Top 10 Marketing Tips in 2020

Social Media
March 3, 2020

Now is the perfect time to take a step back and figure out how you’re going to crush it with these Top 10 Marketing Tips for 2020

In the past year alone, we’ve witnessed the rise of LinkedIn, chatbot marketing taking center stage, and the growing importance of hyper-targeted advertising.

As technology continues to evolve and the digital marketing landscape continues to change, what might have worked in 2019 might not necessarily work for 2020.

Marketing Tips to Help You Stay Ahead of the Curve

To stay ahead of the game, it’s vital that you’re able to keep up with what’s working today when it comes to effective online marketing strategies.

That’s why we reached out to 23 world-class marketing experts and asked them to share their top marketing tips and predictions for the coming year by answering the following questions:

What up-and-coming tactics or channels are you planning to focus on in 2020?
What was the biggest marketing lesson you learnt in 2019?
What’s the number one rule every marketer should follow?

From doubling down on paid advertising to tips on how to master personalization, you’re guaranteed to find expert advice to help you dominate digital marketing in 2020.

Start off the new year on the right foot with the following expert advice:

Marketing Tips #1: Messenger Marketing Poised to Explode

There are a lot of things we plan to focus on in 2020 relating to chatbots and Messenger marketing. For example, we expect WhatsApp to be available for business messaging. We also expect Google and Apple to serve messaging APIs to marketers.

You should always do your marketing using the same platforms that people engage with every day. That’s why we’re excited about the messaging channel for 2020.

Some marketing channels that bombed in 2019 are Facebook Ads, due to the rising costs. Organic reach on social media, since it’s become more competitive than ever before; even email marketing is significantly more competitive due to aggressive spam filters.

While still effective, we’re definitely seeing a lower return on investment with these channels.

conversely, the things we are still excited about include video content, large scale online events, and chatbots and Messenger marketing.

The number one rule that every marketer should follow is to find and clone your marketing unicorns.

Every time a marketer publishes something, such as blog posts, webinars, conference talks, email blasts, infographics, etc., they’re auditioning an idea. Some ideas are catchy and generate a tremendous response, but most fall flat and fail to generate any significant traction.

The idea is to find your unicorn. Do a brutally honest review of your marketing initiatives over the last quarter or the last year, see which campaigns did significantly better than the rest, and focus efforts on replicating similar concepts across different channels.

– Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey

Marketing Tips #2: Don’t Neglect Your Main Growth Driver

We are continuing to get smarter with how we double down on existing channels that are working for us. SEO with content is still our biggest traffic driver, but due to a lot of Google’s changes, we are also focusing a bit more time on Adwords and other paid channels moving into the future.

But that doesn’t mean you should get distracted from your main “Growth Driver.”

When something works well, it’s easy for marketing teams to hire more people, try to do a bunch of different things, and test out new shiny channels. But by doing so, you have to pull away focus from what is already working. I’m not suggesting you don’t test new things, but always remember what your main growth engine is, and keep it running smoothly.

Use data to guide your actions but use empathy to generate your ideas. You need to listen to your customers and empathize with them, but you also need to look at the numbers and be metric driven. It’s not one or the other; it’s both working in tandem.

– Nadya Khoja, Chief Growth Officer at Venngage Infographic Maker

Marketing Tips #3: Leverage Influencers Wherever You Can

They say influencer marketing is dead. It’s not. Influencer marketing is still as powerful as it was before — brands are just getting smarter about the kind of influencers they want to work with.

As we move into 2020, one of my primary focuses will be to find more opportunities to collaborate with other influencers. Whether that’s interviewing people for our podcast, writing up more roundup posts like this, or just reaching out and building relationships.

Time and time again, I’ve seen how collaborating with influencers has driven huge results for us.

Another massive opportunity for us is LinkedIn. Over the past year, we’ve witnessed how powerful LinkedIn can be as a source of traffic, leads, and sales, for both personal and company brands. That’s why I’m very excited to see what I can achieve with LinkedIn in 2020!

At the very end of the day, my number one rule for marketing is to always be providing value. Original, I know, but it’s true! All good marketing stems from having a meaningful connection with your audience, and that all begins with providing value.

