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Charlie Worrall

Marketing Executive

Jamie Gentile-Clarke

Managing Director

Matt Cooke

Website Manager

Nathan McEvoy-Swann

Head of Digital and CRM

Charita Chutoorgoon

Well, it is coming to that time of year again, where we wait for the fireworks to be set off at the London Eye (if you're from the UK, that is) and we welcome in a New Year. This year, it's even more special, as we are welcoming in a new decade. Most business owners will be starting the process of looking at their sales and marketing strategies with a view to big change in 2020, but do they really need to? I have spent the last couple of months looking at digital marketing trends we have seen come into play this year, and thinking about what we will see going into 2020 and beyond.

In this article, I will go over some of the key new trends we will see emerge in 2020, as well as some of the trends we have seen this year that will stay in their place this year. This is an exciting time for me as it's the time where I get to put my skills as a digital marketer on the line and predict what we will see in 2020, as well as what we will see from 2019 move into 2020.

I know, marketers have been saying for the last 2 years or more that voice search really is going to become the next big thing in the year ahead, but this time, it really is the case. We have been saying for the last couple of years that around 50% of all web searches will be conducted using voice from 2020, so now really is the time voice search is going to become the next big thing.

So how do marketers prepare for the imminent rise of voice search?

One of the key things marketers will need to go is to optimise their pages for long tail search queries rather than short term, which is what we have been doing for many years. This is going to be a big change, but there are a few things you can do to make it easier for you. Your blog is a great starting point, try to publish some blog posts with long tail, question like, titles and ensure these are fully SEO optimised. That way, you have your internal pages doing the work for your short tail key words, but your blog being optimised for long searches.

Again, this is one that marketers have been talking about for what seems like an eternity, but in 2020, it is estimated that around 

25% of customer service operations will use a chatbot in 2020

, compared to just 2% in 2017! This shows just how much chatbots have risen in popularity in the space of 3 years.

There are a wide variety of ways that marketers can make use of chatbots in their operations, whether it is by assessing leads through using a chatbot to take their details and the details of their projects, or to help clients solve technical issues by directing them to the right department, the opportunities are endless it seems. There may not be a way to actually boost yourselves up the rankings by using chatbots, but the opportunities that are there in terms of lead generation, CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and generally improving your sales funnel are really exciting to see.

One thing marketers cannot get enough of is quick wins, and in 2020, the "quick win market" really will explode. We have seen a certain element of stagnation when it comes to quick wins since 2017, with many of the tactics and strategies that used to work really well, not working as well as they did. Guest posting for example has become a less used tactic as it is very labour intensive and only works well if your post is published on a high domain authority website. Directory links is another quick win that isn't so common anymore. It is great for getting your clients up their in the local rankings, but not great in terms of the national results.

However, PR is becoming a more exciting opportunity for marketers, almost by the day! The idea of PR outreach involves a 

 creating a piece of exciting content (whether that is through a 

 focussed piece, or a piece of graphic design) for their clients and sending this off to journalists in the space relating to the outreach's subject. This tactic, when done well, can have a huge SEO (and brand recognition) benefit for a company's clients as it could be picked up by potentially hundreds of well trusted and high authority news sources across the country!

4) Collaborations Between Non-Competing Companies for Links

This is not a new tactic, but there has been a good reason why (up until now at least) we have not seen many pieces of content that have been co-authored by companies to bring links to both of their websites, and a reason for that is because not many companies have been keen to open up their tactics to companies who could potentially be competitors. However, 2020 will see the dawn of a new age of marketing and many more companies pooling their resources together in order to create amazing pieces of content in return for links to both (or more) of their websites from sites that are linking to the content.

One of the best co-marketing pieces to have ever been created (in my opinion) is the 

 campaign. This involved sending Felix Baumgartner into the stratosphere and having him jump down and free-fall back to Earth. This was watched live, all over the world, as well as millions of times after the event and gave great brand exposure to both companies before the event, during and after the event! At present, it stands at over 22,000,000 views on YouTube! And that's just the video we have linked, this does not include the original live stream and the massive amount of news coverage and other videos covering the event.

Have you ever experienced this? You have seen an interesting looking article on your social media feed and decided to click on it for more information, and you're almost immediately taken to the article in what looks like a hybrid social media page and website page. If you answered yes, then you've used a PWA before! If you haven't used one before, here's what it looks like:

We will see much more of these PWAs popping up in 2020 because marketers have now identified that these area great way to improve your "technical SEO score" in terms of page speed. Rather than having to load a full website, which can sometimes take too long for our relatively short attention spans, you can create a PWA and allow the content on your site to load within a second (when done right). This is a great way of both increasing your page speed score from Google, as well as reducing your bounce rate. Not only this, but it also allows you to get much more content in front of your reader. We consume content quickly, that's a fact, and allowing your articles to load quickly means your target audience can take in the content quicker and take action.

One of the many ways marketing companies have started to tap into the Millennial and Gen Z markets is by encouraging them to create their own content in exchange for something from you. One of the best examples of this was AS Roma's Nutmeg Challenge, where they challenged their fans to nutmeg a mate, send it into Roma's team and the best example would win a signed Totti shirt! This attracted thousands of applicants, had them trending on Twitter, Facebook and even had local news stories written about them. Of course, Roma are a huge football club in Italy and they did not need to do this, but it shows how easy it can be for a company to gain many brand mentions by doing such a simple thing.

Want to learn more about how we could help you improve your online presence in 2020? Check out our 

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Digital Marketing Trends for 2020