4 Content Marketing Trends To Follow in 2020

We have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the content marketing strategy that has been working for your brand perfectly in 2019 will not work in 2020. The good news is that if you adapt your strategy to current content marketing trends, your content marketing agency will easily achieve the desired results in the new year.

The key problem is that modern customers feel overwhelmed by the content options. And as you have probably noticed, it’s getting more challenging to grab their attention. To understand what specific content your target audience is ready to consume, check out the following four content marketing trends.

Video Content

Video content is not a new trend. And it’s highly likely that your current content marketing strategy is focused on video content production. But the point is that to succeed in 2020, you should generate even more videos than you did before.

Results of the resent survey reveal that 54% of consumers want to see more videos from brands and businesses they follow online. So you should expand your video content strategy, and start shooting new types of videos. Here are a few content ideas to consider:

• TikTok videos – If you target Generation Z, you must create videos for this new popular social media app. Since consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical of traditional ads, the raw, unedited videos on TikTok help to engage the audience better than other types of content.

• How-to videos – Are you struggling to sell products that are new to the market? Try to create videos that explain how to use, apply, wear, install, or clean your products. Provide your customers with the answers to the most frequent questions, and you will double your sales.

• Customer testimonials – People do really care about the opinions of others. So if your satisfied customers share video testimonials, it will help you to convince your prospective buyers to try your products.

• Unboxing videos – Modern customers are obsessed with this type of content, and scientists still struggle to explain why. Unboxing videos are cheap to produce, so even if you operate on a tight marketing budget, you can afford it.

Content Personalization

According to the recent marketing research, 90% of consumers feel positively towards the brands that “treat them as an individual”. And they feel negatively towards the brands that use a “one-size-fits-all” approach in marketing. For this reason, the primary tasks of every modern company are to produce personalized content and to create a personalized shopping experience.

Here is a list of tools you can use to boost your content personalization efforts:

• SurveyMonkey. If you want to personalize your content, you should know your customers better first. Survey Monkey is a great tool you can use to run a survey and collect the personal data you need.

• TopEssayWriting – it’s a writing service that employs highly-qualified content strategists. You can use it to create personalized social media posts, emails, articles, and other textual content.

• If-So Dynamic Content – it’s a WordPress plugin that allows personalizing any content. The plugin automatically adds or replaces content according to the visitor’s profile or interaction with the site.

• MailChimp. It’s an email marketing tool that allows companies to send the content that matters to the target audience the most. If you want to create a personalized shopping experience for every customer, use MailChimp.

• ClassyEssay – It’s another online writing service. You can use it to get professional assistance from experts in content personalization.

User-generated Content

Studies show that 66% of UK buyers and 63% of US buyers trust customer photos and videos more than they trust content published by brands. And it means that that if you want to convince your target audience to buy your products, you don’t really need to work hard to create tons of content. You can just use content published by your real customers for free.

“User-generated content (UGC) is a game-changing trend that you can use to improve your business. In 2020, don’t spend your entire marketing budget on content production. Invest some money in engaging your customers in a content generation – and you will be amazed at results” says Trevor Robbins, a content strategist at Studyker and WriteScout.

Here are a few tips on how to collect more user-generated content:

• Choose a branded hashtag, if you haven’t chosen one yet.

• Use the bio of your social media account to explain to your customers what they should do to get a chance to be featured on your website or Instagram.

• To boost your efforts, use email marketing. Offer your customers a small reward (e.g., discount for the next purchase, coupon code) for writing a review.

Voice Search

Voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby, Google Assistant, are not a new thing to the market. According to new research, seven out of 10 owners of the voice-controlled devices now use devices daily, up from four in 10 a year ago.

People use voice assistants not only to check the weather or play music but also to research and buy products. And the experts suggest that voice-based shopping will jump to $40 billion in 2022.

If you want your brand to benefit from this trend, you should adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly. There are four things to consider when creating content for voice search:

• Choose long-tail keywords over short-tail keywords.

• Use more natural language and write your blog in a conversational tone.

• Add frequently asked questions with answers to blog posts

• Simplify everything. Substitute sophisticated phrases with the words that people use in real-life conversations. For instance, write the word “use” instead of “utilize”.

In Conclusion

Follow these five content marketing trends in 2020, and you will achieve all the goals set. Also, keep watching the market and revisit your strategy if a new trend emerges. Don’t ignore the trends, and your business will stay profitable in the long run.

