:

“Rather than chasing the latest SEO trends, it’s more important to make sure your site has fast loading speed, useful links and well-written content”.

In fact, content marketing is so important that 88% of B2B content managers agree that content creation makes their audience see their organization as a credible and trusted resource:

Statistics from the Content Marketing Institute:

• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3 times more leads.
• Content marketing has lower initial costs and deeper long-term benefits than paid search or SEM.
• 615 million devices currently use ad blockers, which means they are not seen by as many people.
• Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than those without.
• Content marketing has a conversion rate 6 times higher than other methods.

Even in the midst of all the innovation, content marketing remains a reliable and powerful way to attract new customers to your site and build relationships with them in real and measurable ways that deliver long-term value to your business.

As Google continues to value well-researched and regularly updated articles, many leading companies will continue to invest heavily in content marketing throughout 2020.

10) SEO A/B Split Testing

Modern marketing is based on testing and analysis. By using A/B tests, you can isolate the variables of your campaign and easily identify which versions are getting the results you need. This form of testing offers marketers a methodical approach to making effective changes to your content.

Platforms like ClickFlow suggest pages with untapped SEO potential, a high print count but a low click-through rate (CTR) that can then be improved to increase traffic, leads and, of course, conversions:

ClickFlow allows you to set a target CTR value, then serves the pages along with a report that lists the keywords your page already has ranked.

Better yet, it suggests valuable new keywords that you should target to get more traffic.

Within the application, you can make changes to the title, metadescription, title tag and body content, which are automatically reflected on the website:

Select your target CTR:

Run the experiment for at least 15 days and ClickFlow will show you how many more clicks you are getting and the additional income you are getting from the improvements.

A/B tests squeeze the maximum SEO juice out of your site and give you insight into the variables that move the needle. With this strategy and the right tools, even a small budget can achieve great things.

11) Semantic Keyword Research

Here’s something to keep in mind when creating long-form content: You must write for people, not for Google.

Posting a 5,000 word entry every other day is fine, but you won’t see the results you expect if you don’t take into account the user’s intent. Also known as search intent or keyword intent, this is the main goal a person has when they type or say a search query. It can be to find a product, information or the location of a store.

Think about how Google analyzes your content. The search engine doesn’t just evaluate the keywords in a search box; it considers the content of a query and goes deeper to determine the user’s search intent. In the following example, if someone were looking for a missing cat, Google would use semantic analysis to include related concepts such as:

“pets” and not just “cats”; “lost” and not just “missing”; “pet shelters” and “animal control centers”

This analysis is called semantic search, and with AI and voice search on a meteoric rise, it is becoming a central aspect of how search works.

Content marketers can take advantage of this by going beyond their primary keyword to include related terms, questions, and phrases in their content. Together, these latent semantic keywords will provide Google with a much better understanding of the nature of your content, as well as the solutions and benefits it offers users.

In 2019, the annual report of the Content Marketing Institute B2B revealed that 90% of the world’s most successful marketers put the needs of their audience before promotional objectives. Companies with this attitude will rise to the top in 2020.

12) SEO Structured Data

Among all the digital marketing trends you will soon hear about, there will undoubtedly be the now mandatory annual claims that “SEO is dead”.

Ignore these claims. Once again, SEO is not dead – it’s a shifter. In this 2020, we will see structured data become more prevalent in search engine results.

Structured data refers to any data that is organized in a way that makes it easier for search engines to crawl and categorize. Content creators can do this in their back-end code or by organizing the information in an orderly fashion in tables with columns and rows labeled.

When done correctly, structured data offers a great SEO boost, as you can position yourself in that coveted Zero Position in one way or another, like a Knowledge Chart Box, which displays important information about your business:

Another possible advantage of using structured data is that you can generate Rich Snippet results, which show images, review statistics and prices. These rich snippets – also known as rich cards – are excellent for generating clicks, especially on the mobile.

Schema.org is a semantic tagging vocabulary that allows website owners to embed structured data into their pages so that search engines can clearly understand, interpret and represent content in response to a search query. The list continues to grow but, so far, here are the types of content-only schema.org that Google is actively using:

With nearly 50% of all global Internet traffic occurring on mobile devices, competition for these rich results is heating up, so we will see many marketers focusing on leveraging structured data by 2020.

13) Quantum Computation

Quantum computing is a new technology based on a theory of quantum physics, which states that subatomic particles exist in more than one state simultaneously.

According to ITSPmagazine:

“Traditional computers store data in bits, which can exist in one of two states: one or zero. Quantum computers, however, use a new unit of measurement, a single atom known as a qubit (literally ‘quantum bit’), which greatly increases a system’s computing power“.

Another way to visualize quantum computing is to imagine a huge library:

“While a classical computer would read all the books in a library in a linear fashion, a quantum computer would read all the books simultaneously. Quantum computers are capable of theoretically working on millions of calculations at once”.

