Trends by nature have a rather speedy existence and sometimes new ones come forth even before the prevailing trend dies. In digital marketing, one of the essential tools for sustaining the market is the contemporary popular trends. Following the trends and accumulating those into the marketing strategy is very effective technique to produce viral contents. In today’s digital world, trends are born in the online world and they take the social media culture a step forward. So, in a sense trends and digital marketing depend upon each other for survival.

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Both on personal and business level social network platforms’ users continue to increase exponentially in numbers. This creates more qualified audience for digital marketing. The people relate to popular trends on a personal level and that is what gives digital marketers the edge to exploit their interests. Coming year is set to evolve new trends in digital marketing as the world around it evolves. Let us explore the digital marketing trends that are likely to dominate in 2020 in Nepal:

Shopping directly from Social Media posts

Many people are reluctant of having to visit the webpage to purchase products that they see and like on social media. This might be because of lack of knowledge about the technology or having to fill up personal information; which might come off as tedious task for some people. Also some of them may never visit the same webpage again so they do not want to put in that kind of effort for one product or one time shopping.

Businesses that are actively responding to comments and queries on social media post itself are getting good sales. Although apps like Daraz and Esewa are very popular and widely utilized there is a remarkable percentage of population in Nepal that prefers shopping from Facebook or Instagram itself.

Your followers will appreciate reduced steps and easier process for shopping, and keep coming back to your page. Facebook and Instagram have already added features that support shoppable posts in 2019. These features allow the brands to make convenient and actionable social media posts for the online shoppers. At its core big purpose of technology has always been to make our daily tasks easier and simpler. Hence easier and simpler online shopping will definitely be popular digital marketing trend in 2020.

Continued reign of Video marketing

It is not unknown that the general audiences in social media are sold more by video posts compared to still ones. Videos can fit and display the contents more detailed and personalized manner. It is easier for your audience to grab more information from a video.

Posting live video from social media channels is already a popular trend. People would rather watch a video than clicking on a link. It is also more likely to create emotional connections with the audience through motion picture. Incorporating videos about your products and other activities on Instagram stories has also helped to build a more personalized relation with the audiences.

Younger generation (millennials) subscribes to many vlogs and video podcast channels and follows their contents regularly. YouTube and Tik Tok influencers are now more popular than TV and radio stars in Nepal as well. Getting such celebrities to endorse your products in their contents is as efficient as advertisement on other media now. This trend is on its inevitable path to gain more popularity in 2020.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

We have witnessed a remarkable progress in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology in the last decade. Some of the sci-fi movies we watched as kids and growing, up seem like becoming reality in just a few more years. Digital Marketing is also not untouched by this advanced tech.

Following are some examples of how this technology affects digital marketing.

Sentiment Analysis
With the implication of natural language processing there are systems built that can learn humans’ online behavior. Data extracted by such programs has been used to analyze the preferences of the customers and plan the future marketing strategies accordingly. This process has been referred to as ‘Sentiment Analysis’. One example of Sentiment Analysis is the reaction buttons on Social Media posts. Based on those reactions (and comments) we can easily measure the popularity of the product/service being promoted.

Voice Search
AI voice search is here to stay and dominate the internet search. With the emergence and growing popularity of Siri, Alexa and OK Google, researchers and AI engineers are inspired and obligated to optimize the system and make them more adaptive to general inquiries. Being easier and simpler tool, popularity amongst general public of Nepal is surely to increase. This will also change the methods of SEO optimization, so digital marketers will have to keep a closer look to this trend in 2020.

Chatbots
The quick communication solution that chatbots offer allows businesses to stay in constant touch with the customers. It is of great use to engage with the customers during off hours. There’s a great deal of work that can be done to optimize and upgrade the response quality of the chatbots. It is definitely going to gain more popularity for marketing purpose in 2020.

Generation Z

This is not exactly a trend, but how emergence of Generation Z , affects digital marketing. This generation includes of those born between latter half of 1990s and early 2000s. This particular group has been exposed to online and social networking lifestyle from earliest stage of life. What truly defines this generation is their pursuit of label-free individuality. This kind of school of thought also shapes their consumerism behavior. They are overly concerned about ethnical and physical dignity of everyone. The socioeconomic aspect that concerns marketing world is the language or rather tones of language that brands and businesses use to promote their product.

Although this concept is more applicable in western world but the thought process and cultural acceptance are closely similar to our side. But digital marketing is rather an international approach, meaning ads and promotions on social media are easily accessible in any part of the world. Facebook has taken extra effort to introduce policies that are non-compliance to the language that may indicate offense to people of all kinds of religious beliefs, sexual preferences, physical appearances etc. Content creators especially are obliged to come up with broadly acceptable message to be used for ads and promotions. Generation Z has started to take a major spot in the target audience for marketing in all genres of business. It is very much essential to address the concerns of this generation to have a successful marketing campaign in 2020.

Employee amplification (Influencer Marketing)

People tend to pay more attention to contents shared by someone with personal connection or someone they follow than a business page. So employee amplification, in simple terms means: having second parties (employee, business partners, fans) to share the promotional posts of the company. This is a great technique to get organic reach as it helps distribute the post farther than the specific target audience. Though this is not a sure shot step of increasing engagement and enquiries, but the word of your company and products will surely travel a long distance (digitally).

You only have to go viral once, multiple sharing of one post leverages the chances of it catching the attention of more people than one paid post. A company’s message shared on an employee’s personal account is more likely to receive more attention than the company’s social media. Those who have achieved a celebrity status in social media; employing them to endorse your product and share your contents also attract a great deal of recognition towards your establishment. This is a positive method to increase traffic towards your company, so it deserves to be a popular trend in 2020.

Conclusion: Unpredictability

As 2020 brings us a brand new decade of 21st century, vast range of changes and developments are expected. Digital marketing is an ever evolving field. There is only so much we can predict that will happen. The shift of generation might introduce brand new cultural aspects. Advancement in technology might create space for many new marketing strategies.

New and unthought-of trends might also develop and take the front seat of our cultural exchange. In digital marketing new ideas are created everyday if needed. This unpredictability is what makes working in digital marketing so exciting (learn about careers in digital marketing, read here). Humans have always been working to build and develop ideas and appliances to make our lives easier, simpler and quicker. Only trends that will dominate digital marketing will be the ones that will make the experience for the audience and customers more convenient and faster.