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About Angela Baker

Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a freelance writer at BeGraded and Subjecto writing services and is trying to improve herself and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That's why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.

Three Tech Trends Transforming Digital Marketing

Unless people have been living in a cave or on a deserted island, they have not missed the explosion of digital marketing. Every time you get online, you are bombarded with advertisements; and when you access your social media accounts, it is even worse. If you have conducted a search for a specific product or service, for example, all of a sudden, ads for this type of product pop up in your feeds. Obviously, your behavior is being watched and noted.

This is all due to big data technology, something that is impacting virtually every sector of the economy. Oceans of unstructured data can now be gathered from all over the web and then organized and categorized, in order to answer questions businesses have about consumer behaviors, needs and wants, and then be used to predict what products and services should be developed and offered. It is based upon science, not “gut” feelings. The implications for marketing are explosive.

And no marketer can ignore the significance of using social media for their efforts. But using social media involves staying current on the latest technologies that will capture target audiences too. It is no longer enough to be on several platforms to promote products and services. Using data science to understand an audience, to know where and when they are online, and what type of content they want to see is critical.

Beyond data science, there are other digital trends that are also transforming marketing. Here are three of them:

1. Chatbots

Chatbots have been around for a long time. They are used via text, voice and messaging. One of the most successful early bots was Poncho, the Weather Cat.

He was developed by a small team, and the purpose was to give daily text weather forecasts to users anywhere in the world, in response to user requests, combined with lots of humor, horoscopes for a while, and social games.

Businesses took up this technology and began to add it to their websites, primarily to answer the most common questions that visitor’s must-have. A prime example is writing services, which students often use for assignment help. One look at the top-rated writing agencies at PickTheWriter will demonstrate the use of these types of bots.

But we’ve come a long way since then.

Enter artificial intelligence. Anyone who has used Alexa has experienced this. Bots are programmed to “learn” through natural language processing technology, so that they become “smarter” through continued use, as they provide more complex answers/solutions to their users.

What does this mean for marketing? A lot, actually. When customer inquiries and product searches are tracked through chatbots, it allows those bots to send out personalized push notifications regarding products/services in which they have shown interest; it allows suggestions for additional “upsells” to be made; and it allows automated yet personalized customer service, which is more and more becoming an integral part of marketing. When customer questions, problems, issues are resolved, they become loyal to a brand.

2. Voice Search

People are busy. And they are on the go a lot. They are on their mobile devices more than on PC’s now, and typing in search terms is no longer convenient or practical (those tiny keyboards). Fortunately. Google and Siri have that covered. Users can search for anything from a nearby Greek restaurant to ceiling light fixtures and get immediate results.

But there’s the thing about voice searches.

They are a huge challenge for businesses. Voice searches do not give pages and pages like a PC search does. It becomes even more important for digital marketers to ensure that their company is among the top results. It means that content must do the following:

• No more single-word keywords. Users search in longer phrases and full sentences, and those must be incorporated into the content.

• Content must reflect the natural conversational language and use vocabulary that your target audience uses. The vocabulary used by a senior citizen may be quite different from that of Generation Z users.

• Content must absolutely solve a problem or answer a question that a target audience will have.

3. Incorporation of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology is already transforming huge segments of the economy because it creates immutable records and documents. This prevents fraud and theft and is the most secure environment for storage to date. Consider, for example, how an international shipment may go through several “hands” on its way to a destination. All along that way, there is the potential for theft or loss. Blockchain will track that shipment through all of these points and record its contents at each stop/transfer. Blockchain also provides permanent secure storage of medical records, voter registrations and identity, financial transactions, legal contracts, and more.

So, how does this impact digital marketing? Consumers are far smarter and far more wary of providing a lot of personal information when they do business on the web. And they want much more control over how their personal data is used by advertisers (sold, rented, exchanged, etc.). When businesses incorporate blockchain into the “mix,” it is the consumer who decides when that information can be shared with any others, not the business. This increases trust.

And there is also the benefit of blockchain for marketers who use paid advertising. Through blockchain, they are able to track all of their ad dollars and confirm exactly who is viewing those ads, when, and how (and there are real people, not bots being “counted”). The point is ensuring that a target audience is actually reached.

