Business moves fast online and the way companies market themselves is no different. Every year, trends rise and fall in popularity, driven by new tech advancements or other industry factors beyond our control. To get ahead of the crowd, some entrepreneurs try to anticipate trends before they fully mature. Here are some developing trends that may become dominant in the latter half of the 2020s.
More Enhanced User Personalization
Assuming all else is equal between two businesses, consumers will most often gravitate toward the one that offers personalization to match their interests. For a long time, personalizing a service cost too much time or effort for most companies to implement, whereas today online businesses in e-commerce, SaaS and other fields can tailor giveaways with virtually no implementation costs.
Giveaways and offer promotions vary depending on the service. In their most basic form, they encourage users to interact with a product or service. These kinds of promotions are very common for iGaming websites, which want new players to check out their libraries of slot games. This results in promotions like Paddy’s 1 Million Giveaway, where slot wagers or prize wheel spins enter the player in for a prize draw, incentivizing them to try a service out. If somebody likes the service, they’ll generally stick around no matter if there’s a promotion active or not.
This is a timeless marketing tool that will stay relevant for many years to come, and user personalization seems to be its next trend. In promotional marketing, personalization is where the business presents an offer that is tailored to the user’s specific wants and needs. This already happens in some basic ways, like discounts for product categories you’ve already shown interest in. As automation tools become more prevalent and easier to use, it should become even easier to program giveaways that can crunch a lot of user data, enabling accurate and more personally appealing offers.
The Expanding Role of AI
Having mentioned automation, it goes without saying that AI will play a large role in the next few years too. Specifically, we’re referring to generative AI tools that use large language models (LLMs). As models become smarter and more widespread, the average small/medium enterprise will be able to use AI to build highly sophisticated chatbots or even generate copy/imagery for a marketing campaign. You can learn more about gen AI from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Every company’s engagement with AI will vary, depending on their role, industry, and the discretion of those leading the business. Besides those relatively front-end use cases highlighted above, AI is already predicted to make back-end functions much more efficient too. For example, AI can be used to parse through market research data even faster, powering a data-driven strategy with record cost-effectiveness.
Video Marketing, Brand Communities, and UGC Aren’t Going Anywhere
For the foreseeable future, marketers should expect video content and online communities to still be the most effective way to reach consumers and promote a service. In fact, those communities are only going to grow as the internet develops. There’s a reason so many social media sites have pivoted toward short-form video content in recent years – it’s snappy, easy to produce, and can be just as effective as a full-length ad.
Online communities will continue to form around companies and, by encouraging them, brands can benefit from user-generated content (UGC). This is content about a brand, posted by influencers, affiliates, or even outspoken customers – essentially word of mouth in the digital space. In the future, new generations of digital natives will feel even more comfortable putting their two cents online.
According to some, the late 2020s will also see a more radical transition from Web 2.0 into Web 3.0. If this is true, community-building will become even more important than it is today. In the meantime, marketers should play to these trends that aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
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