With not only another year coming to an end, but the beginning of an entirely new decade just weeks away, we decided to collate together all the marketing trends we think your brand should be aware of for 2020.
Visual/Video content
Video content is something we have become more proficient in throughout the last 12 months. From creating a mood reel with both trade and consumer facing edits for snack brand Munchy Seeds, to Facebook and Instagram advertising video for Garden Trellis Co, to planning video developments for Curzon Marketing itself, video is something that we are investing in.
You can watch our work for Munchy Seeds here.
This is due to visual and video content is becoming more and more effective every day. According to Vegage, 85% of people are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. People are visually oriented; with 65% of us being visual learners. If this isn’t enough of a reason to encourage you to introduce video to your marketing activity, consider the fact that posts with images produce 180% more engagement than plain text*1.
Customer Experience
Positive customer experience (CX) is becoming make-or-break for brands. According to PWC, 65% of people agreed that when it comes to making purchase decisions, customer service is important in choosing between options, and 1 in 3 consumers said they would walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. CX may not sound like the key point of contact that is directly associated to the marketing of a brand, but there are ways that you can use your marketing to indicate towards good CX. One example would be your social media presence. Many consumers prefer human interaction to automated technology. Having a strong presence on social media that clearly relays your brand identity and key messages, whilst also appearing more human like and personal will help people put a face to a brand and feel more comfortable with you.
Social Media
Social media marketing budgets are predicted to have doubled by the end of 2025, according to SocialTimes*2. Social media is worth engaging with as, in addition to helping your brand appear more ‘human’ and personal, it’s a mobile industry. Mobile phones, tablets and even laptops to a certain extent are much lighter and more mobile than the large, clunky desktops that we started the decade with, meaning we are on our devices more than ever and on-the-go connectivity is on the rise. Word of mouth also applies to Social Media – people trust what other people love linking us onto our next trend for 2020: Influencer Sampling.
Influencer Collaborations/Sampling
People trust what other people like*3, and influencer marketing (especially when you develop an ongoing relationship with a specific few influencers) can work well in your favour. Often, smaller influencers are happy to create content in return for free product, making it a cost-effective advertising option.
Voice Search
ComScore predicts that b 2020, 50% of all online searches will be performed with voice search*4. In a recent post from emarketer.com, smart speaker usage is projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 48% to include over 76 million users by 2020. This rise in voice search means adaptions your brand’s online presence to be ready for it. Using natural language with clear and concise answers to questions will help optimise your position for voice searches.
Strategic Marketing
Finally, it can be easy to read blog posts such as this and believe that if you simply follow these few steps then you will have mastered your marketing in one go! However, it isn’t quite that simple. In addition to keeping up to date with trends and established a well-founded brand identity, you also need to think beyond the what and focus on the why. Why do we marketers do what we do? It’s crucial that marketing goals and objectives align with the overall goal of your brand. It’s also important to track your progress: for example, there’s no point investing in a large scale, expensive social media campaign if your brand has no following. Using web analytics services such as Google Analytics offers you the ability to keep track of how successful your marketing campaigns are, what platforms your customers use most and where they come from, helping you adapt your marketing activity to be the most effective it can be.