So how can marketers use quantum computing? This is what we can expect:

• Better mobile data coverage (an advantage for mobile marketers).
• AI is becoming more humane (Google AI is developing quantum algorithms that will dramatically improve machine learning).
• Increased relevance of ads (quantum computing can help ads reach more people at a better cost).

14) Big Data and Deep Learning

In 2020, the world’s big data industry will continue to grow exponentially, which is great news for marketers – if they know how to harness the power of big data. A large part of this task comes down to the tools you use, which is something many companies find challenging.

Forbes reports that 78% of organizations already have or are developing a customer data platform to help manage, analyze and leverage their data. Not surprisingly, data experts top the priority list for many companies, with 41% of business owners saying it is now their most desired ability to hire.

With the benefits of great data comes the need for businesses to leverage it to “significantly simplify tasks that previously could only be completed by data scientists. Most importantly, “This continued democratization will lead to new use cases that are closer to the needs of business users and will allow faster time to market for AI applications in the enterprise.

It is important that you heed this warning: as large data becomes more powerful, the demands on how companies should manage consumer data become increasingly precarious. The changes in GDPR have been the starting point for a global revolution in data privacy, as California implemented the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on January 1, 2020.

As such, big data is a double-edged sword, but one that many digital marketers will find hard to resist in the very near future.

15) Automation (& AI)

Gartner projects that 30% of companies will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into their sales processes by 2020.

For example, artificial intelligence and automation can be used to:

• Improve customer retention and loyalty.
• Predicting customer behavior with propensity modeling and predictive analysis.
• Use AI-powered chat bots to improve the user experience.
• Harnessing the power of audience perceptions to drive search ads.
• Expand content marketing with AI-generated content.
• Offer a highly customized UX.
• Optimize for voice search queries
• Identify the “Hot Leads”.
• Reduce car abandonment.
• Addressing customers through different channels.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Upselling and cross-selling to customers.
• Improve bloggers’ reach.
• Generate clues from the thank you pages.
• Automatically suggesting content to visitors,
• Identify the bottlenecks in your sales channel.
• Measuring the performance of your marketing campaigns.
• Maintain a center for all your marketing activities.
• Reducing costs and saving time.

As Neil Patel says

“Marketing will become a more level playing field and you’ll have no choice but to use automation“.

16) Google Ads or Smart Bidding

With intense competition in social media slowly suffocating organic reach, paid advertising will become a more reliable force by 2020.

Google explains that with Smart Bidding:

“Self-learning algorithms are trained with large-scale data to help you make more accurate predictions across your account about how different bid amounts can affect conversions or conversion value”.

In other words, advertisers can hand over the reins of their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to Google’s artificial intelligence system, which will then optimize their budget to maximize the return on investment. This works for any number of PPC objectives, including:

CPA Objective – Generate new clients and potential clients for a maximum cost per acquisition that the company establishes.

ROAS’ objective: aim to obtain the best return on your advertising investment.

Maximize conversions – Increase the conversion rates of your advertising, whether your goal is to get more email subscribers, downloads or product sales.

Smart bids allow many different signals to be used for bid optimization, including:

• Device.
• Physical location.
• Location intention.
• Day and time of week.
• Remarketing list.
• Characteristics of the ad.
• Interface language.
• Browser.
• Operating system.

Some of these signals are available as manual bid settings, but other signals (and combinations of signals) are only available through Smart Bidding:

The end result is that with Smart Bidding leading the program, sellers will have more free time to focus on strategy, writing and analysis.

17) Zero position of the SERP

For the past two years, voice search has been making waves, changing the way search engine optimization works. Most notable is the increase of the featured fragment, which appears in the highly coveted “zero position” in Google’s search engine result pages, as in this example:

In this 2020, at least 30% of all Internet searches will be conducted without a screen, and since 40.7% of all voice search responses come from a featured fragment, if your marketing is strong enough, you could be the one to reach that coveted point.

Also known as a zero rank or zero position fragment, this is the holy grail of modern SEO, as it responds directly to the user’s search queries without requiring the user to click on a link. VSEO (Voice Search Engine Optimization) can give you a huge competitive advantage (of course, this is only good news for a brand…).

This trend is growing, with 62.5% of mobile searches and 34.4% of desktop searches now resulting in “zero-click search” results. And according to Ahrefs, these are the most common words in the Featured Snippets search queries:

Because of this, more vendors will invest their resources in On-SERP SEO, which is the practice of optimizing web pages with the goal of claiming as much space as possible in Google SERPs. This increases their click through rate (CTR), driving more organic traffic to your site and increases the likelihood of claiming first place.

18) Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web applications are basically web pages that work like mobile applications. They offer the functionality of a native mobile application: fast load times, push notifications, offline work, use of device hardware, etc. – without being limited to an IOS or Android platform.

