The digital marketing landscape is evolving constantly. It is important to stay ahead of the curve if you want to be on top of your game. When it is about digital marketing, the focus remains on the future. Since 2020 is almost coming to an end, the question that comes up here is what does the final quarter of 2020 hold for digital marketing?
Yes, we shall get into it, but before that, let us have a quick look at the existing digital marketing trends in 2020.
What are the already-existing digital marketing trends in 2020?
In 2020, we have seen new and effective marketing trends. They are as follows:
Video marketing – Hosting videos became very much popular and an easier way to increase engagement and this is going to boost dramatically in 2021.
Voice searches – Since more people are using digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, SEO has inclined towards voice searches along with keywords that are based on how people talk and not type.
Chatbots – These are personal assistants without the personnel. 2020 tech trends have brought new life into the chatbots and AI, using them more convincingly in digital marketing.
Shoppable posts – This is also known as social commerce. You don’t need to leave the site or the app. These things came into existence in 2020 with Instagram and gained quick popularity in 2020. With 54% using social media for product research, the shoppable posts are great tools.
Direct messaging – This is one of the hottest marketing trends in 2020 – The DMs! Through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Twitter, and Instagram, brands have built a stronger connection with customers.
Micro-influencers – Influencer marketing was popular for a few years. In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of social media peaked. At present, influencer marketing has become a commodity and it is a significant one. Micro-influencers are medium-sized influencers with narrow niches that are popular enough to be influential yet not too overloaded with offers.
Sentiment analysis – This is also known as social listening. It is the practice of analyzing the reactions of the users and customers on social media on a certain product or service. Sentiment analysis includes using data-collecting tools and algorithms to scour online responses.
Alternative social channels – The alternative social channels like Medium, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat are becoming new favorites for marketers. If you are a niche brand, then more specialized platforms are better to reach your target audience.
Programmatic advertising – AI and machine learning algorithms are now designed to make things easier. Starting from ad placement, performance tracking, media buying, and customer targeting, everything can be done through software.
Optimizing for the featured snippets – One of the primary reasons the digital marketing trends change is because the platforms change rapidly. Search Engines have become smarter, more search queries have featured snippets. Thus, at present, every piece of digital marketing content is created keeping in mind the featured snippets.
Now that we know the on-going digital marketing trends, let us have a look at the top digital marketing trends that will continue to exist in 2021 as well.
| SL NO | Digital marketing trends for 2021 | Brief Summary |
| 1 | No click searches – aka featured snippets | At present, when you search for something in Google, sometimes the answer is suggested at the top within boxes. This is the position zero box, aka the featured snippets where you get the answer without any clicks. |
| 2 | Google verified listings for local SEO | For the businesses that operate on a local level, Google My Business offers valuable information and helps in establishing your brand in your location. |
| 3 | Visual search | Instead of typing, the users have the option to upload an image and get information about any item. |
| 4 | Automated Smart Bidding in Google Ads | These allow Google in using machine learning for analyzing a large amount of data on the users so that you can adjust your bids in real-time. |
| 5 | A change in the adoption of social networks | Social media usage has naturally increased due to COVID-19 pandemic. With the social media platforms expanding its advertising and publishing options it will be interesting to see how brands use these short-form video platforms. |
A few digital marketing tips for the 4th quarter of 2020
Here are a few things that you can do in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The 80-20 rule:
The 80-20 rule is applicable to a lot of things. Now here is how it relates to marketing and sales.
- You get 80% of your profits from 20% of your customers.
- 80% of the product sales will come from 20% of the products.
- 80% of the sales are obtained from 20% of the products.
Now, the fourth quarter of 2020 is the right time to adjust your efforts to attain optimal returns.
- Keep your focus more on 20% of your customers that generate 80% of the profits.
- Also, put more energy into the campaigns around 20% of the products.
- Increase the amount of expense on 20% of the ads that bring results for your company.
Use the holidays effectively
The final quarter of any year brings up the holiday season along with it. There are numerous upcoming festivals and in India where you as a brand can offer a lot to your customers. Instead of the boring discounts and price cuts, you can offer your customers something that connects with them emotionally.
Connecting with your audience emotionally is more important these days than offering simple monetary discounts. Thus, think about something creative to connect with your audience during the festivals. Have a look at our blog here on how you can make a content marketing calendar for the festivals in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Use the free time to your advantage
Since the fourth quarter of the year is a festive time there are opportunities to plan a lot of activities to engage your audience. You can do the following:
- Start an email marketing campaign with a holiday theme.
- Promote holiday offers through social media available until 31st December.
- Line up a fourth-quarter social media strategy that revolves around Instagram, Facebook, Blogs, and Email.
- Send virtual gift cards to clients and customers
- Run a contest to grow your database, sign up people, partner with vendors for sharing expenses.
- plan a get-together with clients, face-to-face, or through video calls.
