Marketing Predictions 2020 - Part Two

With 2020 now well and truly in swing we have some more marketing predictions for the year ahead from marketing professionals across a range of backgrounds. From PPC, SEO and eCommerce there are loads of great ideas on what is next for marketing.

We would love to hear your thoughts and get in touch if you’d like to contribute or join in on social media with #marketing2020

Kris Boorman, PPC Strategist from On The Beach gives us his predictions that look at automation and user experience.

From a PPC perspective, I think we will continue to see leaders like Google move further and further away from manual control. While having a rocky start, most automated bid strategies and dynamic targeting are now robust, though like any aspect of machine learning, still require a human hand to guide (but not dictate) targeting. Instead, marketers can benefit from the new insights that a "hands off" approach to targeting can produce and get inspired by what it reveals, and rather than fearing automation, embrace the extra time automated bidding and dynamic targeting affords to experiment more with audiences, user signals, split tests and ad copy. More extensions and tools are being produced that are intended to engender trust from users, which is becoming more and more vital. We're also seeing Google continue to take steps forward on their aim of achieving an all-in-one user journey without ever visiting a website, with the rollout of Google Hotel Ads and the growth of Google Home. 2020 won't be the year that the keyword disappears from Google Ads accounts, but it will be another step towards marketers realising that they might not miss it when it goes.

Ciaran Fegan, PPC Partner at Open.Partners gives us insight into what he sees happening in Paid Search in 2020. 

From a paid search perspective, 2020 is poised to be the year of Audience and Automation. The landscape of digital has changed and as consumers become more tech savvy, the principle of ‘right message to the right user, at the right time’ is more important now than it ever has been. When you look at some of the changes in Google ads over the last few years, it’s all been geared up to drive automation through responsive search ads, data driven attribution and smart bidding. The fact that Google consider themselves to be an AI first business should give us an indication of the role that automation is going to play in 2020.

Tom Pressman, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at The Dining Club discusses what he thinks 2020 will hold for digital marketing.

Reflecting on the past decade we have seen an explosion of mobile usage, expansion of big data and advancements in machine learning and AI, all of which have begun to shape or influence our digital marketing strategies. So what will be the key technological milestones to determine our future direction over the next decade?

Looking into the immediate future, I think we still need to be better at harnessing the technology and information we have at our disposal. Here at the Dining Club Group, we are undertaking a business-wide digital transformation journey that isn't just tech led but, a whole company initiative. One of the most significant outcomes of this project will enable us to leverage and deliver greater value from our most commoditable asset, data, my first 2020 prediction. Companies who can successfully join the data dots together and activate this through multi-channel marketing strategies will have a significant advantage over their competitors. 

This then leads on to my second 2020 prediction; the ability to break down marketing silos to deliver an omni-channel team. Day-to-day I see collaboration between marketing teams becoming more fluid. But the marketing team should be the hub of the business. They should be responsible for driving forward business innovation, strategies and products by working with and understanding, not just marketing performance, but other key business stakeholders to which we can add value. 

My third and final prediction is creativity and being able to cut through a crowded market. The use of video and personalisation will be key to achieving this. It is not a one size fits all approach as this can often be damaging to your brand if you decide to ignore your core demographic needs.

With the digital industry moving at such a pace, we therefore need to take time to reflect, digest and understand how we can master the advancements already made in the last decade to deliver future improvements. But like most people I enjoy shiny new toys so this year all I what for Christmas is a 6G phone which folds into a square😊.

Gerry White, an experienced digital marketing specialising in SEO and Analytics as well as co-organiser at eCommerce Roundtable, www.takeitoffline.co.uk discusses what we can expect for SEO in 2020. 

One of the key things we saw in 2019 was that pages were no longer the focus of Google, in fact it shifted towards an understanding of entities and understanding what they are, and how they apply to each user, typically Google tried to see if they could monetise it. Google are increasingly owning and commercialising the SERP for many key popular searches you would have to scroll a long way to see a set of classic organic results (try 'marvel' on a mobile phone).  Within digital teams, we are seeing the rise of Machine Learning (often labelled AI) and the impact and insights it is starting to reveal are incredible but we are still at early days,  the key thing here is that the cost and availability has dropped with Google and Microsoft making it accessible to ever larger datasets. 

Voice will continue to rise, but it will be subtle, in the same way mobile rose - more and more smart devices are entering the home, but the way to win will be to understand that you need to understand your business as entities rather than as pages. Another aspect that will rise is image search, people can already take a photo of a bottle of wine and buy it quickly within Google, this will increase as people learn it and it becomes as second nature as typing. 

One prediction I made last year would be that Progressive Web Apps would start to kill off apps, unfortunately, this was a little premature and app marketing is still a critical skill for many businesses 

Chloe Kendall, Senior Marketing Executive at Cocogreen talks about personalisation and how she feels 2020 will see it become even bigger in marketing.

In 2020, there is going to be a greater push on personalisation. Even though it has been on the agenda for the past couple of years, the next 12 months will see significant advances in how brands can personalise their marketing messages, thanks to ever-improving technology and more intelligent data collection. As experts think that the average consumer receives between 4,000 and 10,000 different branded messages each day, it is more important than ever that marketers can cut through this noise to make their business heard. During the next year, personalisation will not just be a buzzword - it will become the norm. 

Aleksej Heinz, Associate Professor at Kedge Business School gives us his 3 marketing predictions on what he sees for marketing in 2020.

1. a) Influencer Marketing is going to become more mature - service level agreements and performance paid models with clear expectations on Return on Investment will become more prevalent  
2. b) Marketers must work harder on authenticity of the message - since consumer are increasingly growing aware of fake reviews and fake news etc   
3. c) Artificial Intelligence-based tools will help marketers to develop their complex paid advertising campaigns

Alex Vaughan, Associate at Kantar Consulting / WPP tells us what he thinks will affect eCommerce and how personalisation will impact how we shop.

In 2020, we’ll start to see a greater split online between experiential shoppers and shoppers that want a minimised digital experience. The marketing proposition of experiential shopping is better understood, with some exceptions, by newer players deploying personalised and rapidly optimisable paths to purchase over channels like Instagram and YouTube. See – Pretty Little Thing. However, the demand for a seamless and minimised shopper journey is only going to increase with both the proliferation of channels like voice commerce and the growth of convenience solutions deployed by major players such as Amazon partnering with CPG brands. 2020 is quite possibly the year the middle market is absorbed completely into experience conscious category leaders or fought over by price orientated behemoths. Keep an eye out in the UK for Alibaba, too! 

Thank you to all our contributors, there is a lot of food for thought and an exciting year ahead for marketing. Get involved with the conversation and let us know your thoughts on social media, #marketing2020.

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