5 Ways Marketing will Change in 2020
January 20, 2020 6 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With a new year (and decade!), we can all expect to see new marketing trends on the rise and being crucial to a companies and brands’ success. As a marketing professional, and one that loves to dive headfirst into all the content around marketing possible, I’ve deciphered what the 5 biggest trends of 2020 are shaping up to be.
Now, I’m no fortune teller with a crystal ball, but I am a huge fan of data and research, and the facts and figures are in the favour of these forecasts.
Consumer Mindset Shifting Towards Privacy Concerns, Social Responsibility and the Digital World
Every year sees massive shifts in consumer mindsets: what we care about, how and why. With technology on the rise, the planet warming and political divisiveness more intense than ever before, expect more concerns around privacy and greater care for social responsibility.
Companies should expect to receive ongoing questions from their consumers around data privacy as they seek reassurance, especially around their data use. As McAfee’s global survey reported, 43 per cent of consumers feel they lack control over their personal information and 33 per cent are unsure they can control how companies collect that information. This isn’t especially surprising considering mammoth corporations such as Facebook, Google, Optus and NAB experienced data breaches in the last two years.
Consumers are also going to become more socially and environmentally driven, caring about not only the impact a product has but the corporate responsibility of the company behind the product too. Salmat reported that 34 per cent of shoppers are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products, while 31 per cent admit to not purchasing a product because of unaligned brand values and ethics. The care for ethical consumerism is particularly on the rise in Millennials and Gen Z, who are growing in size within the consumer market.
As reported by Marketing Mag, Salmat and ACRS’ research shows that the environment is the most important social issue to consumers with more than half (57 per cent) of consumers surveyed identifying climate change and environmental woes as their most troubling issue, closely followed by data privacy and security (51 per cent) and locally-sourced products (49 per cent).
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
2019 saw a huge increase in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and in 2020, we can expect this to only accelerate. Forrester reported that 29 per cent of global developers have worked on AI/ML software in the past year, and 16 per cent of global B2C marketing decision makers planned to increase spending on data and analytics technologies, including AI, by 10 per cent or more this year. AI will continue to reshape user experience with more augmentation embedded in products and devices.
Also, expect AI to shape the products we see enter the market or modify existing ones. Take self-driving cars for example. There’s been whispers of autonomous vehicles for decades and the past few years have seen a particular increase in talk about this innovation. In 2020, we might even start to see some cars coming out. As CabForward puts it, self-driving cars rely on technological modules, which are looking to be assembled next year.
Visual and Purposeful Content Marketing
We all know the significance of content marketing, and in 2020, expect the content to get more visual and purposeful.
People are reading less and watching more. When there’s a lot of text, expect your audience to be skimming it. Because of this, in 2020 you can expect a lot more visual content – and a lot more creativity in that space. Think infographics, videos, dynamic imagery, animation, graphics, short-form written content and lots of popping visuals across all platforms.
Consumers also want higher-quality, more purposeful content over fluff. And marketers are going to be listening. According to Content Marketing Institute’s B2B report, 90 per cent of the most successful content marketers put their audience’s information needs first over their promotional message. In 2020, expect content to be focused on providing thought-provoking value-packed content to their audience over simply pumping out anything for clicks.
Chatbots (Bits and Bots)
In the new year, expect more bits and bots. As reported by Hootsuite, Facebook predicts that by 2020, 80 per cent of all smartphone users will be using a mobile messaging app. With more users conversing via messaging apps, you can expect marketers to be right there with them. Think more customer service, chatbots and sponsored messaging posts.
You can save you a ton of time and help your customer with the correct programming of chatbots. Chatbots are most popular with messaging platforms such as live chat on your website or Facebook messenger. These bots talk directly to your users and do all of the hard work for you. Messenger bots are especially handy for e-commerce stores. You can sell your products without ever lifting a finger. The bot does it all.
