New year, new possibilities.
As you look to revamp, add to, refine or reinvent your marketing strategy in 2020, be sure to examine which marketing trends are actually worth incorporating into your plans for the upcoming year.
Here are three trends we think will define the year ahead.
Entertainment fatigue
Have you watched The Morning Show on Apple TV+? What about the latest season of The Crown on Netflix? Are you planning to get through The Mandalorian on Disney+?
There are now so many different options for entertainment that, in order to watch all the hit shows that are out there, you need to subscribe to what feels like dozens of different streaming services.
It’s the latest example of the sheer amount of entertainment available to everyone (provided, of course, they’re willing to shell out the money).
It’s been more than three decades since Neil Postman coined the term “amusing ourselves to death”. But it’s perhaps never seemed more prescient than it does now, an age where “the streaming wars” define the number of options we have available.
This creates opportunities for marketers. Who doesn’t want to get their product placed in a show on Netflix?
But it also creates challenges. How do you get audiences to care about your cause in an age when our attention spans are devoted to the yawning maw of TV, movies and documentaries?
In 2020, successful brands will find a way to cut through all this noise and make audiences engage with their cause, product or ideal.
Content over content creators
TikTok, an upstart social media platform geared at allowing users to create lip-sync, comedy and talent videos, took the world by storm in 2019. The company grew in-app purchase revenue by 310 per cent in 2019, thanks in part to its 500 million monthly worldwide active users.
For some, this might just be another social media application that will – like Vine and MySpace before it – pass in due time.
But even if it does, there are still lessons to be learned from the rise of TikTok.
Among them? The importance of great content over the people (or brands) creating them.
TikTok doesn’t prioritize particular accounts or content creators based on the number of followers they have. Instead, the best content wins.
In 2019, consider putting the TikTok ethos to work across all the channels on which you create content. Instead of trying to build followers or engagement, just focus on creating the best possible content that your audience will care about.
Privacy
It’s been two years since the General Data Protection Regulation – the European Union’s sweeping privacy legislation – came into effect.
Still, privacy should remain top-of-mind for all marketers in 2020.
Maybe it’s adopting a privacy policy. Or maybe just taking a different approach to how you collect and store your audience’s information.
Whatever you decide, you’ll want to ensure privacy is a priority for your brand in the year ahead.
Conclusion
How will you stay on top of the latest trends in 2020? You shouldn’t let the above list limit you in any way – there are tons of trends out there that may or may not be valuable for your brand.
Just be on the lookout for what you can achieve in the year ahead.