What We’ll See in 2020
Trends we expect to see continue to grow in 2020 and the years to come.
There are clear trends emerging as we head into 2020, some of which may completely reshape the way you approach your marketing, web development, content strategy, and more. A few of us met earlier this week to discuss what we’ve seen over the past few years and where we expect the industry to take notice. The following are trends we expect to see continue to grow in 2020 and the years to come.
Value in micro-marketing
Maria Newton – Media Planner + Strategist
With the rise of influencers, and now micro-influencers, comes the rise of their micro-audiences. Audiences of niche influencers are engaged, knowledgeable, and ready to invest in brands they believe in. For brands and marketers, these audiences provide enormous opportunity and potential value. Identifying the right niche audience or micro-influencer can lead to an entire community invested in your brand. Find the micro-audiences appropriate for your brand and give the tools to influencers and customers to love your brand and share it.
SEO is hard on purpose — and it’s only getting more complex
Alex Schillinger – Director of Media
When developing websites, content is king. But over time, websites became more complex, users became more adept, and technology advanced, and SEO has morphed from what was once a simple process to a multibillion-dollar industry. But there are still a lot of questions to be answered: What are best practices? How does a crawler know what to serve? What exactly is [insert needlessly complicated phrasing of a relatively easily understood concept]?
SEO is hard because it was meant to be. Too many people tried to game the system, leading to incoherent messaging, slow websites, and overall poor user experiences. So search engines started looking at hundreds of different factors to determine the best results. But SEO being complex doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Those who try the hardest will succeed.
If you’re developing a website in 2020, there are three things to remember:
- Have a good keyword strategy — there are tools out there; use them.
- A good UX is a fast UX.
- As always, content is king.
Purpose behind brand purpose
Blaire Plunkett – Sr. Account Executive
Modern-day consumers (millennials in particular) are attracted to brands with a social purpose. It’s become the expectation. Companies whose purpose is to improve the lives of customers outperform their competition. CVS showed a great example of this by removing cigarettes from all stores, sacrificing $2B in revenue for the betterment of their customers’ health. When we think about what true social purpose looks like, here are some questions to reflect on:
- Are we taking a stand? And what do we stand for?
- How can we integrate our social impact across the entire business? Does our purpose engage our employees?
- How can we communicate our purpose in creative and impact-driven ways?
- Are we actually investing in the wider issue? Or just a philanthropic organization?
- Are we building authentic, long-term partnerships? Or just sponsorships?
The future of marketing is moving beyond just the “4 Ps,” with “Purpose” being the fifth. So with that purpose in mind, I ask you — what is your purpose?
What do you think?
We’d love to keep the conversation going and hear what you think will emerge or continue to trend upward in 2020. Find us on Twitter (@phiregroup) and let us know what trend(s) you’re predicting!
