How I Think Digital Marketing Will Change in The 2020S

Note: This post was also a scholarship entry for the Melissa Weekes Business and Marketing Excellence scholarship.

Digital Marketing has been constantly growing, morphing, and evolving since we gained access to television and other digital media. Throughout the 2020s, digital marketing has begun to rapidly grow into the number one way to get consumers to notice a product.

User Generated Content

One of the main ways I think digital marketing will change is the increased presence of user-generated content (UGCs). UGCs are things like videos and images posted on social media by individual people supporting brands but not brands themselves(nosto., 2021). These ads can be very discrete and go unnoticeable if you’re not paying attention. A simple product review on TikTok or an outfit breakdown video could now be UGC for a brand. When you think about it it's a pretty simple concept, people see someone they like with a cool product and buy it… this is essentially the concept of influencers doing brand deals but it can be done by people with a significantly smaller following.

You may think you’ve never seen any UGC but I can guarantee you have, a Canadian example is the MilkUp (Dairy Farmers of Ontario) post to pay popups. With these popups, people can come and get free dairy-inspired products and snacks just by promoting the Dairy Farmers of Ontario and the importance of dairy on Instagram or Tiktok. With this event, UGC just looks like your friends posting about having a good time and getting free stuff but it is actually a very clever way to increase digital marketing for MilkUp.

User generated content is also extremely beneficial to the consumer as it shows how a product truly functions when in the hands of an “average” person. Overall I think user generated content will keep soaring in use by both large companies and small businesses.

E-Commerce and Search Engine Optimization

The second way I see digital marketing changing is with the prevalence of E-Commerce outlets. The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns led to a major jump in people online shopping, this means in order to succeed as a business in the 2020’s you need to take full advantage of SEO to be at the top of a google search with a functioning website (digital coast marketing, 2020).

Digital marketing is no longer just used to drive people into a physical location, digital ads being clicked can now drive traffic to an online store thus resulting in sales. This means that digital marking has been adapting and needs to adapt to create ads people want to click. Things like bright colours, captivating images, and layouts are now extremely important in drawing customers into e-commerce sites. In fact, if the marketing is done well enough it’s possible for an e-commerce site to thrive without any physical locations.

For a fully online business to thrive there is another aspect of digital marketing that is changing to become more important in the 2020s… Search engine optimization. SEO is crucial when it comes to being found in 2022, if they don’t have the correct keywords that are relevant to your brand it is likely that they won’t gather that traffic needed to sustain a business and will instead be lost on the many pages of google results, not the ideal first page.

Social Media Managers

The third way I think digital marketing is changing in the 2020s is its diverse need for multiple people with multiple expertise in multiple areas. For a brand to excel, they don’t only need someone to design an amazing website and to use SEO… and it’s not just graphic design that needs to pop.

Social media presence is now a crucial aspect, everything from what content you post, and what format the post is to how many times you post a week is important. This is definitely more overwhelming than it was in the 2010s so having a social media manager along with help with SEO, website design and business branding is something that is seriously needed. Thankfully there are companies like SociallyInfused Media who can help you with all of these things and provide the best outcome possible.

Since digital marketing is fast evolving it only makes sense that the people evolve with it, this has led to an influx in the need for unique jobs like the above-mentioned social media managers. These managers normally have a good amount of knowledge of how things like engagement and algorithms function so brands can maximize their efficiency in the digital marketing world.

Virtual Testing

The last way I think digital marketing will change in the 2020s is not one I have seen too often yet but I can see it slowly emerging. This is the ability to try on and test out products from just your phone before you purchase them. This is a very unique concept that can be extremely beneficial when applied to products like makeup, clothes, and accessories.

Using AI lenses that can detect things like facial features and body shapes it is possible to “try on” necklaces, t-shirts, glasses, and even different shades of makeup. The issue with the current implementations of this is that shades may look different depending on the lighting the user is in and sometimes the AI lens will shift or not fit quite right making the product look wonky.

The ability to try before you buy would be a huge sales driver as people will feel more secure in liking their purchases and be less on edge about if what they are looking at would suit them. My hope is that over the next few years AI technology can improve enough to make this type of marketing the next best thing and an ideal way to let consumers virtually try on products before purchasing them online.

Overall, technology and digital media are evolving and changing faster than we could ever imagine. Trends and micro-trends are constantly showing up and fading away. It is impossible to predict how exactly digital marketing is going to change, what we do know is that it’s going to continue to be one of the most important methods of marketing and the number one way to bring traffic into business because digital media is everywhere which makes digital marketing everywhere.

References

“What Is User-Generated Content? the Ultimate Guide to UGC: Stackla.” Nosto, 13 Apr. 2022, https://www.nosto.com/blog/what-is-user-generated-content/#:~:text=By%20definition%2C%20user%2Dgenerated%20content,and%20customer%20review%20sites%20have.

“Digital Marketing Changed in 2020 and How Can Your Business Adapt?” DigitalCoast Marketing LLC, 11 May 2022, https://digitalcoastmarketing.com/digital-marketing-changed-in-2020/.

“Strategic Social Media Management .” SociallyInfused Media, 30 Nov. 2020, https://www.sociallyinfused.com/services/social-media/.