One client used Facebook Messenger instead of a more traditional channel like email or paid ads. The results? 88 per cent open rate and 56 oer cent clickthrough rate. That was enough to convince me that Facebook Messenger bots have huge potential. It’s inexpensive and many platforms can take out the coding and tech, making it easy for any business to implement chatbots into their existing channels: Many chat, Zendesk and Mobile Monkey.
Voice and Mobile Search
We spend around three and a half hours a day on our mobile phones. This, plus an increase in voice recognition, we can expect to see an increase in voice and mobile search.
Everyone in the digital marketing world has been talking about voice search for a while. Consequently, Google has switched its priorities by introducing Mobile-First Index, which means that Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking. In other words, if your page doesn’t look good on a mobile device, or if the mobile version has less content, you may lose rankings in both mobile and desktop search results.
So, there we have it. 2020 marketing predictions. There’ll of course be a lot more in this coming year that we could never have predicted (will Zuckerberg finally change his haircut?) but the above seem to be areas we will almost be assured to see growth, change and development.
5 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2020
Due to constant shifts in the marketing landscape and shrinking budgets, CMOs are under more pressure than ever before to deliver results that prove the value of their investments. But despite Gartner’s predictions that CMO’s will enter 2020 with even less resources to work with than in previous years, America’s marketing chiefs remain optimistic thanks to an ace up their sleeve—agility.
Industry struggles of the 2010s have made today’s CMOs more agile than ever before; still they can expect 2020 to test their limits. To meet the challenge and create success for their companies, here are five trends marketers must act on now.
1. Use a Digital Asset Management System (DAM)
You’ve heard the saying “content is king” before, but a king can’t wear its crown if it’s not supported by the appropriate technology. We were all learned that the hard way, having bought into content management system’s promise to organize all of our marketing content only to discover they couldn’t. But digital asset management systems (DAMs) can.
DAMs are quickly becoming marketers’ preferred tool for organizing and optimizing content assets across channels because they’re built to store all marketing assets, streamline workflows, and efficiently deploy campaigns. By investing in a DAM, not only will your team be able to leverage existing content to its fullest potential, but they’ll also see what content performs best on each platform so you can adjust your strategy for maximum ROI.
2. Test Your Personalization Strategy
Personalization tactics are improving on a regular basis, helping marketers understand and connect with individual prospects on their own terms along the customer journey. Before marketers make any promises, they must know if their tech partners are capable of helping them deliver the results they want. That’s why I encourage marketers to take advantage of new, highly effective personalization testing tools that can pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and areas of opportunities within your personalization strategy as it evolves—because it will.
The practice of personalization is constantly undergoing adjustments to keep the pace with customer preferences, meaning what worked last year may not work now. As a result, for highly personalized content to resonate with customers, it needs to be rooted in all of your marketing data—from up-to-date marketing personas and differentiated buyer process mapping to user experience testing and email deliverability insights.
3. Bring Back Customer-Centric Culture
Effective marketers are jacks of all trades, having broad knowledge of many disciplines and demographics. This is why it’s no surprise the C-suite often relies on marketers to help determine what initiatives will have the greatest impact on customers, especially in a time where there’s a heavy push toward customer-centricity in B2C and B2B organizations.
Their rising profiles mean marketers no longer have to ask for permission to act on their instincts. Now, they’re empowered to create a customer-centric company, which requires customer journey mapping and identifying more chances to “wow” clients.
In 2020, marketers should focus on uniting IT, sales, operations and finance teams to shed more light on the customer journey—helping other teams at their company achieve their goals with customers in a scalable way.
4. Work Together to Create the Best Team
In today’s competitive hiring market, recruiters and marketers need to work together in order to obtain the best talent.
Marketers are armed with digital insights that can identify which channels work the best for locating, connecting with, and converting promising candidates and how to craft messages that will stand out. Marketers are also skilled at amplifying their company’s story and sharing its differentiators, which is essential for enticing job seekers and ultimately hiring the best-fit candidates.
