BY SHAZIA AMIN, LEWIS

Marketers everywhere have bid farewell to 2019 and are now moving and grooving through the start of 2020. Want your marketing campaigns to capture the attention of consumers, rather than fade behind the noise of competitors? Don’t we all!

Whether you’re looking to increase sales or grow brand awareness around your local business, these trends should be implemented into your overall marketing strategy to ensure the greatest success.

1. GET FRIENDLY WITH FACEBOOK GROUPS

We’ve heard it a thousand times: due to platform algorithms, organic social reach is dwindling, especially on Facebook. While this can be daunting for companies to face, it does not mean that their organic social strategy should be abandoned in 2020 – it just needs to be adapted.

When Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team decided to prioritize “community” on the newsfeed, the running joke was that we’d see more babies and engagement rings … and the jokes weren’t wrong. However, we also saw an uptick in posts from Facebook Groups. These groups are the virtual communities of Facebook, allowing users to connect based on interests, likes, geographic location, and so on. The algorithm favors these posts, so if brands want more organic reach to connect with their audience, they should invest in a Facebook Group strategy. Since people are actively choosing to be members of these communities, they’re already more engaged with specific content by default. This is a huge opportunity not only for brands to reach the people who actually want to hear from them, but to interact with them as well. Companies might even discover a few brand ambassadors or advocates. Several brands, including Peloton, are already taking advantage of Facebook groups and reaping the benefits of higher engagement.

2. LOCATION-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA ADS WILL INCREASE

Since most people have at least one GPS-enabled device on them at all times, social media targeting by location (http://bit.ly/LEWIStargeting) is scarily accurate and, usually, relevant. Location targeting in social ads is nothing new, but as more people are on their phones for more time throughout the day, and as those phones’ location tracking features improve, we’ll see more of these ads.

When people are standing in line or waiting to catch a flight, they often turn to their phones to help pass the time. Even when they’re in the middle of an active task, like grocery shopping, they’re still on their phones! Chances are they’re checking their social profiles while they’re at it. How about targeting them with a discount at your car wash, which they just passed? A lot of brands are already doing this, and more will do so in 2020.

3. CONVERSATIONAL AI AND CHATBOTS

With artificial intelligence-driven language processing reaching new milestones every year, watch for increasingly complex applications of conversational AI. Early chatbots empowered companies to address customer concerns without human intervention, reducing service wait times for customers with more complex needs. With the ever-increasing use of chatbots, we’re likely to start seeing a push for bots with more advanced capabilities – including the ability to hold conversations on the phone in a human-like voice and the ability to recognize and assist with more complex queries.

4. CREATING/OPTIMIZING FOR SERP POSITION ZERO

It’s a pursuit as old as time … well, at least as old as the dawn of Google: having your content rank for Position #1 in organic searches. In fact, it’s every content marketer’s dream to obtain that position. But what if we told you there was a ranking even more important and influential than that number one spot?

Introducing SERP Position Zero!

Position Zero represents the first Google search result that appears above the top-ranking organic SEO results. Also known as the Featured Snippet, this enviable position offers searchers the direct answer to their organic queries without them having to click through to the link provided. For content marketers, ranking in Position Zero in a given search engine offers greater SERP visibility, a massive boost to your brand authority and more overall traffic to your site. Now, that’s not to say Position #1 is irrelevant – Google prioritizes top-ranking results when choosing what the Featured Snippet will be to a given query.

Position Zero will become more important as the paradigm of how we search shifts from a text-based approach to a voice-activated approach, aka voice search, like asking questions to Siri or Alexa. To help secure this coveted position, it’s important that you’re creating simple, relevant content that precisely answers a given organic query and presents the answer in a user-friendly, digestible format. In 2020, coming in at zero is better than coming in at number one.

5. KNOWING GOOGLE’S ALGORITHM UPDATES

Google got tricky and incorporated a natural language processing AI update known as Rankbrain, which was modified this year with the BERT update.
Important updates to Google’s Algorithm to know:
1. Hummingbird Update: http://bit.ly/LEWIShummingbird
2. RankBrain Update: http://bit.ly/LEWISrankbrain
3. BERT Update: http://bit.ly/LEWISbert
Make sure to write explicitly with relevant topic modeling. Again, this is not really new, but is more important now as Google’s algorithms are getting more sophisticated with AI updates, like BERT.

Behavior metrics to measure quality content:
1. Increased rankings & traffic
2. Increased time on site
3. Increased pages per visit
4. Lower bounce rates
5. Higher conversion rates

6. CONDUCTING COMPETITOR KEYWORD ANALYSIS

When it comes to upping your SEO game, this is definitely where you need to start. Who you think your competitors are might not actually be your competitors. It’s a good idea to look at your top three or four competitors’ keyword rankings and domain authority. You’ll want to see how your website stacks up against the competition so you can lay the groundwork for a successful SEO strategy.

Things to look at:
1. Compare your site’s Domain Authority (DA) versus your competitor’s DA
2. Your website’s ranking history
3. Your website’s competitors’ rankings and keyword strategy
After reviewing these trends, do you feel the need to readjust your marketing strategy? It’s not too late. Sprinkle in some of the trends we mention above and ensure you’re capturing the attention of potential customers, setting up your brand for success.

Shazia Amin is the Marketing Director at LEWIS, which provides full PR, marketing and digital services to drive tangible results for clients around the world. Consistently named as one of the industry’s fastest-growing agencies, LEWIS has 550 staff across 27 offices throughout Asia, Europe and North America.