This allows development teams to create web applications for any device that works just like a mobile application and regardless of the operating system.

The number of smartphone users is expected to reach 2.87 billion by 2020. With total mobile page views increasing by nearly 50% year on year worldwide, the mobile phone is more crucial than ever to your digital strategy:

PWAs are going to become more frequent as the mobile revolution continues at its pace.

19) Interactive Content

Speaking of instant access, this brings us to one of the fastest growing digital marketing trends in recent times: interactive content.

In the year 2020, we are destined to see a shift from traditional text-based content to dynamic and engaging content that offers users an immersive experience. For example, think about:

• Tests and surveys
• Integrated Calculators
• Augmented reality ads
• 360 degree videos

Here’s a good example of a 360 VR video:

And here’s an example of our Marketing Impact Calculator to help you calculate how much more money you’ll make from marketing:

If you need to convince, consider that 91% of buyers are actively seeking more interactive content. People like it not only because it’s fresh and original, but because it makes them feel more connected to brands and more involved in the buying process.

Interactive content is more engaging, memorable and more likely to generate the results your business needs.

20) Web Security

As well as privacy, we must mention the security of the website.

When a user arrives at your site for the first time, he will decide for his security in a matter of seconds. If he doesn’t feel safe, he won’t stick around, which leads to increased bounce rates. Over time, a high bounce rate is bad news for your business, as it will drop in SERP when Google realizes that people don’t want to stay on your site for long.

Tech Republic reports that there have been more than 3,800 data violations within organizations – in 2019 alone! While hackers from large companies such as Yahoo, Facebook, Equifax and Marriott are making headlines, there are also many gaps in smaller businesses. As a result, only 25% of consumers believe that most companies handle their sensitive personal data responsibly.

In 2020, web security is no longer an option. As of August 2014, Google announced that HTTP is a classification signal and marks all sites as unsafe unless they are HTTPS certified (the “S” stands for “secure”):

HTTPS vs. HTTP

From now on, the minimum is to activate the HTTPS protocol for your website, which will show users a small green padlock icon in the URL:

In addition, displaying a security seal or trust badge on your website will reassure your visitors that you take their security seriously.

21) IOT advertising

No matter our mobile and portable devices – from smart cars to home appliances and wearable technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming increasingly connected:

IoT According to QuanticMind:

“Today, connected devices and technologies are expected to discreetly, and sometimes stealthily, collect data about our vital functions, what we do, where we go, what we share, what we create, what we buy, who we know, how we move and even what we eat.”

Which means, of course, that brands and marketers want to use (or are already using) this data for their own business and advertising purposes. For example:

• Johnnie Walker has a Blue Label bottle with built-in electronic sensors that can tell if the bottle has been opened and where it is in the supply chain.
• Malibu, another beverage company, goes a step further and uses its “connected” bottles as a digital touch point to promote exclusive content.

And as 5G technology matures, more IoT devices will present more on-demand content for consumers and more advertising opportunities for marketers.

22) Long-form content

In 2020, shorter posts will get you nowhere, either with Google or your audience. Generally, posts of at least 3,000 words attract the most traffic, as they offer readers an in-depth exploration of topics. Long content allows content creators to establish themselves as experts on a topic and gives them more possibilities for keyword targeting.

A Search Engine Journal study indicates that long-form content gets 77% more backlinks than short articles, which is critical for driving organic traffic:

According to Small Biz Trends, 56% of bloggers generate a better ROI on their content when they spend more than six hours creating a single blog post. That may seem excessive, but when it attracts more traffic, increases time on page, and boosts your organic search rankings, it’s a great business investment.

These epic articles are sometimes called 10X content or pillar content, which is basically content that provides a complete answer to any question a user might be searching for on a given topic. It is specifically designed to provide value to the reader, and also to rank highly in search engines.

The benefits of long-form content are:

• Longer time spent on your site’s pages. The more content that is available for users to consume, the more time they will spend on the page.
• A decrease in bounce rate. If users find what they are looking for on your page, they will not return to Google to find another source.
• Backlinks and a lot of sharing on social media. Pillar pages are shared widely and often, especially among influencers in a given space.

Pillar content is evergreen, so its value does not diminish over time. A high ranking in Google. High word count, shares and backlinks will contribute to improved SERP visibility.

23) Augmented Reality (AR) and Immersive Technologies

Gartner predicts that by 2022, 70% of enterprises will be experimenting with immersive technologies, and 25% will have deployed to production.

While virtual reality (VR) makes a lot of noise and gets everyone excited about big science-fiction ideas, AR is much more implementable from a marketing point of view. Experts predict that AR will continue to overtake VR in terms of market share:

Brands are increasingly using this technology to enhance the consumer experience and increase sales.

