Marketers should be unicorns in 2020

Marketers feel like they have to try everything and stay ahead of all the trends. Here are some answers for 2020

The world of marketing continues to evolve every year, and 2019 was no different. But with more marketing channels comes more confusion about where to invest limited budgets for the greatest return. Even as digital channels like social media and search engine optimization (SEO) continue to grow, “old-school” channels like direct mail and email still thrive because they still deliver results.

Twenty-two marketing experts and practitioners recently responded to a survey about what to expect in marketing for 2020. Interestingly, when asked which marketing channel was used most in their business during 2019, nearly two-thirds said social media. In fact, no other marketing channel got more than one vote except for email, which only received three votes.

In 2020, though, marketers expect to branch out. At least half of the respondents indicated that they expect to use more social media (68%), email (55%), and website/mobile app (50%) next year. Search engines followed with 41%.

So what’s the one thing that companies must focus on in 2020 relating to marketing?

• Focus on data and how you will use that data for more personalized and relevant content.
• Voice-activated content. Smart speakers like Amazon Alexa are soaring in adoption, and more and more interfaces of all kinds are becoming voice-enabled. Creating content that is voice-ready is the new frontier for marketers
• to use the social media experience to develop deeper and stronger relationships with your networks
• More people are moving into private conversation channels; This is going to cause brands that haven't already been focusing on relationship marketing techniques to either spend more on their pay-to-play model or dive into… building one-to-one “crave-able” experiences.
•  Humanizing brands by supporting employees to be organic ambassadors. People crave authenticity, and they want to do business with people. Give your employees a chance to stand in front of your brand.
•  Focus on the WHY of strategic marketing, not just the HOW and the WHAT. A holistic approach is a key to sustainable business growth.
• Engagement only works when you're interested when you make that emotional connection. Why? Because emotional connection translates into trust and likability and people understand value based on how it makes them feel. When customers feel good, they give you their money.
• Building communities to support the brand, ease of interaction for the customer, and accessibility of information about your product.”
•  It's not enough for a brand to put something out there in the world and measure impressions, you need to demonstrate people cared about your marketing campaigns enough to engage
• Brands should be creating more impactful content by leveraging AI-powered insights which analyze what customers, prospects, and competitors are saying. They should be using AI to catch a crisis before it goes viral on social media. And, they should be cutting costs by using AI to identify high-performing content they’ve already produced and then reusing it across channels, markets, and business units