2020 | Trends in Digital

It’s a start of a new decade. It is 2020 and if you want your brand to win big this year and in the coming decade, you can no longer ask why digital but how digital can help achieve more growth (on internet scale) to your brand. I am listing new and emerging themes in digital marketing for 2020.

1. Mobile Customer Experience

It’s been 10 years since original iPhone. Your customers take customer experience on mobile for granted now as the mobile ecosystem is very advanced. Your brand better excel in delivering brand experience there through mobile apps or PWAs or whatever it is called nowadays.

2. Audio Skills for the Voice Assistants

Audio is set to make your customer experience more better! You must have heard about the chatbots (yes, alien entities conspiring to take all the customer-service jobs!) Well, not so fast but the important news is that they can talk now!

Your brand marketing strategy without an audio element inbuilt is like you wanting to be in dating game without being on any online dating app!

3. Snackable Video Content

Is your brand ready to leverage the tiny videos taking internet by storm? Yeah, I am referring to Tik Tok and the likees of the world. The younger generation can engage with your brand’s edgy side. (off course, if you have one!)

4. AR + VR

Another big theme is emerging given the development in mobile and internet technologies. AR stands for Augmented Reality and VR stands for Virtual Reality. All the other realities can be derivatives of one or both. If your brand doesn’t take this reality stuff seriously then your customers might move on to new realities.

5. Personalisation

In the age of Facebook and Google and Amazon, one design for all doesn’t make sense as even the customers expect personalised experiences from all brands. Customers would love to indulge in whatever they like most so you better serve them with it.

6. Data-driven or Machine Learning for Multiple

Technology like machine learning can learn best from user behaviour and historical data or against industry standards and can help you optimise your marketing material to create multiples.

7. Creative-led Campaigns

Listing out products and services is not enough anymore. Customers wish their favourite brands be creative and entertain or educate them(as well!). Creative-led campaigns can help your brand unlock the potential of story-telling and help mend the missing connection with your customers.

8. Inclusive Marketing Design

Taking the theme of ‘Creative-led campaigns’ and ‘Personalisation’, your brand can not afford to design without inclusivity. Brands who design for all (the demographic that spans across all social layers including specially enabled) make a greater impact on their average audience as well.

9. Visual Search

The very fact that Instagram is a unicorn technology business speaks volume about the importance of images as core value-proposition. There might be hundreds or thousands of other brands who leverage the images in similar fashion. Year 2020 is high time that your brand should think beyond stock images.

10. Brand Transparency

As customers relate more and more with the brands, they obviously want brands to be transparent. Customers trust the brands and expect high integrity at every level. Only participating or organising tree plantation once every year is not going to convince them that you are serious about environmental sustainability. They expect you to disclose the number of air conditioners in your offices too.

I hope this is list helps your brand prioritise your marketing goals. If you think Awesome can help you with any of the above, please feel free to get in touch at business[at]artmarq.com.

P.S. The satire and casual tone should not be taken as offensive or demeaning as I always think good for your brand and hope you would appreciate the humour in the image campaign.