ModiFace, which was recently acquired by L’Oreal, produces AR applications for brands. Sephora Virtual Artist, an impressive example of ModiFace’s technology, allows you to see how different types of make-up look on you without having to go to a shop and physically apply it.

IKEA also has its own AR app called IKEA Place, which lets you take a photo of a room in your house with your smartphone (iOS 11.0.1 only for now) to see how IKEA furniture looks in it. You can move the furniture around and check how it looks from different angles:

With the rapid improvement of AR, we will see a huge uptake by brands to find useful applications for the technology in the future.

24) Predictive and augmented analytics

Predictive analytics is the practice of using data mining, predictive modelling and machine learning to identify patterns and attempt to predict the future. It is becoming increasingly sophisticated and widespread in many industries.

In terms of digital marketing trends, we will see a lot more of this, as it is being used in advanced lead scoring, as well as individual segmentation and personalisation, helping marketers reduce churn and improve customer loyalty.

One example of this is Amazon Assistant, a Chrome extension from the retail giant that allows users to get Amazon’s product recommendations to extend beyond the website to personalised offers while they are browsing elsewhere.

Augmented Analytics, on the other hand, uses machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate data preparation and enable data sharing.

As Bonnie D. Graham, host of the Game-Changers Business podcast, puts it:

“While predictive analytics uses machine learning to predict what will happen, augmented analytics uses machine intelligence to empower human intelligence with why, so that we can work faster and smarter on ever-larger data sets.”

Gartner predicts that by 2020 more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated, meaning that insights from the huge amounts of big data that companies are collecting will enable better, more personalised decision-making and therefore increased productivity.

25) Growth of Geo-Fencing

While the idea of delivering a message to people based on their location is nothing new, we do expect an increase in the use of geo-fencing – this market is set to grow to $2.4 billion by 2023 – along with the increase in mobile usage:

Geo-Fencing enables real-time targeting based on the user’s location. A target area is defined as, for example, within a mile of a restaurant, and when a user enters or leaves this area, they receive a push notification, text message or other form of marketing communication.

The research shows that of the people who open a push notification, 54% of users convert from a segmented push compared to only 15% for broadcast messages. And 52% of users enable push messaging in their apps.

76, an American gas company, used Waze to mark its gas stations on a map across California. As drivers approached, a logo appeared on their map showing them where to stop for gas and offering them the chance to enter a contest if they filled up. Their “Tank 5” campaign resulted in a 6.5% boating rate at service stations:

26) User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful resource for marketers who want to tap into the Millennial and Gen Z markets. You can encourage your audience to share unique content by offering them an incentive, such as a discount, or even partnering with them for a good cause.

Aerie, a women’s clothing company, “pledged to stop retouching photos of models in their swimming costumes”. And for every Instagram user who posted an unedited photo of themselves in a swimming costume (using the hashtag #AerieReal, of course), Aerie now donates $1 to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA).”

This simple UGC strategy can quickly increase brand engagement and boost conversion rates as more people discover your brand and your products and services.

People trust others like them far more than they trust companies. In fact, one survey found that 90% of shoppers reported that UGC influenced their purchase decision more than any other form of advertising, with a whopping 97% of 18-29 year olds saying it had “extreme influence”.

UGC can be as basic as blog comments and testimonials or it can take the form of blog posts, images and user-created videos. GoPro’s entire YouTube channel is dedicated to UGC, showcasing high-quality videos produced by its customers using its rugged handheld cameras. The channel is currently driving 8 million subscribers.

Recently, GoPro created a UGC contest with the hashtag #MillionDollarChallenge in which its customers created and shared videos – and 25,000 people participated!

27) Programmatic advertising

Programmatic advertising means using AI to automate ad buying to target more specific audiences. Real-time bidding, for example, is a type of programmatic ad buying. This automation is much more efficient and faster, which means higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs. Or it can be used to find alternative means to the most common traffic sources such as google and facebook. Imagine that by using traditional sources you have already reached the maximum number of people, i.e. you have reached the maximum number of people. Testing programmatic advertising gives you one more channel to explore.

Digital advertising is changing so rapidly that, according to eMarketer, 86.2% of digital ads in the US will be programmatic by 2020.

According to Irina Kovalenko of SmartyAds:

“Most manual search-driven ad campaigns (even those run with professional tools) take into account three or four targets: keyword, time of day and location. Tools such as programmatic platforms can use hundreds of targeting signals to personalise advertising and even target based on lifestyle or behavioural habits when integrated with customer data platforms such as a CRM.”

28) Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using key influencers to reach a wider market and gain credibility.

Influencers can be well-known celebrities, but are usually Instagram or YouTube personalities with a huge community of followers who can help spread the word about your business or product through their social channels.

Why is influencer marketing generally more authentic than corporate advertising?

