Digital marketing is indispensable to any business and can make all the difference in the success of your overall strategy. But online trends change quickly. We reveal the latest digital marketing insights to bring your A-game for 2020.
Insight: The digital experience is more important than ever before, particularly as Google and Facebook introduce a higher focus on privacy and data security. Businesses that seek to create a stellar online experience for their audience must pay attention.
Data: By the year 2022, around 87% of marketing budgets will be spent on digital marketing. (CMO)
What’s the step change: Understanding channel profitability and leveraging data will be a game-changer for brands.
In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence and use of more data in digital marketing. The prevalence of data breaches only pushed for greater transparency and the need to rebuild customer trust online.
The silver lining to marketers is that access to analytics and rich customer data meant an improved capability for audience targeting and personalisation.
As a result, customers began to look for and expect a more targeted and personalised messaging and turned to those that could give them what they needed.
Here are some important trends and insights, provided by Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2019 report, that can help fuel your digital marketing strategy for 2020.
The Rise of Image-First Communication
No matter where you look online today, the use of images account for why visual posts get the most engagement. As an example, more than 50% of Twitter impressions come from posts with images, video, or other media, which is a big deal when you consider how Twitter started out to be significantly text-based.
To generate an immediate response for your upcoming campaigns, integrating images into your posts helps you grab attention and ensures your audience can retain your message better. This also helps you build loyalty and share important information in a way that is easily remembered.
By 2020, if audience engagement is one of your core goals, you’ll need to develop a visual brand identity that is consistent, using powerful images that convey your marketing message.
Rapid Growth of Ecommerce
Ecommerce is growing 6x as fast as traditional retail sales. Three-quarters of all Australian households are now shopping online, with 12% of consumer spending expected to be conducted online by 2021. Purchases through marketplaces continue to grow by 31.2% every year.
The surge of marketplaces is growing in the eCommerce market with consumers opting for the convenience of being able to find everything they need online while also being on the lookout for discounts and great deals.
If your business is in eCommerce, it’s important to take into consideration the recent technology that is shaping the shopping habits and expectations of Australians today and how online shopping experiences can help you grow your brand and your customers.
Greater Privacy in Social Media
Data is fast becoming an important selling point for businesses with privacy concerns driving the need to make online communication safe. In Q1, 87% of global web traffic was encrypted, up from 53% three years ago.
Customers now expect safer options for how they communicate online. The future of digital marketing is in giving customers better control of their data and what they choose to share online.
With the help of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses are held to higher public expectations and entrusted with the responsibility to safeguard customer data and protect it with everything they can to prevent any unauthorised collection or usage.
With privacy being a top concern for online users, protecting user data and regaining the trust of customers should continue to guide businesses in their digital marketing efforts while helping them increase loyalty.
High Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer acquisition costs (CAC) are on the rise, which is a sign that we are nearing saturation. This means businesses who are looking to attract new customers and audiences will have to spend more.
You need to make sure your CAC does not exceed the customer’s lifetime value and focus on exploring other marketing methods that do not require costly paid advertising methods. Don’t overspend on advertising, because high CAC does not always relate to customer lifetime value or revenue in the long-term.
To be effective while saving on costs, consider exploring other more sustainable marketing methods, using the strength of your core products and services or from testimonials and recommendations from happy customers. Leverage the impact from non-media channels while recognising your overall CPA from your paid channels.
Data-Driven Customer Experiences
Data fuels today’s marketing, and we’re seeing more of that driving customer experiences now and into the future. Companies that are able to use data to transform the customer experience to guide their strategy are far better able to achieve their goals.
But businesses need to be wary of analysis paralysis or harnessing data without the means to fully understand or use it to inform their marketing strategy.
Making use of data-plumbing tools and software can help make better sense of your big data so you can understand what action needs to be done to drive the results you need and utilise them effectively.
Tying It Together
Knowing the latest digital marketing trends in the industry is crucial to identifying what strategies will be effective at driving your success and what is best left out in creating a winning digital marketing strategy for 2020 and the years to come.