There’s More…

In addition to the use of big data, covered in the introductions, these three trends are big, as far as the technology that should be incorporated. Another huge trend is the use of the augmented and virtual reality that will give consumers experiences with products and services.

But new technologies are not the only key components of digital marketing. There are many non-tech trends too, and marketers would be well-advised to stay current on those as well. Just a few of these involve storytelling, feature advantages benefits selling (FABS), use of media, and promoting relationships rather than products.

Digital marketing, in total, is a complex and challenging effort if it is to be successful. But it is the one thing that will bring consumers to a company’s doorstep and beyond. No marketer can become lazy in a crowded and constantly changing space.

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About: Angela Baker

Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a freelance writer at WoWGrade writing services and is trying to improve herself and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That's why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.

How to Increase Your Average Order Value Through Product Recommendations

Product recommendations are one of the most powerful selling techniques around. Think about a time you’ve visited a brick and mortar store. We all think we’re immune to salesmen. In reality, it’s hard not to be swayed by someone who knows more than you do.

Of course, in the world of online shopping, it’s harder to take advantage of this effect. However, there are still steps you can take to steer your customers towards the perfect product for them.

These days, product recommendations are still an effective way to boost order values on e-commerce stores. In this article, we’ll look at several ways that this can be achieved, as well as some concrete examples of product recommendations in action.

First, some background...

Why you Should Use Product Recommendations

The core of any good product recommendation strategy is figuring out which products are right for your customers. However, unlike in the past, this isn’t done with personal intuition or expertise.

Instead, the e-commerce sphere uses data on its customers to decide on the best product recommendations. This can be done with a native function in your e-commerce platform or using a third-party plugin.

This is great since you don’t need to be a data science expert to get the benefits of product recommendations. All the same, it’s important to understand a little bit of the theory behind these tools.

In practice, there are three main ways that these tools come up with product recommendations:

1. The Content Focused method - This uses cookies to track your customer’s behavior, to determine their likes and interests

2. The Collaborative method - This uses buying patterns from other customers to find trends as a basis for product recommendations

3. The Hybrid Method - This uses elements of the first two methods in tandem

Now you understand what makes product recommendation tools tick. Next, we’ll look at how to leverage these to increase your average order value.

There are two ways that these techniques will increase order values:

1. By steering customers towards a more expensive alternative product

2. Or by encouraging customers to buy additional products as accessories or add-ons

Now, here’s ten ways that this works in practice.

Suggested Products

The most common product recommendation you’ll find uses the ‘recommended for you’ format. This is a hybrid approach. To some extent, it can take into account the customer’s browsing history. Mostly though, it just recommends similar items.

The goal is to increase order values by directing customers to a pricier alternative.

As much as this is a popular way to recommend products, it’s also not the most effective approach. There’s generally very little real personalization, so these recommendations tend to have poor conversion rates.

The example above is from ASOS, but the only thing all of the products on display share is that they’re ostentatious shoes.

While a product recommendation like this is better than nothing, you have several much better options. A ‘recommended for you’ style recommendation is the bare minimum that you should implement.

Email Recommendations

Of course, product recommendations can also appear off your site. This is most often done through email marketing. The benefits of this are numerous. For one thing, it can help you to salvage lost sales through cart abandonment emails.

However, using email marketing to increase order values works a little differently. That is after you’ve optimized and sent your email with a great sales email subject line, you have a shorter window of opportunity to upsell extra products or upgrades. For physical products, this is before the initial order is dispatched.

If you sell services, this is a little easier.

In either case, the trick is to use your standard automated emails to recommend products. The great thing about this is that users are more likely to open something like an order confirmation than they are a pure marketing email.

Here’s a typical RyanAir booking confirmation, for example.

Frequently Bought Together

This is probably the most common way to increase order values by adding additional products to the cart. This is generally used when someone is viewing a high-value item. You then push additional low-value items as accessories or necessary add-ons like batteries.

These are pretty effective, but since they’re computer-generated, you can end up with some weird combinations. In the above example, it’s hard to say why anyone would need three pairs of headphones and a Bluetooth speaker.

This example would probably be more effective if they recommended lower value items, like a charging cable or carry case for the first set of wireless headphones.

Customer’s Browsing History

To utilize these product recommendations, you need to collect a certain amount of customer data and then track their behavior. As well as increasing order values, this is a handy way to eke out higher lifetime values from your customers.