– Jonathan “JC” Chan, Head of Marketing at Insane Growth

Marketing Tips #4: Listen to Your Customers

Talk to your customers. Their responses may not always be things you’re able to work into your product or marketing strategy, but at least you’ll be starting with some understanding of what people want from solutions like yours.

– Sujan Patel, Co-founder of Right Inbox

Marketing Tips #5: Nothing Develops Brand Loyalty Faster Than Education

One of the biggest challenges we expect to face in the coming year, and one that we will focus heavily on, is to create captivating yet concise and catchy social media content that will resonate with a wide target audience — including those who decide they want to undergo a digital detox session.

On one side of the spectrum, you have people who spend copious amounts of time glued to their phones scrolling various news feeds, yet paradoxically there is an emerging trend of people taking a digital detox and switching off social media altogether.

So, what I believe to be of importance in 2020 is to take into account both these trends when creating content for social media, be it organic or paid.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising’s on the rise, and the trend is likely to continue. Companies are spending lots of money on that, and platforms provide them with wider and more elaborate opportunities for placing paid ads.

If you’re not getting into the advertising space now, you’re losing big time, because later, it will be increasingly harder and more expensive to fight for the audience as budgets are shifting towards online from TV and offline ads.

Educational Content

Finally, educational content. There’s no doubt there is a hunger for content that provides people with something they can gain, be it technical skills, training, advice, or inspiration. They want to explore specific techniques that might help them with their product or business.

This was one of the main reasons we launched Global Marketing Day — the world’s first 24-hour live online marketing conference. This multifunctional platform enabled a wider variety of educative content to be shared over the duration of two days across four different major cities: Sydney, London, New York, and San Francisco.

By offering a gap in the market – a platform that provided non-stop marketing tips by leading experts, we were able to connect with a wider network.

This is exactly how you build brand loyalty in 2020 — by sharing relevant and useful content from professionals across the world, we tapped into the minds and hearts of people across the globe. Offering them something useful for free demonstrated our commitment to their skilful development.

– Olga Andrienko, Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush

Marketing Tips #6: Going Back to Real Human Interaction

Talking to people one on one, face to face is my main goal for 2020. So many people have moved to tech and platforms that it’s opening up an opportunity for old-school, human-to-human interaction. People naturally want to have that human-to-human connection with others; the challenge for me is figuring out how to scale it.

In 2019, I learnt that I can’t do it alone, and I shouldn’t do it alone. If I collaborate with others, I can get 1000x the results, whatever they are. It doesn’t matter what the tactic is — if I involve other people in it, I get way more out of it.

No marketer can be successful without love, by which I mean passion, empathy, and goodwill. You can get everything else right, but if you don’t have love, nobody will care. And you can get everything else wrong, but if you’ve got love, nobody will care if you get it wrong.

– Josh Steimle, 7 Systems of Influence

Marketing Tips #7: Don’t Forget the ‘Social’ in Social Media Marketing

2020 is all about graduating from using social media to primarily promote website content. It’s clear that the algorithms on every social network work in your favor when you are posting images and videos. We all know this, but it’s time to make a fundamental shift in how we engage social media users in newer content mediums while still meeting our marketing objectives. This also includes leveraging more user-generated content as our primary content for brands that generate sufficient word-of-mouth.

For example, 2019 was when I realized the staying power Pinterest has, and I actually renewed my interest in the platform because of that.

Everything you do HAS to be data-driven and objective-driven. Period. Stop wasting your time otherwise.

– Neal Schaffer, Author of The Age of Influence

Marketing Tips #8: Stop Trying To Reinvent The Wheel

Research and case studies are certainly a key focus for me in the coming year, mostly because I want to develop better standards to address the content marketing conundrum — but also because the number of alleged social media and digital experts in the world doesn’t correlate with the results people are actually getting.

So I’d like to try silence the money-grabbing bullsh*it artists from the conversation by understanding the individual roles and interdependence of probability, timing, mathematics, manipulation, and emotion when it comes to achieving meaningful results that actually add value to both the consumer and the business.

Marketing Is Becoming Increasingly Complex

The skill set required to be an effective marketer today is far more multifaceted and complex than it has traditionally been! Technology and its consequences, such as social media, continue to completely change the game, and as such, we’ve seen an incredible power shift:

Traditionally, marketing penetration was driven by budget, but now the marketing consumption preferences of consumers is leading the way for penetration capability and costs.

