The year 2020 has made significant changes to how we conduct business. With companies and brands becoming more and more dependent on their digital strategy, it is time to revitalize your digital marketing game. Without doubt it will be the deciding factor in making through these tough times of crisis.
Companies of various sizes are facing their own share of problems due to the pandemic.
First, the B2B companies that rely on trade shows and exhibitions to network and build customer relations. Second, smaller businesses that acquire new customers through word-of-mouth referrals or on the strength of a hard-won reputation. Third, larger companies incurring huge losses due to cancelled events.
Industries that have been slow to adapt to digital marketing are already losing their edge. However, with businesses digitizing their strategies, a new issue is arising: stiff competition in the online arena.
Survival of the Fittest
Digital marketing strategies are clearly the top priorities for brands in 2020. So, if your business plans to survive the online landscape, adapt to the rapidly evolving changes. With every passing day digital marketing is being impacted by fast-paced technology. Trends change at breakneck speed and consumer behaviours are unpredictable. Marketers need to take well planned strategies and ace the game with foresightedness.
“Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behaviour when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened.”
To make things easier for you, here are the top 7 digital marketing practices for 2020 that will help revitalize your digital marketing strategy. These tips will not only help you survive this crisis, but also thrive.
1.Update your content to Educate and Personalize
Content has been king for long and 2020 is going to only support this statement. Make content optimization a part of your strategy to succeed. Involve experts who will lead to more external links and a better social media presence.
Use content that are educational assets such as informational blogs, white papers or quizzes, etc. This will help to nurture leads and build audience trust.
And don’t forget the content you’ve already published. Update blogs or articles that have ranked well previously and have attracted backlinks. Make simple updates such as dates and tweak the article for latest statistics. Google always prefers fresh content. This is a cost effective way to get your rankings rise quickly.
Content marketers should personalize messages for modern netizens. Do this by digging into analytics and understanding demographics, affinity categories and in-market segments. This will invariably cause an increase in organic rankings, lead to more website traffic and new customers.
2. Embrace Research
One of the best marketing strategies of 2020 is investing in data, research and analysis.
Use your resources to analyse the performance metrics of existing creatives. Also, identify where the gaps and slippages in the creatives are. Finally, design new creative that have a direct impact on poor performing metrics and give better results. This methodology is an educated and informed way of moving forward.
You can also conduct and publish your own research on online trends. Experts who have tried this earlier claim that such reports generate links from reputable websites. Although, this is not an absolute necessity, it can definitely amp up your game and help you yield thousands of subscribers who will respect your brand.
This strategy works well because when you come up with something new, people share it on social media. This can become an effective 2020 strategy, resulting in backlinks from thousands of high-authority publications.
3. Use Video Content
Video is growing as a popular digital marketing tactic every year. Moving content creates stronger bonds with consumers. With the onset of pandemic, the growth of video is rising meteorically.
Video content makes customers more likely to purchase a product. The best way to drive conversions through video content is tutorials, testimonials, and behind-the-scenes footage. They can be created to make complex concepts easier to grasp and make it easier for customers to understand products and services that are offered.
We know that the Google algorithm favours websites with video content. Thus, this is an incredibly important part of marketing for SEO. The idea behind this tactic is to build brand awareness. What’s more, the videos are also reusable in other capacities, like blogs and social posts.
4. Embrace podcasts
Digital marketing has made a real breakthrough with the rising popularity of podcasts. Podcasts are one of the best channels to build a solid audience. Once the bond is established, they will return for every episode. It is also a great way for reutilizing content. Therefore, make use of your content that you may already have on your blog, articles etc. Marketers can appear as guests on established podcasts or they can start their own. It is a win-win situation in both the cases as both offer huge benefits with negligible downsides.
According to experts, appearing on podcasts has been one of the most effective marketing strategies of 2020. This has also added to site traffic and brand awareness.
Try podcasts that have devoted audiences or build one in your own niche. Remember the audience interests need to overlap with your own. When a podcaster has a large and faithful audience, any endorsement that you make will be trusted and they will want to try it out.
5. Embrace Voice technology
The voice search trend has been ongoing for some years now. However, now it should become a part and parcel of your digital marketing strategy. Adopting voice search is a great way to not just spread brand awareness, but also to convert into sales. Brands and businesses must tap into this potential. Therefore, start experimenting with fresh and creative ideas to use smart speakers as an effective channel for driving sales.
This way you can convert visitors into leads by answering FAQs. You can also optimize for voice queries and long-tail keywords. This will be a huge asset to maximize marketing and advertising opportunities via voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. Keep in mind that for voice technology, write content in a conversational tone. Also, focus on getting featured snippets on Google. Lastly, think about keywords that people will speak rather than type. Natural language semantics are a big win in voice technology.
The increasing use of voice search has made it important for companies to rethink their digital marketing strategies in 2020. Here are a few statistics that will surely persuade you to adopt voice technology.
- 50% of all searches will be via voice by 2020
- 55% of all-American homes will own a smart speaker by 2022
- 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that their devices are used as part of their daily routines
6. Featured Snippets
SEO has always been an important aspect of digital marketing. This will remain the same throughout 2020.
However, there are also major shifts in the SEO industry that need to be kept in mind. Consumers are changing the way they use search engines like Google due to the growth of mobile and voice search. Therefore, just the number one position in the search engine result pages or SERPS is no longer necessarily the primary goal.
Rethink Google searches in terms of Featured snippets. These “on SERP” information means that all the information you are looking for is right there on the Google search results page. In other words, you don’t need to click through to a website to learn all the information. This is what your business should be aiming for.
Featured Snippets may appear in various places. However, the best position is right at the top of the page, before the organic listings also called the “position zero”. As it is often the only information that a searcher will view, it is highly coveted. Brands should definitely aim to achieve the erstwhile “position zero”. This coveted position requires different SEO techniques than those employed for a normal listing in the SERPs.Therefore, be the first in your industry to adopt this. This way, you will have a huge advantage over your competitors.
Fact Check: Over 60% of search results returned by Google are now featured snippets.
Learn the art of Customer Retention
A huge part of marketing is providing a great customer experience. Therefore, make sure that Customer Experience is your top priority. Your ongoing marketing strategy should not deviate from what the customer wants. Be focused on keeping your existing customers, rather than just attracting new ones.
Loyal customers are as valuable if not more than new customers. Generating new leads should never take a priority above keeping your recurring customers happy. Experts have found that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep a new one. Thus, it’s definitely worth putting in the effort to keep learning to complement customers’ needs.
Loyal customers also help to increase the reputation and awareness of your brand as they’ll talk about your company and products with their friends and family. Remember always that satisfied customers make great brand ambassadors and influencers. What’s more, it’s the most effective brand awareness program.
Conclusion
These are unprecedented times no doubt, but it doesn’t mean that your digital marketing strategies should take a backseat. Instead the decline of all channels related to live events and conferences combined with the increasing hindrances on travel and face-to-face business ventures make digital platforms all the more important. Take a strong stance against this enormous challenge. The key to this crisis is resilience.
Many of the above-mentioned ways and methods will surely prove to be helpful for optimizing your brand power through effective and updated digital marketing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aditya is the founder of Digital Polo a unique design company that provides unlimited design work for a simple, affordable fee. He also heads a full-service digital agency called Nico Digital.
