The digital marketing industry is constantly changing, we are here to help you stay ahead of the curve, so to speak.

If you are not up to date with the current marketing trends, you are limiting your brands reach. You may not be aware of these trend changes, however, your target audience is. Which is why we have created this list of digital marketing trends for you.

In the year 2020, we some older trends come along side some of the latest trends:

• Chatbots – This kind of trend acts like a personal assistant, where they are constantly learning and becoming more popular among website users.
• Voice Searches – People who use Siri, Alexa or Google to search the internet are evolving daily. Which effects the way we do SEO, as we have to learn how people speak and search your terms.
• Video Marketing – Majority of the internet would rather watch a video on how to do something or gather information, thus making it more popular to create video content and get your brand out there visually.

Now for the latest trends in online marketing.

1. Social Commerce

Since online stores and social media platforms have been around, many people have been trying to figure out how to get their users to visit their online store. Well now they have the option to sell their products on social media platforms.

2. Direct Messaging

With communication constantly being simplified, we can now using instant messaging via our social media platforms, where any question can be answered via a quick direct message from your customers.

Brands find DMing customers to be effective for forging relationships, whether addressing complaints, taking sales orders, or even just goofing around. The big stipulation here is the customer agreeing to it—a customer DMing you first is worlds apart from you DMing them first.

3. Micro Influencers

Influencer marketing has been a digital marketing trend for a few years now. It’s been so successful, though, that big-time influencers are now calling the shots. It’s not enough to send them a free sample in hopes they’ll review it—there’s payment tables and pricing lists. Social media “influence” is now a commodity, and an expensive one at that.

Rather than competing with global enterprises for the top-tier influencers, small- and medium-sized businesses are opting instead to work with small- and medium-sized influencers.

Micro-influencer is a term that we’re seeing more and more lately. It refers to the medium-sized influencers with narrower niches—popular enough to be influential, still in touch with their followers and not overloaded with sponsorship offers.

4. Polished & Interactive Emails

Email still remains just as viable as ever—the ROI of email marketing as of February 2019 was 3,200%. However, other experts notice that the numbers are slowing or stagnating. Rather than abandoning this fruitful channel, digital marketers are reviving it with a new coat of paint.

Lately, we’re seeing a swift decline in plain-text emails and newsletters. In their place are gorgeous, pixel-perfect emails that look ripped from a web designer’s portfolio. Email marketing now and through 2020 utilizes emails that look and function like web pages—including clickable buttons and other interactions.

These highly polished designs do more than just impress, they improve conversions. Readers are more likely to click stylized buttons with accompanying images than they are plain-text links.

5. Sentiment analysis

Most of human communication is trying to figure out what the heck each other is thinking. And while hundreds of thousands of years of biological advancement haven’t aided us much in understanding each other, after just a few years of machine-learning technology and we’re already making progress.

Sentiment analysis, or social listening, is the practice of analyzing the reactions of users and customers to a product or service, typically on social media or other places online. Online reviews and posts aren’t always a black-and-white “I like/dislike this.” There’s a big gray area with varying degrees in between. Maybe a user likes the product on a whole but one particular feature gets in the way. Maybe the product is fine just not what what they were expecting.

Sentiment analysis usually involves data-collecting tools and algorithms to scour online responses to your brand and evaluate them. Again, this isn’t a new digital marketing trend, but new technology is making it more popular than ever before. Advances in natural language processing let computers understand the meanings behind what humans say online, including slang and emoji.

6. Alternative and niche social media channels

Despite optimism over Facebook’s most recent earnings, the continual declines of both user growth and public opinion have shaken confidence in the platform’s dominance. Likewise, Twitter is seeing a similar plateau in growth, leading to a shift in power.

To be clear, both Twitter and Facebook will remain useful marketing tools throughout 2020 and beyond. But the exodus has already started.

Alternative social media channels are already seeing new interest and promising growth levels. If you can start developing your presence on these “secondary” sites now, it’s likely to pay off in a few years after they continue to rise.

7. Programmatic advertising

Just like with sentiment analysis, don’t send a human to do a robot’s job. AI and machine-learning algorithms are designed to make your work easier, and that includes optimizing your online advertising campaigns.

Ad placement, media buying, performance tracking and customer targeting can all be handled by software. Not only do the results tend to be better, but “outsourcing” these tasks to a bot also frees up time in your schedule to handle more important tasks. It’s automation at its best.

Software like the Adobe Marketing Cloud or Smart Ads navigate the landscape of online advertising for you. Real-time bidding can be stressful and time-consuming, just like finding the right avenues to advertise on. Handing off these tasks to an automated system can be best for both you and your business.

8. Optimizing for featured snippets

One of the reasons digital marketing trends change so rapidly is because the platforms they depend on change rapidly. Just look at Google, which updates its search algorithm thousands of times a year…

But as search engines evolve and become smarter, marketers need to adjust. More and more search queries have featured snippets, which enjoy a lot of real estate on the first page and get a lot more clicks than the other search results. That’s why it’s crucial to keep them in mind when creating digital marketing content and optimize each piece of content for featured snippets, using clear and well-structured content.

Google is trying to get better at delivering content to humans, so we need to take these changes into account and adjust our SEO techniques accordingly.

9. Vlogging

Branded vlogs: a curse or a blessing?

With the ongoing success of YouTube, Instagram Stories and Snapchat, video blogs are more popular than ever. As opposed to other video types like explainer videos or short films, vlogs are more personal and direct. Vloggers speak directly to the viewer (PewDiePie style), creating a more personal and direct connection—obviously a great boon to marketers trying to forge stronger relationships with their customers.

10. Talking to Gen Z on their own terms

Last but not least, marketers in 2020 are welcoming the latest consumer group, Generation Z. Those born just after the turn of the century are now turning 18 and entering the workforce en masse. Some sources even claim Generation Z will make up 40% of all consumers in 2020.

Among other things, marketing to Gen Z means a sharp turn in how you stylize your content. The youngest market is also the quirkiest, with tastes that may seem weird if you’re used to marketing to Boomers or Generation X.

If Gen Z is one of your top markets, here’s a quick list of their general values to keep in mind:

• Authenticity—having grown up online in the era of misinformation, Gen Z are very sensitive to authenticity and can smell phonies a mile away—avoid overly promotional approaches and opt for transparency instead.
• Privacy—concerns about privacy rank highly among Gen Z, so respecting their data will earn you more than using it against them.
• Diversity—the most diverse generation yet appreciates that diversity reflected in the videos and images they see online.
• Sense of humor—Gen Z humor has been described as “absurdist” and other less-polite euphemisms, so if you personally don’t get it, hire someone who does.