The way this works is that a customer isn’t always ready to buy the first time they view a product. However, they might then forget about that product entirely. This type of recommendation is simply a gentle reminder.

Nobody tracks their customers like Amazon. On their homepage, they have a widget to display the last ten or so items you viewed, like so.

This can remind you of an item you previously considered. Equally, it can leave you scratching your head about why you were looking at banana slicers.

Related Item Recommendations

This is another technique aimed at increasing order values by adding on additional products. However, it works slightly differently from ‘frequently bought together’ recommendations. That is, they go together, but they aren’t necessarily bought together often.

Generally, this is because they’re items with a similarly high value, rather than one high-value item and one or more lower value accessories.

Equally, it could be a combination of many high and low-value items.

This is very effective in niches, like home improvement, where customers can be pushed from buying a single product to taking on an entire project. For instance, the example above would more than double the initial order value.

Bundles

Similarly, you have product bundles. With a product bundle, you offer a discount when all the items are purchased together. This type of product recommendation works best when the customer is going to need the extra items at some point anyway.

The goal then is to get them to buy them from you straight away, rather than someone else down the line. The discounted price incentivizes this.

Product bundles are also great, as you can offer flexibility. Budgets differ, so not every customer can afford everything they need all at once. Offering different tiers of product bundle helps to overcome this challenge by offering something in every price range. This is the kind of thing you see a lot of and is effective if you are pushing an offer to your e-store for affiliate marketing purposes.

Updated Products

Humans are simple creatures. One way to show this is how much we love shiny and new things. It’s easy to take advantage of this fact when selling goods. This works well with prestige goods.

This is precisely why car companies release a new model every year. Even if the changes are minuscule, a certain number of people will still splash out on the new model, because it’s the new model.

Similarly, this works well with high-value consumer goods, like computers, cameras, and phones.

Luckily, newer models also tend to have a higher list price.

What’s great about these recommendations is that they require very little effort on your part. Check out the example above. There’s no compelling copy or fancy calls to action. The fact that it’s a newer model is enough.

What Others Bought

One of the most sophisticated ways to use product recommendations is to display what products other people ended up buying. From a marketing perspective, this is gold, since it taps into the herd mentality.

The European music retailer Thomann uses this in a creative and impressive way.

There’s a bunch of things to take in here. Look at the pricing, for instance. Only one of the recommended alternatives is below the price of the item the customer is viewing. This has two effects. It provides a sense of choice while also directing the customer to more expensive alternatives.

Also, the percentage of customers who went for each option is displayed, providing a strong element of social proof to encourage conversions.

Finally, the most popular item is displayed first in the list, underscored with its availability in green text. This is a powerful way to encourage customers to commit to a purchase.

As a bonus, displaying alternative products like this is a great way to rank for long-tail keywords. This is an easy way to use your page structure to boost on-page SEO.

Best Sellers

Another easy to implement technique is directing customers towards the bestselling items in a certain niche. This works in two main ways. Firstly, it focuses your selling efforts on the most popular options. These are naturally the easiest to gain conversions.

‘Bestsellers’ recommendations also have a layer of social proof.

This works better in some industries than others. In particular, these product recommendations are effective in niches with a strong emphasis on trends. The obvious example is fashion.

The example above makes good use of star ratings, which you can add as a structured data markup to your search results. This helps to project quality and legitimacy.

Customers Also Viewed

This kind of recommendation is pretty simple, but if you’re only going to implement one of these techniques, it’s a pretty good all-rounder. The crux of this is that it displays both alternatives and add-ons to increase order values.

This example appears on a listing for a shirt.

As you can see, the recommendation points the customer towards other shirts, as well as hoodies and jackets.

You’ll also notice that most of these are pretty much in the same price range. This is a safe bet for this kind of product recommendation, as customers probably already have a certain budget in mind.

Recommending a Rolex wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

How to Increase Average Order Values with Product Recommendations

One thing is for sure. You’ve got a lot of different options when it comes to product recommendations. However, your best bet is to use a number of these techniques all on the same page.

There’s a reason that big ecommerce platforms like eBay and Amazon usually have dozens of different recommendations on every single listing. Each one builds on the last to boost order values and conversion rates.

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ABOUT: OWEN BAKER

Owen Baker is a content marketer for Voila Norbert, an online email verification tool. He’s spent over a decade in online marketing. He enjoys sharing his knowledge of content marketing across a range of websites.