Employee advocacy will also boost referrals for better-quality hires and an increased retention rate, so internal marketing is an important component. You can easily integrate advocacy tools with other systems, making it accessible on personal devices, which can help build strong employee momentum.
Most companies have refined the employee value proposition (EVP), but not everything may be in motion. Mobilize existing employees to amplify your EVP in an effective and affordable way.
5. Spread Data Comprehension
Data has become critical for marketers because transparency helps guarantee organizations are optimizing resources, achieving results, and maintaining a competitive edge. Companies must have the tools and resources to analyze this information and put it to use; however, challenges still exist.
One challenge is that data across organizations is too siloed—locked away in different departments and systems. Another is that there aren’t enough data experts at the company to nail down what all this information means and determine its potential.
Marketers and their teams should bring cross-functional data together in an aggregated tool to provide a comprehensive view. Also, companies can connect with data experts within the organization and have these experts coach others to develop more data-minded employees. By sharing this knowledge outside of the marketing team, it’ll offer company-wide success.
In the ever-changing environment that is marketing, marketers must rely on their ability to quickly adapt and be proactive in finding new opportunities for growth. This will be what pushes the needle for your organization in 2020 in the face of declining marketing budgets. Now is the time to find new ways to increase ROI in the new year.
Jay Atcheson is the senior vice president of marketing at R2i and has a depth of experience driving high-paced company growth through demand and lead generation, establishing brand awareness and taking brand equity to even greater heights.
Five Poker Predictions for 2020
January 16, 2020Mo Nuwwarah
It's an early January tradition here at PokerNews. Some intrepid writer tries to divine the future and forecast the things that lie ahead in the poker year to come.
As usual, it was a mix of hits and misses in 2019. Batting 1.000 would be too easy, so there have to be some bold calls to make it fun. At the same time, I try not to be totally nuts.
Here's a look at how everything shook out last year:
3. WPT Events Featuring Delayed Final Tables Have an Attendance Dip — This one is a bit tricky as one of the events televised was new and another one (WPT Choctaw) occupied a completely different slot on the calendar. Nonetheless, here's how the returning events fared:
Year Borgata Winter Poker Open L.A. Poker Classic Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Choctaw 2017/18 1,244 493 1,309 924 2018/19 1,415 546 1,360 577
Only Choctaw saw a significant dip, and again, that's an imperfect comparison. Looks like people didn't mind a little delayed gratification.
Okay, let's get to 2020. What will we see?
1. Phil Crushes the Galfond Challenge
While there is plenty of high-stakes action out there in the online poker world, the scene is a far cry from the halcyon days of six-figure pots exchanged on a regular basis between legends like Patrik Antonius, Viktor Blom and Phil Ivey. Linus Loeliger and "OTBRedBaron" are more like poker cyborgs terminating anything in their path than identifiable heroes, and many fans long for the days of sweating seven-figure swings on Full Tilt's Rail Heaven.
Phil Galfond wants to put asses back in seats, with his Galfond Challenge promising to be a spectacle unlike any since Tom Dwan infamously proclaimed himself willing to lay 3-to-1 on a heads-up match against any comer willing to step to the plate. The Durrrr Challenge proved ill-fated, derailed by a number of factors, including Dan "Jungleman" Cates emerging as a superior nosebleed end boss.
But where Dwan attempted to lure challengers to stir up high-stakes action for himself, Galfond's goals are a bit different and therefore should help allow him to see this one through. He hopes to promote both his training course Run It Once and, more importantly, garner publicity for his nascent online poker site, Run It Once Poker. Backing down would be a bad look, and Galfond knows it.
Can Jungleman derail Galfond like he did Dwan?
Luckily for Galfond, he has set up a bit more of a sensible framework for the most part, assessing prospective opponents and adjusting the odds on side bets accordingly. The list of opponents announced thus far is rather different than was the line-up for the Durrrr Challenge, a more diverse mix of high-stakes live regulars and online crushers.