• 63% of consumers trust influencers’ opinions about products far more than what brands say about themselves.
• 58% of people have bought a new product in the last six months on the recommendation of an influencer.

For this reason, Iceland, a popular British supermarket chain, switched from celebrity ads to a campaign featuring real-life mums. In collaboration with the YouTube Channel Mum community, it now works with a number of bloggers to promote its products in a more ‘authentic’ way. And research shows that 35% of mums trust videos like the one below more than traditional ads.

Influencer marketing is not just a trend: A study by mediakix predicts that advertising spend for influencer marketing could reach $10 billion by next year.

Influencer marketing will also be affected by artificial intelligence. Every year, AI is making the process of finding the right influencers to partner with easier and faster. It is helping to identify those with better engagement, fewer fake followers and a greater chance of generating a positive return on investment (ROI).

In addition, artificial intelligence is transforming influencer marketing in the following ways:

• Image recognition with ANN (Artificial Neural Networks)
• Determining influencer performance with NLP (Natural Language Processing)
• Predicting incentives with ANN
• Determining the influence of an influencer
• Pinpointing posts that do not follow disclosure guidelines
• Eliminating false commitments and spambots

29) Blockchain technology

As defined by Blockgeeks:

“A blockchain is, in the simplest terms, a time-stamped series of immutable data records that is managed by a group of computers that are not owned by a single entity. Each of these data blocks (i.e. the block) is secured and linked together using cryptographic principles (i.e. the chain)”.

However, the uses of blockchain are much broader than in the financial world; this technology is also making waves in the digital marketing world. Blockchain cuts out the digital marketing middleman, builds trust through transparency, drives public accountability and delivers brand benefits.

But from 2020 onwards, we will see these trends in blockchain:

• Tracking media buys
• Social impression management
• Online identity verification
• Enhancing transparency
• Protecting personal data
• Targeting with precision
• Authentication and provenance

30) Visual search

Visual search can take the user experience to a whole new level: People can upload an image to perform a search and get more targeted results.

Pinterest Lens

Not surprisingly, Pinterest has jumped on the visual search bandwagon. It has created Lens, a visual search tool that allows users to take a photo of an item to find out where to buy it online, search for similar products or view ads for related items.

As Marketing Land says, it turns the phone’s camera into a search bar.

Since the beta launch, Pinterest Lens now recognises 2.5 billion home and fashion items, has inspired more than 600 million searches on mobile apps and Pinterest browser extensions, and has seen a 140% increase since launch day.

Pinterest has continued to update its functionality:

It introduced Pincodes, a QR code technology that allows you to find inspiration while out shopping or flipping through your favourite magazines.

They launched Lens Your Look to take the guesswork out of outfit planning.

They partnered with brands like Samsung to bring visual search to their latest smartphones and Target to allow customers to search their catalogue using related products they see in the real world.

They’ve fully automated Shop the Look, a feature that helps users buy products from companies that work with Pinterest, so they can, for example, buy a pair of jeans they see in a photo.

They’ve launched a bunch of new tools to help merchants sell their products, including Catalogues, which allows anyone to upload and convert their entire product catalogue into Pins to buy.

Make sure you’re optimising for visual search, because (unsurprisingly) the top search categories for Lenses are:

• Fashion
• Home decoration
• Art
• Food
• Products
• Animals
• Costumes
• Beauty
• Vehicles
• Travel

Google Lens

And Pinterest is not the only one with visual search. Google Lens is Google’s visual search engine, which recognises objects and landmarks through a camera app. Here’s what you can do when you take a photo of the following items:

• Clothing and household items: Find similar products and where to buy them.
• Barcodes: Use a barcode to find information about a product, such as where to buy it.
• Business card: Store the phone number or address to a contact.
• Book: Get a summary and read reviews.
• Event flyer or billboard: Add the event to your calendar.
• Landmark or building: Learn historical facts, hours of operation and more.
• Paintings in a museum: Read about the artist and learn more.
• Plant or animal: Learn about species and breeds.

As CNet puts it:

“Google Lens is becoming what Google Glass never was” when it comes to real-time augmented reality.

CamFind

CamFind is another visual search mobile app that allows you to search for anything on your phone by simply taking a picture.

Instead of typing queries into a search engine, you can search directly through images to find similar pictures, price comparisons, local shopping results, and so on. You can also take a picture of a movie poster and CamFind will show you information about the movie, trailers, showtimes and local cinemas.

Bing Visual Search

And with Bing Visual Search, you can search for a specific item within an image without having to jump through all the current hoops.

For example, let’s say you’re looking for inspiration for decorating a kitchen and an image catches your eye. Click on a thumbnail result to get to the “Detail View”. The overall décor is great, but you’re especially interested in that nice candlestick. Wouldn’t you like to know where you can get one just like it? With Bing Visual Search, now you can.

