Like design and software development, (digital) marketing also changes with time. Not only because of the constant stream of technological innovations, also because we keep learning more about the behaviour and thinking processes of our audiences. A fresh trend in digital marketing is Growth Hacking, which involves a process of constant analysis and testing to keep marketing strategies optimized. Read along to find out what other digital marketing trends are waiting for us in 2020.

Conversational marketing

Sliding into your DM’s has never been so popular within the world of digital marketing. Instead of formal and time-consuming back-and-forth emailing and often limited contact forms, Direct Messaging creates a stronger sense of trust and efficiency between your company and its clients. Did you know that, for example, Twitter is often used by companies simply for direct client contact and quick responses? It’s a much smaller step for clients to ask a question if the only thing they have to do is send a short direct message, instead of spending half an hour on an email that accidentally gets lost in the company's flooding inboxes.

Chatbots

Another example for conversational messaging is the chatbot, which you might have seen appear on websites more often during the past years. Yes, it can be a bit annoying when every website you visit has a little nosey pop-up chat box in the corner of your screen. But like direct messaging, it lowers the threshold for asking simple questions you normally wouldn’t ask per email or contact form. Some chatbots are AI-driven, and have standard answers based on keywords in questions. However, these AI bots can often only answer very straightforward, short, and simple questions. Having a real human being answering the burning questions of your clients might be a bit more of a hassle than an automated chatbot, it does provide your clients with more thorough and satisfying answers.

Interactivity and gamification

Because the internet is full of information and stimulation, it takes an increasing amount of effort to catch your audiences’ attention and keep them entertained. In order to make things a little bit more fun, and a little less serious, interactivity and gamification are growing in popularity. This can be, for example, with interactive buttons in a company’s newsletter. Or a reward system for registering to a website or subscribing to company or product updates.

Long-form content

Whereas short and quick content like listicles are still great for building up the quantity of content on your website, so-called long-form or pillar content is taking the lead in 2020. Longer articles like these often contain more than 2000 words, and are almost more like an essay or short paper than a blog post. Research from Search Engine Journal showed that these long-form articles generate about 77% backlinks than shorter quantity content. Themes are often based on a specific product or service a business sells, and has more of an educational goal rather than amusement. Pillar content like that provides your clients with clear answers and background information, which raises a level of trustworthiness and professionalism. After all, as a client you want to be sure a company knows what they’re doing, right?

Sentiment analysis

The client is taking an increasingly central position in all aspects of marketing. After all, in order to establish a successful marketing strategy, we need to know exactly what our audiences think, and what they are looking for. In order to do this, we need to be able to take a peek inside their minds. More businesses are implementing questionnaires for their clients, to analyze the way they experience a website or a specific service. Next to that, website traffic and audience behaviour analytics with tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics is also becoming more of a core strategy in 2020. With tools like these, companies can see exactly how their audiences behave and interact with their content. Based on that, they can adjust their strategies if necessary.

Privacy marketing

In our article on cybersecurity we already gave a little insight into how important data privacy is. More and more people are gaining access to the internet, and more and more personal information is being stored in online databases and Clouds. Protection of that data has never been so indispensable. Not only for businesses, but also for its clients. As a company you want to provide your client with a perfect end product, which involves a solid system of privacy-by-design. Privacy marketing is built on the idea of making your client feel safe and sound by offering a product or service with an indestructible wall of privacy around it.