The odds paint Galfond as an underdog against several of his opponents. As he stated himself, even the spots where he's favored offer a significant bit of risk simply due to the nature of relatively small samples of pot-limit Omaha, Galfond's game of choice. Any PLO player worth his or her salt can attest to sessions dumping buy-in after buy-in, left bewildered at the end as he or she stares at the ruins of a once promising bankroll.
However, I've followed Galfond's career on a number of avenues, from covering his tournament play to interviewing him to watching his training videos and livestreams. Maybe it's the fanboy in me, but I am bullish on his chances, even against the online grinders whom PokerShares favors. Galfond has an astounding ability to think through hands and range his opponents with a precision that would make Daniel Negreanu jealous in two-card poker. He also has the requisite steely mental makeup to withstand the sick swings soon to be standard in his daily life.
The only stone lock is that the fans will be big winners here, but I'm picking Galfond to post a sizable, let's say seven-figure profit.
2. WSOP Main Grows, PSPC Shrinks
Every tournament player with either a deep-pocketed backer or a decent-sized bankroll has their eyes and dreams locked in on two tournaments this year. As always, one is the World Series of Poker Main Event. For the second straight year, though, PokerStars has forced tournament grinders around the world to pony up for a high-value shot in the PokerStars Players No-Limit Hold'em Championship.
The WSOP Main Event has seen an incredible run of growth in recent years. After some of the shine seemed to wear following anti-poker legislation when numbers expectedly dipped, participation returned to nearly peak levels in 2019 when the second-biggest field ever turned out for the Main.
Here's how the numbers have trended the past five years:
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 6,420 6,737 7,221 7,874 8,569
One of the things that has held back the legalized online scene in the United States lately is the concept that liquidity begets more liquidity. That is, every player putting money into play represents an increase in the amount of money available to be won, thus encouraging more players to put their own money in play in hopes of winning bigger prizes. In effect, a poker prize pool can snowball, and that's what we're seeing happen, along with other factors like a recovering economy, to boose Main Event numbers.
It looks clearly like the WSOP Main Event has a great chance to set its attendance record, and that's what I'm predicting will happen. However, on its own, that's a bit too much of a lay-up, so I'm combining it with a prediction that the PSPC will not quite match the first running in 2019.
Last year, more than 1,000 players, many of whom don't make it a habit of firing $25K events, took their shots in the PSPC in the Bahamas. The allure of the event was obvious. Not only was PokerStars qualifying more than 300 players through various means to make for the softest $25K in history, they were straight up adding $1 million to the prize pool as well.
Poker players don't need much reason to gamble, and this presented an opportunity unlike any other.
I'm not getting quite the same sense of opportunity here, at least when it comes to scale.
First, unlike the announcement of the 2019 PSPC, PokerStars has not thrown around any numbers like $9 million guaranteed, $1 million added to first, and 300-plus qualifiers.
The PSPC is back
Second, and perhaps more meaningful, the Platinum Pass push has been a bit muted at least in comparison to the previous PSPC. Where an industry colleague had a running joke with me that every headline written by poker media in 2018 was "Platinum Pass Platinum Pass Platinum Pass," Stars hasn't appeared to be throwing the golden tickets around like a rapper in a strip club this time. Even the "Upcoming Platinum Passes" page on the official website was left blank recently.
It's possible the word will spread of how incredible the 2019 PSPC was — and let me tell you, it was incredible and definitely worthy of major shot-taking — and numbers will stay solid or even increase. Some have also pointed to an easier access point for European pros and recreational players alike as additional reasons for optimism, given how Barcelona has long proven an amazingly popular poker hotspot
That said, I feel like the reduced marketing push and seeming drop in qualifiers will see it fall a little shy of 1,034.
