The business model with the positioning “we are successful because we have a great product” has not worked for a long time, because a good product alone is not enough for promotion in an environment of the most aggressive competition.
Briefly about those aspects of marketing that will continue to provide a consistently positive result:
- Individual approach (yes, customers all also like to be addressed by name and made a personal discount on their favorite hair shampoo!);
- Video content (yes, video clips in articles, posts and on YouTube still get the maximum number of views!);
- Adaptation to mobile devices (yes, it is much easier to find people in their mobile gadgets and show them ads there!);
- Social networks (yes, more and more functions appear in social networks for the direct sale of goods and services!);
- Opinion leaders (yes, online users still trust the opinion of people who are authoritative for them!).
Now let's take a closer look at the factors that will become an effective innovation in the field of marketing in the next 2020th year. even for social media marketing for small business
Interactive content: again, about virtual and augmented reality
Netizens are tired of linear monotonous content; they want to become an active participant in the process and get their value from viewing ads (since they are wasting their precious time on this). In the report of the analytical agency DemandGen Report, this fact is clearly recorded in the form of the need of 91% of buyers for visual and interactive content. It is he who brings the highest conversion rate and increased audience engagement.
The most advanced companies (for example, The New York Times and BuzzFeed) have long relied on interactive content, when the recipient of an advertisement becomes a direct participant in it:
- Live animated posts;
- 360-degree video;
- Polls and quests;
- AR / VR videos - new 2019-2020!
With the advent of virtual and augmented reality, marketing has gained the ability to implement interactive content in the most effective format. Now even a house in Antarctica can be purchased based on the results of a virtual inspection of each room.
According to experts, by 2021 AR will almost double the pace of VR development, which means that this particular technology will become the most in demand in marketing and other areas of business.
Messengers as a business tool (Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp)
Let's start with Facebook. In one of its reports, the company reported that 2.5 billion users of their social network send more than 8 billion messages each month as part of business communications.
WeChat, in turn, has nearly 1.5 billion loyal users, of which 1.5 million are registered as business units. As the statistics of the company show, 83% of accounts are used, among other things, for solving business issues.
But WhatsApp, without being tied to any social network, breaks all records for the number of regular users - according to experts, this figure is about 1.5 billion people, of which three million accounts are in WhatsApp Business status. The number of messages exceeds 65 billion messages per day.
For what purpose do companies use instant messengers?
- Building contacts and building business relationships;
- Informing customers about the product of their business;
- Increased sales;
- Inviting people to events;
- Providing customer support.
And consumers receive bonuses in the form of a prompt answer to their question and direct access to the official representatives of the company. I can confidently say that in 2020 this trend will be even more relevant and effective.
The study of market analytics is the # 1 task for a marketer
Last year, Ron Berman, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, did some interesting research on how to work with analytics well. It found that 57% of marketers are mishandling data and possibly drawing the wrong conclusions, which then cost companies a lot of money.
So, it is the marketer who builds a successful business development strategy from scratch. To do this, he needs several important tools and resources:
- Market analysis (Who works in the market? What product is already being produced? Who are the competitors? What product is most in demand?);
- Strong team (Technical and humanitarian performers);
- Implementation budget (Of course, the more the better, but reality usually requires maximum modesty in costs).
Why analytics comes first? It's simple: it is the foundation for determining the correct direction of development and the selection of appropriate tools in order to create a demanded product and its development.
From my own experience, I will say that it will be even more useful for business if this analytics is studied in advance - at the idea stage, when the founders of the company are just planning a product launch. A detailed study of it will allow entrepreneurs to get a detailed and most relevant picture of the market in order to bring the most popular product to it.
# 0 in the search engine - this is what you need to strive for now
A few years ago, Google created a new feature for its search engine - Featured Snippets, which in 2018-2019 remained very underestimated by marketers. In 2020, this situation will change for the better, that's for sure!
What, in fact, are we talking about? This so-called position number 0 is located above the position number 1 of the search engine Goggle, which means that the user sees it as the very first one in the SERP. Often, the content of this position can contain a squeeze of useful information (as a response to a user's request), a list, quotes, and even a photo.
from the experience of many digital marketing company, most often content from the first position in the search results gets to this "zero" position, but this is not always the case. Therefore, even a company from the fourth or sixth page has a good chance of being there. The main requirement is that the text must meet the requirements of Google in terms of formatting and semantic load. So, for example, according to SemRush, the average number of words in a block that falls on position # 0 is 40-50 words. And there are a number of such parameters.