- Start a gift idea board on Pinterest and share it weekly.
- Create a blog on the main product that you offer and use it to educate your customers.
- Update the website to a new and more blog-friendly platform.
End of the year 2020 digital marketing aspects to monitor carefully
The New Year is almost around the corner. Sure we have talked about a lot of existing digital marketing trends like video marketing and voice search that will account for over 50% of the search queries by 2021. However, there are few interesting digital marketing aspects that no one is really talking about. Here are certain digital marketing aspects that you have to monitor carefully, especially now, when we are at the end of 2020.
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Companies that rely too much on Google Analytics will be beaten by their competition
We all love Google Analytics and there is nothing wrong with it. However, marketing is changing and new channels are introduced (like voice search). Transactions are no longer simple. There are upsells, downsells, repeat purchase, checkout issues.
Also, you can generate more revenue for your online business through affiliate marketing, partnerships, and even webinars. This is what led the companies to start using analytics solutions that tie to their database better, like Amplitude.
More companies are using business intelligence solutions like Google Data Studio. You can pass more granular data from the Facebook Ad Campaigns into Data Studio. This phenomenon would be difficult with Google Analytics.
Thus, if you want to win big, you have to combine Analytics with other tools like Google Data Studio to access advanced data for more informed decisions.
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Organizations will optimize for the voice searches but not for the revenue
In 2020, more than 50% of the searches are through voice search. However, that is not a new trend. So what is the big deal? To optimize for the voice search. Optimizing for the voice search is a great way to get your brand out there. The best example here is Jetson.ai.
If you are not familiar with Jetson.ai, it enables people to buy from your website using a voice search. It doesn’t matter whether it is Alexa or Google Home. It works with most of the popular devices. The best thing is, it can learn from the customers and customize the interactions.
For instance, if you order the same toothpaste from the same store, it will keep a track of it and help you to order the same product repeatedly.
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You have to look for alternative communication channels
Well, we all know that email is something that we use in the corporate world. However, the click rates from email marketing have dropped by 9.4% in 2019. Does that mean email marketing is obsolete? Absolutely not! Email is here to stay but the companies need to leverage other communication channels.
Chatbots, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp messenger is an even better marketing channel. Also, it is important to leverage tools that allow push notifications like subscribers. You can wait till next year for the chatbots and push notifications to get more popular but the sooner the better it is.
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Automation in marketing
Automated SEO solutions increase page views per visibility by 60%. Also, it offers 21% more keywords on page one. Yes, it is applicable to larger organizations. However, some startups like Ubersuggest, are starting to leverage AI.
In simple terms, the marketing field is getting even. If you want to do well, you need to leverage AI and automation. It will make quick changes and more accurately than any human.
There will be affordable AI options as well. It is just a matter of time. Now, if everyone is using it then how do you beat your competitors? Simple, you use what everyone else is using, which are the -price, customer service, upsales, operations, etc.
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No more silver bullets
Previously, a lot of businesses were built on a single marketing channel. For instance, Dropbox grew by referral marketing where you used to get more space by inviting more friends. Facebook grew by email address book where Facebook could tap into it and invite your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf. Yelp and Quora were built on SEO.
Yes, all these factors help in driving the business. However, you can no longer do business with a single marketing channel. Good channels get saturated. Also, when a single channel works, your competitors will jump on board and make things harder for you.
This is why, marketing today, is shifting towards marginal gains. Digital marketing today is about improving in multiple marketing channels instead of sticking to a single “holy grail of marketing”.
Starting from the split testing of the title tags to tweaking a few ranking improvements, to adding a few check-out bumps to spend a little more on your paid ads to using the Google Data Studio to optimize for your lifetime – it is all about the little things now.
Practical digital marketing recommendations for a profitable 2021
It is important for all business organizations to review how they can harness the latest marketing trends. It will help them in applying the latest innovations.
According to Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist,
“70% of the time we’re going to focus on things that we know that are very core to our business. 20% is where we’re trying to push the boundaries. You get into the known unknowns. And the last 10% is true crazy experimental stuff. Trying to figure out how to do uncomfortable things that we’re going to fail at more than we will succeed at. But with every success, you build a competitive advantage.”
Thus, evaluating the innovations will help you push boundaries and help you improve digital marketing activities.
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Monitor the core Google Updates on organic search
In 2020, the core updates had a significant impact on organic visibility for multiple brands and businesses. According to Google,
“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our search results. Most aren’t noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve. We aim to confirm such updates when we feel there is actionable information that webmasters, content producers, or others might take about them”.
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Check out the opportunities from structured data and SERPs features
Structured data will reshape the future. It is true because, by September 2020, Google implemented structured snippets with SERPs. As you can see the “how-to” schema carousel is right above the featured snippet. Once you click on the steps on the how-to schema, it will take you to the site listed within the featured snippet.
