Stay on top of the hottest marketing trends for 2020
Discovering the most impactful 2020 marketing trends will help you stay relevant and in front of your ideal customers.
As technology advances, it opens up opportunities to reach your audience in new and exciting ways.
Read on to learn how you can use the latest marketing trends to improve your overall branding, customer service and marketing objectives.
Use these trends to your advantage
Create content made for interaction
Despite how busy social media and online traffic is, content creation is here to stay. And because of the saturation, it’s more important than ever to curate content that aligns with the message you most want your audience to hear.
Platforms (most importantly, Instagram) are incorporating engagement options that encourage viewers to take action and participate in the post. Humans are always engaging and as part of keeping your business real and true to your audience, you need to bear this in mind.
What’s great about interactive and engaging content is that your audience can enjoy your pages for longer as it keeps them viewing the content. Engaging content is interesting and helpful, plus the mysterious algorithms love it.
Interactive or engaging content benefits include:
- Some viewers wanting to share or repost your content
- They stay longer on your page
- Attractive content tends to promote higher click-through rates
Support your customers 100%
Many people are optimistic and confident that 2020 is an amazing year of opportunity and achievement waiting to happen. This is not only good news for business owners but for their customers too. To keep things going strong, businesses always try to offer the best customer service as this enables trust and loyalty.
By this, we see that one thing remains clear. When developing strong relationships with current and soon to be customers, your opportunity for recognition increases.
First impressions should never be taken lightly. This is extremely important when your customers encounter your brand and services. Customers remember their experience, good or bad.
And social media makes it even easier for them to compliment or complain. Be sure to respond quickly and exceedingly politely to any complaints you receive. Complaints should be seen as an opportunity to improve and to amaze the customer with the resolution of their complaint.
Supporting your customers allow for:
- Building better trust
- Word-of-mouth sales
- Recommendations and referrals
- More recognition of your brand
Help your customers remember the experience (personalise it)
A tailor-made experience is something that most people appreciate. If you treat people as partakers on a journey, rather than just a transaction, you will build a following of loyal fans and this is the best form of marketing you can have.
Most customers prefer an experience that is personalised to their needs; it gives it more meaning and a higher satisfaction rate.
These are the benefits of creating an amazing experience for anyone who deals with your business:
- Customised service increases loyalty with customers
- You build the know, like and trust factor
- Eliminate competition by providing the superior experience
This concept doesn’t even have to cost you money.
Here are a few ideas:
- eCommerce stores/online orders: include a thoughtful hand-written note
- Florist: upsize their bouquet at no extra charge, provide free flower food
- Hair salons: give a customer an unexpected discount
- Beauty salon: provide an information pamphlet or free sample
- Car service centre: do free windshield wiper per check
- Coach: set up a referral program where you give the client a 10% discount if the person they’ve referred books a session with you
Think about what would work best for your industry and come up with some creative options that leaves your customers bragging about how amazing you are.
Make your content visually appealing
Everyone likes great content, but it’s even better when it’s visually appealing. This concept applies to written content, photos and videos.
Become aware of and leverage how your ideal customer interacts online.
Terrible visuals and written content can imply that the reader wasted their time stopping by to support you.
If you want to improve the quality of your images, click here.
The more videos you post, the better
There’s no need to be a YouTuber to post videos. But it can certainly benefit your business to create a YouTube account and leverage its tools to promote your company.
Don’t forget that you can also do Facebook lives or try out IGTV to get new people aware of your brand.
Video content is king:
- People tend to prefer watching videos online rather than reading
- People have access to video content from most mobile devices (with the only restriction being their data plans)
- Video content tends to gain more traffic
Pro Tip: many people watch videos with the sound off, so we highly recommend including captions on your videos!
Optimize your SEO
Don’t think about being first; instead, be a step ahead of first place. Being above position 1 in search engines is the spot to grab this year. What exactly is beyond position 1?
That’s right… paid ads.
Now, keep in mind that placing Google ads is not as straightforward as placing ads on Facebook. If you want help with Google Ads, click here.
After the paid ads, you’ll often see the “Google My Business” map which shows businesses in your area for the service you are searching for.
If you’re smart, you’ll want your business to feature on this map, especially if you’re a local business.
Let’s say you’re an accountant in Sandton, and someone searches for “Accountant in Sandton”, then your business simply must appear on the Google My Business map! Otherwise, you’re throwing away opportunities for new business.
To read more about Google My Business in general, click here.
If you need help setting this up, Big Domino Marketing can sort it out in no time. Just click here to contact us.
Get the best of both worlds with digital and brick and mortar business
Despite being an SME (small and medium-sized enterprise), you may have already established your business in brick and mortar sales. This is how people know about your products and services. They know it is accessible when they walk through the front doors of your shop and they can make their purchases or book services and so on.
Don’t detach your business from brick and mortar. Digital online stores have fewer overheads, and other perks, so depending on your business model, you might be able to leverage the benefits of both worlds. Make your services or products available online and offline for your customers to buy.
With online markets, you’ll be able to reach a larger audience and you’ll be making things convenient for your current customers.
- Brick and mortar plus digital makes for better sales options
- Digital sales can help cut costs of brick and mortar establishments
- It isn’t too difficult to set up your online store
- Brick and mortar stores have established the relationship with customers, now use the online feature to grow it further
Feature augmented reality and virtual reality where you can
VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) is next-level interaction with your viewers, customers and potential buyers. If you’re really into using the latest tech, consider using augmented reality and VR to help the viewer get a feel of the real thing.
For example, being able to see furniture in a place via augmented reality, or using a “smart mirror” in a clothing store that will help customers to see what the clothes look like on them before they buy it.
While these options can be pricey, it helps to give your viewers a more interactive and almost “real-time” experience. Augmented reality (AR) is very similar to virtual reality (VR), except AR uses cameras such as mobile phone cameras to create a world through that lens. A good example of augmented AR is the ever-popular Pokémon Go. You’ll pretty much get the idea of AR with this game.
VR, however, creates an entirely digital world allowing the viewer to feel as if they are present within that digital world. VR games are a good example of how you can experience VR for yourself. The Oculus, PS VR, Samsung Gear VR, and Vive are some of the leading VR headsets out there.
Another good example of VR is commonly seen in real estate. Viewers can have a 360-degree tour of a property for sale and feel as though they are inside the building with access to certain areas.
With VR and AR you get:
- Incredible customer experience
- Engaging marketing activity
- Something for people to talk about
- It’s great for many industries
The takeaway on the best 2020 marketing trends for your small business
We know that business owners tend to wear many hats, and that when it comes to online marketing, things are always changing.
Even so, we hope we’ve inspired you to stay on top of some of the latest trends so that your business can create more impact and leave your customers raving about how good their interaction with you was.
Do you need more business marketing tips for your small and medium-sized business? We have a team of experts who can help you sift through the “noise” and use the tools that matter.
Click here to get in touch today!
