If only we had a crystal ball so that we could see into the future, we would be the star of our marketing team. Unfortunately, futurists sometimes get it wrong. Typically change happens slower than we think. But, if we don’t pay attention to these pundits, our marketing efforts may be left out in the cold.
Marketing has been evolving for the past several decades with the rise of social media, content marketing, video marketing, and other digital marketing opportunities. A report written back in 2016, titled The path to 2020: Marketers seize the customer experience, was developed by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit (EIU) who surveyed 499 CMOs and senior marketing executives. The report was sponsored by Marketo. The survey explored which technologies and customer trends would likely change marketing organizations over the next few years.
Here are some interesting insights and trends to expect for 2020:
Eighty-six percent of CMOs believe they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020
This means that you must have a comprehensive understanding of your customer. Now with data analytics available, it is easier than ever to gather data about your customers. You must have unified information about the customer’s purchasing history, preferences, and desires. The data needs to come not only from the marketing department but from sales, accounting, customer service and other departments who have touchpoints with the customer.
Reorganizing the marketing department around data and analytics as much as content and media channels is inevitable
Marketing has already become very data-driven. So it makes sense that marketing departments will need to be reorganized according to their customers’ experiences. Marketing will become more technology-driven. We’ve already seen chatbots (check out a study conducted by Juniper Networks) and other forms of customer engagement on websites. And with artificial intelligence (AI) now being used with some marketing applications, the customer’s information can be collected as they move throughout their day. Mobile devices and personalization technologies are the key drivers in obtaining these data analytics.
Smart speaker advertising
You may already be using smart speakers in your home, like Google Home, Alexa, or Siri. This type of advertising is expected to grow exponentially in 2020. Over 43 million smart speakers were sold to consumers in 2018 according to the Smart Audio Report by Edison Research. One interesting statistic from this study was that podcast listeners love smart speakers especially because it is easy to find podcasts that they like. Smart speakers are stealing the share from other media. According to the study, 45% are listening to less radio, 32% are reading fewer magazines and newspapers, 29% are watching less TV and 38% are using their smartphone less.
Voice search
Along with smart speaker advertising, optimizing your website for voice search will be extremely important in 2020 and beyond. According to BrightLocal’s Voice Search for Local Business Study 2018, more than half (58%) of consumers used voice search to find local business 46% of voice search users search daily and 28% used voice search about once per week. So, voice search is a growing trend, especially among younger audiences. 76% of consumers ages 18 to 34 had used voice search in the last 12 months and another 15% who had not used voice search would consider using it in the future.
Live video content will continue to trend
As I discussed in a previous blog post, video marketing has become more and more popular. But, live presentations will become even more important. According to Digital Information World by 2021, 13% of all Internet traffic will consist of live video. Live video allows the speaker to interact with the audience via the chat. The speaker can answer questions, reply to comments in the chat, and acknowledge people hopping on to the broadcast. More and more social media platforms will support live video streaming by 2020.
Interactive marketing will drive engagement
Many companies are already using interactive content such as contests, quizzes, polls, surveys, games and interactive videos. So, it should be no surprise that this trend will continue for 2020 and beyond.
Adapting to change may be difficult for some marketing departments, but it is necessary to stay in the game. With all of the clutter out there, you need to find a way to make your content stand out from the crowd.
To your marketing success,
Sheila
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