I’m fortunate to be working with professionals in the marketing industry from multiple angles, and the most valuable conclusion I’ve established this year is that most marketing professionals and experts have been outpaced by changing consumer behaviors — and a lot of money is being blatantly wasted.

The funny thing is that there are more self-proclaimed marketing experts than there have ever been in the history of marketing, but a trivial percentage actually have half of an idea how to keep pace with and navigate the new ways in which consumers are exposed to, interact with, and perceive marketing assets.

Marketers should never forget the consumer they are marketing to is a human.

Particularly, as we continue to see a dilution of consumer attention, and we’re becoming increasingly subject to anonymous algorithm writers, many marketers get nervous because they aren’t achieving the results they previously would.

So they seek out shortcut tactics in an effort to perform in the short term for themselves, their clients, and their bosses.

These shortcut tactics tend to tarnish the perceived value of whatever is being marketed and interrupt the momentum already established because such individuals end up getting stuck in a situation that hinders their ability to actually recall what got them this far.

Fundamentals Remain the Same

The marketing tactics that worked in the past won’t particularly work now, but the fundamentals of human psychology haven’t biologically changed.

So many will rely on paid marketing to try and “solve” the problem, but even paid won’t save you if you don’t actually know how to effectively market to your target persona(s).

It’s important to note that consumers are more informed than they’ve ever been before, and as such, the buying process has completely changed.

As a marketer, your best bet is to develop a holistic marketing strategy that enables the brand to tap into multiple stages of the buying process, so that massive value is provided to the target audience and there is a clear demonstration that the brand is the “right choice” for the consumer.

– Sally A Illingworth, Marketing & Influence Strategist

Marketing Tips #9: The Rise of the Nano-Influencer

I think videos are going to be the future of content, and I will focus more on that, as it is still a very small part of my current strategy and I plan to invest more time into creating and posting content on my YouTube channel. Apart from that, I also plan to continue hosting my podcasts, as I have seen a good response to it from my audience.

The rise of videos is the biggest marketing trend that I will focus on, and I think other marketers should also.

I learned that influencer marketing has not yet reached its peak and is continuously evolving with different microtrends. One such trend is the rise of nano-influencers and how businesses are working with several smaller influencers rather than one or two bigger ones. A lot of businesses now have a whole network of influencers working for them. And the best part is that their content does not look overly promotional. So, I guess the evolution of influencer marketing is what exceeded my expectations last year.

However, finding the right influencers and collaborating with them in a smooth and efficient manner still remains a challenge for most of my clients. And, that is where they seek my help.

The number one rule of marketing is and will always be “know your customers.” Any type of marketing initiative you want to execute should be based on thorough consumer research. You need to know who you’re targeting to effectively determine how to target them.

– Shane Barker, Digital Strategist, Brand and Influencer Consultant

Marketing Tips #10: Pair Long-Form Content With Tactical Videos

Something that’s worked really well for me this year is the pairing of highly tactical YouTube videos with long-form written content. I’ve started to see a really strong correlation between my most successful long-form articles rising in organic search rankings shortly after embedding a well-produced, genuinely helpful YouTube video I’ve made on the same topic. I’ll be doubling down on that as we head into the new year!

My biggest marketing lesson this year is that it’s dangerous to rely upon a small number of content pieces to drive the majority of your revenue.

After seeing some volatility in my organic search rankings for a couple of key articles on competitive keyword phrases this summer, it really forced me into coming up with more clear plans for diversifying both my revenue streams and my traffic sources.

I’m now publishing and promoting new content at a quicker pace than ever before, and a few months into this new implementation, I’m starting to see the impact of that paying off in a meaningful way.

My one piece of advice is to never lose touch with who your audience really is.

The moment you begin chasing random keyword opportunities or affiliate-aligned campaigns, you start to stray away from delivering truly beneficial content (and solutions) to your audience.

While selling is without a doubt a natural part of every marketing handoff, marketers themselves can’t afford to forget that their job is to deliver value first. When you forget that, your competitors will step in to seize the opportunity.

– Ryan Robinson, Blogger and Content Marketing Consultant

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