Local Business Marketing Trends You’ll See in 2020 

After a hectic holiday season, the start of the new year has finally arrived. And if you’re like most local business owners, you’re ready to take a breather and regroup. But don’t get too relaxed. Your competition is already planning its 2020 marketing strategies.

Don’t worry – You still have time to get ahead of the curve. While the new year will, undoubtedly, bring new ideas and techniques to the marketing world, you’ll also see many familiar concepts. Read on to learn about the marketing trends you’re likely to experience in 2020.

The popularity of voice search has been on an upward trajectory for some time now and it’s not slowing down any time soon. In 2020, expect to see more and more businesses tap into this opportunity by optimizing their websites for voice searches.

Click here to learn more about how you can optimize your site for voice searches.

One theme you’ll see again and again in 2020 (and beyond) is making a human connection with your customer. But when you’re marketing in a digital world, that can be tough. That’s why vlogging, videos on social medial, and video communication in general will be a big deal this year. With videos, your customer isn’t just reading your words or looking at your photos – they’re hearing the inflection in your voice, seeing your reactions, and interacting with you on a different level.

We’ll start seeing more videos on websites, explaining services, answering FAQ’s, and giving consumers the chance to match a face (or faces) with a brand.

Generation Z will solidify their place as powerful consumers this year, the oldest among them turning 25. Out of college, starting families and careers, Gen Z is the most important customer segment.

Businesses will begin to target Gen Z more than ever before, by focusing on what’s important to them: authentic content , human connection s , social responsibilit y, and community.

Click here for tips on marketing to Generation Z.

Customer service is the foundation of business, so it seems strange to include it on a list of “trends.” But the way customer service is handled has changed.

The last few years we’ve heard a lot about chatbots and AI and all things automated. And yes, that technology is an important part of the marketing space. B ut it won’t replace good old person to person interaction .

Consumers have shifted toward a desire, no - demand - for more customized experiences. Canned email responses, form letters, and vague customer support doesn’t cut it anymore. In the coming year, expect to see highly personalized customer interactions.

We can probably consider this entry as a continuation of the above. Along with personalized customer service, consumers now want a very interactive experience. Think 360 ° video tours, customer polls, surveys, quizzes .

Interactive experiences not only engage consumers on a deeper level, they also allow you the opportunity to gather more information about your individual customer. A well-placed poll or survey can tell you all you need to know about targeting and marketing to that particular customer in the future.

As part of the personalized and high-touch customer experience, businesses have started the process of integrating private messaging apps in their customer communications.

Some businesses are now offering up the ability to contact via Viber, WhatsApp, or Facebook messenger. We’ll see this increase in popularity as this year moves along. These platforms are not only relatively cheap for the company to utilize, they offer instantaneous and personalized communication to consumers – and that’s the big win.

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know how important reviews are to the success of a business. And nowadays, consumers want total transparency when it comes to reviews – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Consumers not only want to see positive and negative feedback; they also want to see how your company engages with the feedback. This year we’ll begin to see more and more company interaction within review platforms. Brands will address complaints and problems via review platforms as well as acknowledging positive reviews.

Anyone who’s tried to manage customer reviews from multiple platforms, respond to them, collate them, and present them in a visually pleasing way on your website knows the process can be a hassle , at best . This year, more and more businesses will begin making use of user review management tools, like Locallogy’s Review Builder .

User review management tools help keep track of reviews across multiple platforms, allowing the business to respond to reviews and funnel them through to the main website in a way that matches the existing branding.

As you may have gathered, this year’s marketing trends will focus a lot on highly personalized customer experiences and making the search process easier. So far, we haven’t seen many brand-new concepts, but rather the boosting of existing techniques.

If you’re focused on giving your customers an outstanding experience in 2020, you’re on the right track.