According to Social Media Today:

• 62% of Millennials are more interested in visual search capabilities than in any other new technology
• Images return for 19% of Google search queries
• There are more than 600 million visual searches on Pinterest each month

Marketers can gain the edge over their competitors by jumping on the visual search trend in 2020 to engage customers and serve them the perfect product.

31) Branding

We live in an age where consumers have a lot of choices. No matter what niche your brand is in, it is unlikely to operate in a vacuum. 66% of consumers say they feel connected to a brand whenever they trust it, and to earn their trust, you have to establish a strong brand personality.

The reason brand is so important now is because of Google’s E.A.T. ranking factor, which it represents:

• Expertise: the page needs to have quality content written by an expert
• Authority: the site itself needs to have some authority in the subject matter
• Trust: the site must have other authoritative links pointing to it from trusted sites

In essence, Google wants to do more than just rank good content; it is catering to the user experience by demanding the most accurate, up-to-date and well-researched (i.e. authoritative) content on any given topic, preferably created by real experts in the field.

If Jimmy’s Medical Blog (hypothetical website) gives some bad advice on home remedies that leads a mother to poison her child, that’s not good for Jimmy’s brand, nor for Google’s reputation for delivering quality results. So as the new year progresses and SEO evolves, Google may crack down on major industries, especially in the health and finance sector, where accurate information is critical.

Neil Patel advises marketers to focus on building their expertise, noting that they can bolster their reputation with guest posts on leading industry blogs, speaking engagements and award submissions. Always include an updated author bio at the bottom of all your published content pieces to build brand recognition and gain readers’ trust.

32) Better analytics through data visualisation

Modern marketing and metrics go hand in hand, so if you’re not investing in better analytics, you’ll struggle to get the results you want. The problem, however, is that the customer journey is more complex now. We live in an omni-channel age, where the average consumer engages with a brand at up to six touch points before making a purchase.

With multiple channels to manage and a myriad of ways to market your products and services, the job of analytics tracking is fast becoming a mammoth mission. As a result, many companies are looking beyond the basics of Google Analytics to a comprehensive BI or business intelligence solution based on a data visualisation dashboard.

Another way this trend will develop is by moving towards business intelligence, the “technologies, applications and practices for collecting, integrating, analysing and presenting business information”. The purpose of business intelligence is to support better business decision making”.

As Neil Patel puts it:

“BI options are a central place where you can link all your data and make better informed decisions so you can optimise for your lifetime value rather than your short-term revenue.”

There are many business intelligence options, both paid and free, such as Google Data Studio (Google’s reporting solution for power users who want to go beyond Google Analytics data and dashboards), Metabase and Tableau:

33) 5G technology

In a world gone mobile-crazy, arguably one of the most significant digital marketing trends of 2020 is the awakening of 5G, or fifth generation mobile technology. This update heralds a new era of digital communications and its impact will be felt across virtually every industry.

As Intel’s Asha Keddy puts it:

“5G will enable a fully mobile and connected society, unleashing human and technological possibilities, and fueling business and financial opportunities.”

According to Adage:

“The advent of 5G may also eventually bring millions of rural consumers into the high-speed data lanes where merchants increasingly sell their products. It could even disrupt the digital duopoly of Google and Facebook by arming telcos with unprecedented data for advertising services.”

T-Mobile points to the benefits 5G speeds have for the burgeoning augmented reality industry, noting how it could be instrumental in the development of a virtual heads-up display. As this image shows, 5G internet speeds can help cyclists detect danger from all sides:

The European Union has an ambitious 5G action plan that includes seamless 5G coverage for major roads and railways by 2025. In addition, this technology is expected to increase the number of connected devices a hundredfold. Of course, this raises concerns about the adverse health and environmental effects of RF (radio frequency) radiation, the electromagnetic emissions produced by wireless phones, but that is a topic for another article.

All of this means that 5G technology will transform the way we access online content, from digital marketers to the average user.

34) Marketing and privacy

Recently, Forbes reported that British Airways was fined £183 million for a data breach, and the Marriott hotel chain was fined £99 million for failing to protect the personal data of 339 million guests.

The aforementioned CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in trend #26 above, will be the most restrictive state privacy law passed in the US when it comes into force in 2020. Despite opposition from big Silicon Valley players like Facebook, the world’s fifth largest economy is pushing its new consumer privacy law.

It’s clear that people (but not companies) are getting serious about privacy, and marketers – who depend on those people – have no choice but to play by the new rules. One of the new rules is that marketers and brands will have to “earn” their targets’ contact information rather than engage in mass marketing.

As Forbes points out:

“In the US, marketers have become so lax in their targeting practices that each of us has to take several minutes a day to delete from our inboxes – both professional and personal – the dozens of emails that are neither relevant nor welcome.”

