2020 Digital Marketing Trends [+free ebook]

2020 is finally here! That means it’s time to check out the top digital marketing trends of 2020 and prepare for what’s to come.

At Cyberclick we've done our homework and taken note of the most notable trends that are coming in 2020. Did your predictions make our list? Keep reading to find out.

2020 Digital Marketing Trends

1. Shoppable Post

Social networks have become an integral part of digital marketing, especially in the retail industry. Naturally, the next logical step is the ability to shop on them.

This is already a reality on some networks, and we predict that it will quickly become one on all the others. On Instagram, business accounts can posts photos that allow consumers to shop directly from the posts. It is an excellent opportunity for e-commerces and brands, and many are already using this function.

2. From Search Engine to Marketplace

Until recently, search engines were the absolute leaders for product or service inquiries. This has now changed: 55% of Americans have started searching directly for products on Amazon. Amazon contains 44% of U.S. ecommerces and 4% of retail sales.

According to Forrester, more than 50% of online purchases are made from the world's leading marketplaces: Amazon, Alibaba, JD.com and eBay. This figure is expected to increase to 67% by 2022.

3. Storyscaping

For decades, brands have used storytelling as a way to connect with potential customers and communicate their values. This is still a very effective technique, but we’re starting to see its natural evolution: storyscaping, a new way of creating corporate stories that captivate and influence.

The concept of storyscaping started in 2014 when Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl released Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds. In their words, storyscaping consists of “an environment of emotional and transactional experiences where each connection inspires interaction with others, so that the brand becomes part of the consumer’s history. Storyscaping is based on the principle that we are trying to effectively connect companies (brands) with people (consumers).”

Even though this concept was created 6 years ago, we are just now starting to see its implementation in digital marketing strategies.

4. Viraljacking

The concept of viraljacking is a concept that we created in Cyberclick, as an evolution of newsjacking.

Viraljacking seeks first to identify content that is viral on social media, and then transform and adapt them to your own brand. You must join existing viral conversations, and then create related and relevant content. You can join a current conversation or even past formulas, that you know work among your audience.

2020 Video Marketing Trends

5. Video Podcast

A video podcast, or video cast, is simply a podcast that is also recorded on video. Video podcasts allow listeners to see what happens during the recording of the show and give a face to the voices they hear. This format creates a new level of closeness to the brand, and it allows your audience to better connect with the hosts.

6. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality has been around for a few years now, making it more accessible for marketers to use in their social media video campaigns. Campaigns using augmented reality are immersive and interactive, leading to an improved user experience and a higher CTR.

2020 SEM and Google Ads Trends

7. Smart Bidding on Google Ads

Smart Bidding is a subset of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to get more conversions or improve the conversion value for each auction.

Smart Bidding offers four key benefits to save time and improve performance: advanced machine learning, wide variety of contextual signals, flexible performance controls, and transparent performance reports.

8. Audience Targeting

You can add audience targeting to ad groups to reach users based on who they are, what their interests and habits are, what they're looking for, or how they've interacted with your business. This feature can improve the performance of your campaigns by reaching users while browsing websites, using apps, or watching videos.

One of Google's latest updates already allows layered audiences, placed on top of each other. This means that keyword and demographic targeting can be used together to create extremely relevant ads.

9. PPC Automation

Pay-per-click automation has become a powerful way to improve the performance of our campaigns. To take full advantage of the automation of the PPC, we need to provide algorithms so that Google can learn from our campaigns, allowing them to continuously improve the machines themselves.

While automation does needs human oversight, it is essential for your brand because it helps free up time overall, which can then be devoted to more qualitative tasks.

2020 Social Media Marketing Trends

10. Messaging Services for Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram for Businesses

Facebook has focused on improving messaging services for companies through its social networks Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The goal is that brands can offer better communication and customer service through these three applications, since it’s estimated that poor customer service is responsible for losing $75 million a year.

We can already find examples of large companies using these messaging platforms as their main communication system. For example, Vodafone Germany already manages 62% of its customer service conversations through WhatsApp.

11. Thread: The New Instagram App

Threads is an app from Instagram that allows users to communicate with and share images with your Close Friends lists. But it goes way beyond that.

As soon as you open the application, the camera is automatically turned on so that users can instantly take a picture or video and share it. Users can only share with their predetermined Close Friends list, a list they can make on Instagram or on Threads. They will then receive the photo or video as a private message on Instagram (even if they don’t have Threads). For now, you can only send photos or videos taken in the moment, not from the gallery.

12. Advertising on Tik Tok

Tik Tok is the talk of the town in terms of social media marketing. The network has managed to reach no less than 500 million users in a short amount of time… and if you’re not in the right age bracket you may have never even heard of it!

In October 2019 Tik Tok managed to outperform Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat in the number of monthly downloads.

It has recently begun to incorporate advertising options, making this platform one of the best options for reaching the Gen Z target. If you want to learn more about Tik Tok and how to use it for your brand, check out our recent blog post.

13. Advertising on Pinterest

In March 2019 we saw one of the biggest news in social media advertising of recent times: Pinterest Ads arrived in Spain! Such ads have been available for years in the United States, and since last year in France.

