As we enter a new decade and prepare to better ourselves this year and beyond, it's important to take stock of the best strategies for digital marketing in 2020. As more and more consumers are increasingly connected to the online world via all manner of personal devices, there are ample opportunities to cast a wider net and bolster your business. If you want to stay ahead of the curve and make the most of the latest trends, here are some key tips for establishing digital marketing success this year.
But before we get into that, here's an interesting (recent) talk about the future of digital marketing by Neil Patel.
1) Don't Underestimate The Power Of Video
Recently we had a small local business located in Raleigh North Carolina (close to Charlotte), enquire about a video for their newest showroom. They told us they manufacture granite countertops and some other types of kitchen renovation and upgrade products. Video marketing is perfect to promote something like this!
Many consumers put in their due diligence before making the decision to finalize a purchase with video. The fact that the online world offers innumerable resources for gathering details about products and services has really caught on. Video reviews in particular are incredibly popular tools for gathering information on everything from major purchases like new electronics to the latest fast food gimmicks.
Smart consumers always vet the quality of anything they buy into; it's integral that you treat this with respect. Informative videos can help instill confidence that a product is worth while. If you can even provide instances of non-sponsored testimonies and personal experiences, you'll have an incredibly convincing means of inspiring purchases.
There are a number of ways to go about working videos into your marketing efforts. You can produce them yourselves or even hire others to do so. In some cases, you can merely offer your products to established personalities and "influencers" in exchange for a sponsored review. If you can find them, previously published third-party uploads that show off your wares in a positive light can also be incredibly helpful.
Another example are moving companies. How would you market such moving services using and leveraging video marketing? Easy! A moving business has tons of interaction daily with clients, right? These interactions can easily be turned into videos that you can post on social media or promote on YouTube. All you'd have to do in take short footage of your professional movers in action or while interacting with the client.
The idea is to make the viewer feel good about your moving services, your team, and working with your company - regardless of the type of services you offer! Hope that makes sense.
2) Craft A Wide-Spread Appeal
For the longest time, digital marketing has been all about chasing niches. That is especially true of building successful websites. While cornering the market on one specific topic or trend obviously has its advantages, it's now worthwhile to broaden the scope of your appeal.
Thanks to the internet, mobile phones, and the wide-spanning reach of social media, we have an increasingly interconnected world. Analytics from platforms such as Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram show that even many smaller profiles draw traffic from all around the world.
As such, you shouldn't feel the need to limit your audience to just one locale or even a solitary country. Find the broadest possible way to reach out within your niche. You can do so by weaving topics that appeal on a large-scale basis into your marketing efforts. Whether it's anything from new ways to save money to dating tips and anything in-between, universally relatable topics can help you garner more attention.
3) Continue Catering To Mobile Users
Studies indicate that more consumers are accessing the internet via their mobile phones than laptops or desktop computers these days. Most of us have already seen this shift as it has rapidly made its way over the horizon. As such, it is of the utmost importance that you cater to the smartphone crowd. This means offering SMS subscriptions that can be used to remind of store updates or sales and even apps if you have the means of developing them. Of course, the necessity of making your website mobile friendly is also even more apparent at this point.
4) Make Your Brand A Community Effort
If you want to see how powerful including your audience can be when it comes to building and establishing a successful brand, just look at the incredible waves that Youtube stars and streaming personalities on platforms like Twitch and Mixer have made as of late. With the ability to communicate directly, consumers will feel they are part of the product and thus have far more loyalty to it. Even if you're simply running an affiliate marketing t-shirt blog, there are many ways to include the community such as offering giveaways or even featuring your favorite comments or social media replies of the week. Have fun with it and the brand will be something that grows organically with multiple new participants involved.
5) Keep Your Old Content Updated
One of the death-knells for keeping your online success growing is an older post that continues performing well with search engines despite having out-of-date information. All of your old links have to be current. If you have a popular blog post or social media profile that's sending people to inactive profiles, you're missing out on a ton of engagement opportunities.
The above is especially true for local businesses. For instance if you own a home remodeling business, you want to make sure that you are regularly creating and providing some type of new content for your visitors.
Again, this is true for local kitchen renovation type businesses, roofing, countertops, plumbing, additions, granite etc.
With these tips at your disposal and a little bit of tenacity, you should have all you need to attain incredible success with your digital marketing in 2020.
...so... now what? Stop reading this post and go execute on the tips we outlined above. I wish you all the best with your marketing this brand new year!
Cheers.