People want to know that they can trust brands and that their personal data is safe. Instead of being complacent, digital marketing teams need to be strategic and reinforce their commitment to privacy in order to earn the trust of potential customers.

Some of the ways in which brands can earn consumer trust include:

• Researching and understanding our audience(s)
• Developing a relevant message to get the audience engaged
• Finding the right channel to appeal to that specific audience
• Developing an “intimate” relationship through thoughtful engagement

35) Alternative search engines

StatCounter research shows that over 92% of all search engine traffic is through Google, dwarfing its “closest” rivals, Yahoo and Bing.

Search engine market share

The world’s most dominant search engine is a sophisticated innovation juggernaut, tuned to deliver the most relevant, recent and comprehensive results for any user’s search query. It is hard to imagine a catastrophic collapse happening in the near future, making it seemingly impossible for any other search engine to give Google a run for its money.

That said, DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine founded in 2008 that has gained a niche popularity among privacy-conscious users, has made some waves recently with its slogan “the search engine that doesn’t track you” because “search engines don’t need to track users to make money”.

According to DuckDuckGo’s general counsel and head of policy, Megan Gray, this model is profitable:

“We make a lot of money. We’re a private company, so I can’t tell you exactly how much we make. But we are subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which requires at least $25 million in annual revenue, and we’re well above that.”

In the spirit of online privacy (trend #33 above), while Google has been embroiled in data scandals such as the Cambridge Analytics fiasco, DuckDuckGo has seen massive growth as it hit 1 billion searches in the month of January 2019:

Recently, the engine received another boost when it was endorsed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Ultimately, marketers need to consider their audience and think about where their branded content is likely to be seen. With this in mind, it is important to optimise your content for more than one search engine.

36) Funnels for voice marketing

We have already mentioned the impact of voice search earlier in this guide (trend #11). What we haven’t talked about is the cumulative impact that voice search enabled devices will have on a fundamental aspect of business: the marketing funnel.

With these fast-growing digital marketing trends, there’s no way your traditional funnel can stay the same. It must evolve. By 2020, the linear funnel will no longer be relevant. In fact, this transition is already underway.

In the new voice marketing funnel, potential customers can enter the funnel at different stages of the customer journey, as many consumers now conduct much of their own research online. This updated model requires that each customer is treated as an individual rather than a generic prospect. As a result, the funnel must cater to the demand for personalised solutions.

Another way the sales funnel is evolving is from funnel to engine, where the brand no longer dictates the customer journey, but rather the brand and the customer “interact synergistically with each other”:

The bottom line is that we can, and should, expect technology to continue to metamorphose, so marketers must develop funnels that are able to react to the ever-changing digital landscape.

Search Engine Journal claims that the first brands to adjust to the demands of voice search will reap the greatest rewards, increasing their online digital revenues by 30% or more.

37) Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing was one of the buzzwords of 2019. While the phrase may seem a bit tired, the strategy is as ripe and relevant as ever in 2020.

Omnichannel marketing is the process of marketing across multiple platforms (such as social media, apps, email and blog) so you can connect with prospects at more touchpoints. When you get omnichannel marketing right, you can deliver an enhanced user experience and a cohesive brand message that drives people to action.

To stay ahead of the curve, brands must present a consistent and seamless voice and message across all available media, including physical storefronts, social media channels, online, in catalogues and everywhere else one can imagine. All channels must be linked in a comprehensive strategy to get the best results.

Statistics show that brands that use three or more channels in an automation workflow can generate great results:

• Engagement rate: 18.96% in omni-channel vs. 5.4% in single channel
• Purchase frequency: 250% higher in omni-channel vs. single-channel
• Average order value: 13% higher per order in omni-channel vs. single-channel
• Customer retention rates: 90% higher for omni-channel vs. single-channel

With sophisticated SaaS companies providing the tools to manage multiple channels more efficiently, it is becoming easier to manage an omni-channel strategy, although it can be challenging.

Users demand personalisation and want to be able to browse a physical shop, view products on social media and buy online. If you don’t meet their demands, someone else will.

This is another area where AI and big data play an important role in helping brands better understand consumer behaviour and personalise on an individual scale. Getting inside the head of your ideal customer’s buying journey is key to an effective omni-channel approach.

38) Social media marketing

In 2020, we will see brands leveraging more of the potential of video and interactive content on social media to capture attention. But they must remain authentic on their social channels and work hard to nurture a community of engaged and loyal followers.

As social media strategy consultant Neal Schaffer puts it:

“If your business wants to survive on organic social media in 2020, I think this kind of humanisation of your brand will be necessary.”

This growth is unlikely to falter after Instagram removed “likes” from the platform.