Because of the particularities of the social network, advertising on Pinterest has more in common with SEM than with traditional social ads. And as always, when a new platform appears, it’s up to marketers to investigate how it works and how we can apply it to our brands.

2020 Inbound Marketing Trends

14. Progressive Forms

Forms are necessary to qualify contacts and assess whether they are a potential customer or not. But, at the same time, asking for too much information can cause the visitor to get creeped and leave before completing the form.

Progressive forms intelligently resolve this dilemma by "remembering" the user and showing them only the fields that they have not yet completed on a previous visit. With this method, over several downloads, you can complete the data you have about a lead and see if they are qualified for marketing or sales.

15. Predictive Sales Rating

As inbound marketing experts know, getting leads is only the beginning. The next step is to perform a rating strategy that allows us to discern whether the lead is ready to be passed to the sales team, if they need more marketing communications, or if they should be discarded.

Predictive sales rating automates the process by using an algorithm that analyzes what the lead has in common with clients who have converted in the past, and then gives it a score based on their conversion possibility.

2020 Web Design and UX Trends

16. Inclusive Design

Designing for everyone is a challenge and can put your imagination to test. It involves coming up with new inclusive ideas and learning about diversity and the unique challenges faced by different groups.

An example of an inclusive website design is one that includes multiple forms of contact. Instead of only being able to contact via phone, there should also be an email option. Error alerts should not only be auditory, but visual as well.

2020 Email Marketing Trends

17. In-Email Purchases

Marketers specialized in email marketing believe it will be possible for personalized shopping experiences to become a reality, based on the habits and preferences of each subscriber in your database.

In fact, we think that the ability to make purchases directly from email is closer to becoming a reality. The same way many social networks have integrated shopping options within their platforms, email will soon be able to host purchases without having to leave the format.

2020 Programmatic Advertising Trends

18. The Introduction of 5G

This high bandwidth allows advertising technology ecosystems to load ads faster, which avoids millisecond delays that generally cause users to leave a website. Therefore, the rise of video provides the opportunity for the world of programmatic advertising to deliver higher resolution ads to its target audience.

This a great opportunity for the future of programmatic buying. It is estimated that in 2025 there will be approximately 1.1 billion 5G connections. With faster transactions, this expedites the way in which ads are presented to consumers.

19. OOH Advertising

Out of Home digital advertising continues to grow. Outdoor ads on billboards, stadiums, festivals, and means of transport have already reached record levels. According to Statista, global investments in OOH will amount to $38.6 billion by 2020.

Tests are already being done so that digital outdoor advertising is personalized. This means recognizing our phones (if for example, they have the bluetooth connection open) and seeing ads designed specifically for you, which will be different for the person walks by 5 minutes later.

2020 Data and Analytics Trends

20. Automation of Data Analysis

As we’ve mentioned, automation is a huge trend. So much so, it is estimated that by 2020 more than 40% of data-driven tasks will be automated. As a result, productivity is expected to increase globally and non-specialized data scientists will be able to take better advantage of the available data.

21.Automated Content Management

By 2020, it is estimated that 95% of image and video content will be analyzed by machines. This market is expected to reach $59.87 billion.

In all likelihood, this 95% of content will never be analyzed by a human. Instead, the machine will use data analytics to provide detailed reports that support the company's digital initiatives. And from these reports, companies will be able to spot opportunities in mobile, social and cloud technology.

22. Natural Language Processing

Next-generation language processing systems can distinguish between passing mentions of a brand and those that have an actual purchase intent, and offer the brand a list of potentially interested customers. Another high-potential application of natural language processing is creating content for inbound marketing. Although computers are not ready to replace a human editor at the moment, in the coming years we expect to see interesting developments in this area.

2020 Branded Content Trends

23. Branded Content with Influencers

Branded content with influencers has a new twist and will once again be one of the most outstanding trends of 2020. Why? Influencers will now be the direct creators of the brand's content, rather than just one more means of launching their advertising messages. For example, Instagram now allows influencers the option to transform their account into a "Creators" account, and which can give permissions to brands so that the brand can promote the influencer’s content, although the influencer still owns the post.

2020 Content Marketing and SEO Trends

24. Position 0 in Google

In order to appear in voice searches you must be in position 0. This is the Answer Box in SERPs or Google search results. Being in position 0 or rich snippet causes you to be the result for voice searches on some of the queries made to smart speakers.

Semantics is important in this aspect of your organic positioning. Alexa, for example, won't read anything that isn't readable and natural, with whole sentences and no abbreviations. A good tool that can help you analyze the entities of your content, syntax and categories (dependant on Google's eyes) is Google's Natural Language tool.

25. Rankbrain

Google can now recognize the "human" concepts behind keywords thanks to RankBrain, and we have to take this development seriously when it comes to assessing what SEO trends will look like in 2020.

So, what exactly is RankBrain? It refers to the name Google gives to the machine learning and artificial intelligence system it uses to help process its search results. Essentially is a machine that teaches itself how to do something.