Top Essential Digital Trends to be Followed in 2020
Today we live in a digital era where communicating with each other has become very easy. The world has turned into a small global village, everyday some or other new technologies are evolving & crossing our way. We need to understand them according to the industry we have chosen to work in, as staying updated with latest trends will save our time & helps to determine our next step as well. This will also lead us to be one step ahead than our competitors.
We will be discussing few of the latest trends from the aspect of Digital Marketing. Let’s begin with digital marketing trends that you can take advantage of to improve your marketing strategy and achieve a desired result.
1. BERT or Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers
BERT is the biggest search change rolled out by Google in last few years after Rank Brain. This update of Google rolled out in early October 19 for 70 languages worldwide. It is all about improving the search from the searcher’s aspect. Google focused on small words (prepositions example: to, for, it, etc.) which clears the meaning of the entire sentence.
In one the example:
Google said, with a search for “2019 Brazil traveler to USA need a visa” the word “to” and its relationship to the other words in query are important for understanding the meaning. Previously, Google wouldn’t understand the importance of this connection and would return results about U.S. citizens traveling to Brazil.“With BERT, Search is able to grasp this nuance and know that the very common word “to” actually matter a lot here and Google can provide a much more relevant result for this query.
Note: The examples below are for illustrative purposes by Google and may not work in the live search results.
In another example:
A search for “do aestheticism stand a lot at work, Google Said it previously would have matched the term “stand-alone” with the word “stand” used in the query. Google’s BERT models can “understand that ‘stand’ is related to the concept of the physical demands of a job and displays a more useful response.
Google said, for example refer below.
So, now Google has become smarter & improving it search results.
2. Featured Snippet
In January 2020 Google rolled out an updated known as featured snippet. It stated that from now onward if your web-page is positioned on 1st page of SERP (Search Engine Result Page)then it will not be displayed twice. Featured snippet will be counted as one of the search results on the SERP.
3. Google My Business
It is a free tool for organizations to mark their presence online. Google My Business help local business to grow well. In past few years search terms like “Near Me” has increased a lot. Businesses should do local listings from Google My Business will show up before the organic listing & thus will be helpful in ranking as well.
4. Voice Search
Amazon Echo/Alexa, iPhone/Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Google Home are few of the voice search assistants trending these days. The voice searches are bit different then the written ones. They are long as compared to the written ones; example: “latest iPhone” is a keyword used while doing a written search which give one the desired result; but while doing a voice search one should clearly speak the keywords. As a break in between can change the meaning of the entire search & the desired results will be disappointing.
These searches are definitely going to grow in the future.
5. Content Written Should Focus User Intent
After the BERT update of Google, things have changed a lot. Now the content of the web-page should according to the user intent. This will help the page to rank easily on internet. Content should not be written in reference to impress a Bot, but it should have the stuff that is the user in search off.
6. Brand Affinity & its Importance
Now a days brand affinity has taken a step forward then brand awareness & brand loyalty. A brand should focus on making a good relationship with their customers rather than going only for brand loyalty or brand awareness. Creating a brand is not enough in today’s time. Your need to make people aware of your brand & what it has to offer them to solve their problems. Brand affinity is today’s demand, it is about making an emotional connection between you & your client where your client believes that your brand shares some common values with them. You have to take care of your client, otherwise someone else will do it, at your place.
7. Personalized Web Experiences
The sweetest sounding word in this world for a human is his or her name. When you remember your client’s name, they feel important. You can use cookies on your website to remember visitor’s name. Your website should interact with your client in such a way, that it solves their issues.
8. Promotion through Videos
Researchers say that if someone is buying a product online then they would prefer to watch a video before making any final decision. So, go for a well-designed video which states the best qualities of the product.
9. Live-stream Video on Different Platforms
In a survey people accepted that they prefer to watch a video rather than reading a blog. Live stream videos are getting popular today on Facebook, YouTube & Instagram. It saves time & if the audience is joining in that means they are already interested or we can say engaged in the content & are willing to either learn something new or just want to get entertained through it. This is a very cost-effective way to promote your brand, For example: it can be a music concert, a playlist of rhymes for kids or any classes that needs to be covered for far staying students etc.
10. Social Media Stories
You can always share your videos in the form of Social Media stories on Facebook & Instagram for those audience of yours who have missed your YouTube live stream.
11. Casting Podcasts
Podcast is an audio where one or more recurring host discuss on a particular topic, these are usually telecasted in series. You can also pick topics related to your niche & create podcast on them. This will help your audience to have trust on you & they will learn in an easier way.
12. Social Listening Analytics
Social listening is the process of collecting data from social platforms and forums on a chosen topic. This could be a brand, an industry, or anything at all. The collected data is then analyzed to find trends and useful insights.
13. Free Listing on Merchant Account
Google is advancing their plans to make it free for merchants to sell. From now onwards Google search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist of free listings also. This will help merchants to have better connect with consumers; regardless of whether they advertise on Google or not. These changes will take effect globally before the end of the year.
So, this was our research for the digital trends that needs to be followed in 2020. Now, here comes the most important part of the article which has an answer to your query.
Will these trends really help you?
As a digital marketers we should combine our marketing technique with digital techniques to make the life of our customer easy. The planet is turning towards virtual world & Digital Marketing is dominating. So, keeping these facts in mind we should understand the importance of these trends. Tomorrow is the time of automation, thus to keep us alive in the race we should update ourselves with the latest trends in the market. As, this is the only way to keep up in the digital world.