According to Social Media Today, here are some social media trends to keep an eye on:

• Facebook Pay: Launching in the US in November 2019, this payment feature will facilitate payments on the platform, in the data stream, making it easier to buy products on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
• Facebook Watch: Facebook’s own video-on-demand service.
• Oculus: VR technology that makes social media more interactive, which Facebook is touting as “the next evolution of social”.
• Cross-stream messaging: Facebook integration with Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp messaging features.
• Instagram removing likes: In response to growing awareness of adverse effects on mental health, Instagram is focusing on better humanising its brand.
• IGTV: Instagram’s long-form video platform is not new, but – likely to get another boost in 2020.
• Twitter’s mDAU: A new metric of monthly and daily active users called “monetisable daily active users”, a move to clean up its bot platform.
• Narrow broadcast tweets: An option that will limit the audience and usage of your tweets, including the ability to remove the retweet feature from chosen tweets, and restrict the reach of your tweets to only chosen hashtag discussions and/or certain friends…and would allow you to target your tweets to specific audiences.
• Tweet streaming: A new live streaming feature.
• LinkedIn Groups: Similar to Facebook groups. Not exactly a new feature, but LinkedIn may try to push it again next year.
• LinkedIn Video: Given that LinkedIn users are 20 times more likely to share a video on this platform than any other type of post, LinkedIn seems intent on improving its video discovery tools and putting more emphasis on the content of uploaded videos.
• Snapchat AR: An augmented reality version of your shows could be on the way, which would superimpose digital graphics over people’s real-world view.

39) Micro-Moments

A micro-moment is “An intention-rich moment in which a person turns to a device to act on a need – to know, to go, to do or to buy”.

People generally make instantaneous decisions within these four micro-moments:

To take advantage of micro-moments in 2020, you have to be where consumers are looking for information in the moment or, as Google puts it, marketers need to “be there, be helpful, be fast”.

The growing popularity of micro-moments means marketers must rethink the conversion funnel that follows a set path: awareness, consideration and decision.

From 2020 onwards, the customer journey will be more dynamic and unpredictable, as it must respond to rapidly changing consumer desires immediately.

After all, in the mobile age, people have become accustomed to instant gratification. If they think or talk about something, they want to learn more, see more and buy more with just a few clicks.

According to Mention:

“When we act on our needs in the moment, our expectations are high and our patience is low. This makes the quality, relevance and usefulness of marketing more important than ever”.

To make the most of micro-moments in this 2020, you should:

• Identifying your consumers’ “I want to buy” moments
• Be present at these moments of need
• Deliver relevant content
• Facilitate the purchase
• Measure every moment that matters

40) Social media stories

First, Snapchat came out with the “My Story” concept, then Instagram and Facebook stories were introduced, and later YouTube unveiled its own story format: Reels.

To make it all clear, here’s a timeline of social media stories:

Since these types of stories disappear after a set period of time, this is a great opportunity for marketers to make good use of FOMO (“Fear Of Missing Out”- Fear Of Missing Out).

The benefits of using social media stories include:

• Increased brand visibility and awareness
• Ongoing engagement with followers
• Cost-effectiveness
• Increased traffic to your website
• Opportunity to reach a younger audience

You can take inspiration from some of these ways to use social media stories:

• Using polls within Instagram stories
• Adding links to your social media stories
• Leveraging Snapchat’s geofilters
• Adding location tags
• Adding mentions for other brands and your fans
• Test live video when creating Stories
• Invite followers to explore more with a clear call to action

41) Neuromarketing

Last but not least, we dive into one of the most surprising digital marketing trends of 2020: neuromarketing. While this may sound like a quote from a science fiction movie, the reality is that this technology is advancing rapidly and may soon become a viable tool for marketers.

For the uninitiated, neuromarketing is a strategy that analyses measurements of a person’s brain activity and nervous system to determine what types of content appeal to them.

It is essentially the design of marketing materials (including your website, ads, email campaigns and content) to evoke specific neurological reactions that trigger emotions or responses that are linked to purchase. You can use this information to optimise your content accordingly and adjust your strategies, improving your marketing effectiveness.

SPARK Neuro, a neuroanalytics company that measures emotion and attention to optimise advertising and entertainment, is a leader in this space. The company combines biometrics, neurometrics and complex algorithms to analyse attention and emotion levels, effectively helping marketers determine which content to focus on and which to avoid.

Forbes reports that the company is expected to work with political campaigns in the future. But whether this happens or not, we can be sure that neuromarketing will have a big impact on the future of marketing. The richest consumer data resides in the brain and any tool that helps companies understand the brains of their potential customers will surely be worth its weight in gold.

In a nutshell

There you have it: our definitive guide to the 41 digital marketing trends for 2020.

As John F. Kennedy once said:

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present will surely miss the future”.

For anyone in digital marketing, change is an integral part of the job. You must keep looking forward and strive to adopt new technologies, tools and strategies in order to gain an edge over your competitors.