Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss Going Into 2020

To say what a year ahead is going to look like is becoming a pretty difficult task. Technology is moving more rapidly than ever before in history and with this rapid pace of progress comes new ideas, techniques, updates, algorithm enhancements and brand new solutions for Dubai digital marketers to add into their marketing arsenal.

With all this change, digital advertising and marketing trends are continually evolving. What looked curious at the end of 2018 was not necessarily what served us well by the end of 2019.

As a digital agency in Dubai, we have some unique insights into what's around the corner. We're sure there will be some additional trends that pop up out of nowhere, but we know for sure that there are ten digital marketing trends that every business needs to pay attention to as the calendar of 2019 comes down, and we enter a new year.

10 Emerging and Continuing Trends for 2020

Often with these lists, there can be a sole focus on what is new, but digital marketing should be about what is working as well as testing what looks promising. With that in mind, we've broken this list of 10 into five emerging trends and five continuing, so as not to forget where the focus should remain while you carefully test new trends.

Emerging Digital Marketing Trends

1. Artificial Intelligence

AI deserves to be first on this list as it is the technology that is likely to drive all of the following trends. AI now makes an appearance in most of our digital and social media marketing tools, including our analysis tools to predict customer behaviour, customer support tools to relieve staff when chatbots can quickly assist, and voice search, which is next on our list.

2. Voice Search

Voice search is officially un-ignorable. Sales of voice service products -- Google Assistant, Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Alexa -- have skyrocketed in 2019 and voice has thus successfully entered the mainstream. What this means for businesses is the adoption of duel SEO tactics. Text queries and voice queries are different and both need to be considered when creating online content. Here are the top 10 voice search keywords:

Source - https://www.brightlocal.com/

3. Google Ads Smart Bidding

Google has recently announced smart bidding, which uses automation and machine learning to optimise your bids. This means businesses or their digital marketing agency can choose conversion action at the campaign level, set bids to change automatically when sales start or stop, and optimise bids over multiple campaigns with a selected set of conversion actions.

4. Virtual And Augmented Reality

VR and AR are becoming wildly popular with the public; thus, it's time for businesses to pay attention. Despite VR being the favourite in consumer products, it is AR that has the most potential to be leveraged as a digital marketing tool. AR can allow customers to try on outfits, visualise what items would look like in their home, or see still graphics morph into motion graphics, all from their device - creating interactive experiences.

5. Interactive Content

Creating captivating content gets harder every year. Interactive content helps businesses to stand out, serving new and exciting experiences. This keeps visitors on your site for longer. Interactive content could be video, fun surveys, and make-your-own-experience type content.

Continuing Digital Marketing Trends

1. Personalisation

If it's not already, personalisation needs to be a top priority for 2020. Consumers tune out generic one-size-fits-all ads, but personalisation keeps you relevant by serving your customers relevant content. Email -- one of the most widely used digital marketing tools -- is the best suited to personalisation, so there are no excuses not to use it.

2. Shoppable Posts

Social media marketing will continue to be hugely important in 2020, and shoppable posts need to be part of your social media advertising strategy. All social media platforms now have solutions to add shoppable posts, and 72 per cent of Instagram users have purchased a product through the app. This behaviour will only continue to normalise in 2020.

3. Content Marketing

Content remains king for yet another year. As mentioned, however, it must be personalised, optimised for voice, interactive and on the platforms where your customers spend the majority of their time online.

4. Video Content

Video is more consumable and shareable than text-based content, and its popularity is on the rise. We're not just talking about videos to go on your website, but also video designed for social media, including live video. According to Social Media Today, 78 per cent of people watch video content every week and email open rates increase when "video" is mentioned in the title.

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/

5. Position Zero on SERPs

We should all now be aware of the featured snippet block -- a.k.a. Position Zero -- that not only ranks us at the top of the page but also gives users a snippet of our content, positioning us as the authority to answer their query. This is the best real estate on the SERP, and all content strategies should be crafted to land here.