3. Someone Off the Board Wins WSOP Player of the Year
Obviously, the 2019 WSOP Player of the Year race grabbed all of the headlines for all of the wrong reasons when Daniel Negreanu was initially announced as the winner, only for forum sleuths to detect a small but significant error in the scoring meant Robert Campbell had actually won.
A number of things led to the fiasco, not the least of which was the format for several of the WSOP events offering unlimited reentry. The whole thing turned into a bit of a farce where a number of players were simply blasting off multiple entries, sometimes in multiple events at the same time, in hopes of building a stack and scoring points even it meant blinding off into the money.
Daniel Negreanu was involved in the mad chase for points.
The goal of the WSOP POY is to crown the best player, not the player who can most effectively leverage the system for points without regard to busting reentry events. That's not to demean Shaun Deeb, Campbell, Negreanu or anyone else participating in the ridiculous race. They simply did what they felt best gave them a chance to etch their names in poker history on a banner, and they are all fantastic players who would do well in any format ranking players for WSOP results.
I just feel like it's pretty obvious this thing jumped the shark, and several factors lead me to believe we'll see a different scene play out in 2020.
First, the WSOP has announced that nearly every event will be single reentry at most. Second, I think some of these guys have got to be sick of literally sprinting between different events to build stacks without regard to actual money expected value — you know, the reason these things are supposed to exist in the first place. Finally, the announcement of the $10K leaderboard at the WSOP indicates to me that maybe some changes are coming to the formula that will more heavily weight results in the smaller events. There's no reporting behind that, it's just a feeling based on everything that's happened.
I'll define "off the board" here as someone outside the 2019 top 50. I think as much as the WSOP profits from what's been happening, they want some prestige to return to this award, and "big bank takes little bank" isn't doing it.
4. Phil Ivey Falls Out of the Money List Top 15
I spent parts of the first few years of this piece predicting the high roller scene would slow down. Very sharp of me, and I also like Packers and the under this weekend, by the way.
On the contrary, the high rollers have grown bigger and more numerous than ever before, culminating in the biggest buy-in ever held when Triton hosted a £1 million buy-in tournament in London last year.
One consequence has been insane inflation in the all-time money list, where Bryn Kenney has rocketed toward $60 million-ish heights never before dreamed of after he chopped the aforementioned mill-ball. Whether anyone will catch Kenney in the near future is a good question in its own right after Justin Bonomo's reign proved so short-lived, but a name further down the list caught my eye: Phil Ivey.
Arguably poker's all-around GOAT, Ivey once graced the highest reaches of nearly every chart measuring poker's greatest feats: bracelets, online cash winnings, live tournament scores.
That's changed in recent years as Ivey retreated into the legendary Asian cash game scene, his exploits nothing but whispered rumors in games omitting a third of the deck. He emerged a bit in 2018 and 2019, seemingly grinding out every bracelet event possible, likely in pursuit of untold sums in side bets.
Scarcely before fans could rejoice, however, Borgata and its lawyers swooped in and dumped a bucket of cold water on the story of a hero's return. When they garnished his winnings in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, they officially served notice that Ivey needn't bother playing any tournaments in Nevada, lest he risk his cash for no reason other than to fill Borgata's coffers.
Ivey's WSOP run only benefited his creditors.
Ivey may still participate in the odd Triton event here or there, but he even skipped the big Poker Central series that included some high-stakes short deck. If he's not playing that, he may be spooked out of playing any tournaments at all, though he did return for partypoker's Caribbean Poker Party and WSOP Europe.
And if he passes on the WSOP and other events, several names are poised to pass him. He's currently sitting 12th with $28,618,209. Isaac Haxton ($27,670,940), Cary Katz ($26,062,522) and Mikita Badziakouski ($25,824,86) are strong bets to pass him if he is inactive or ineffective. Jake Schindler ($25,070,015), Christoph Vogelsang ($22,664,465), Sam Greenwood ($20,903,696) and Adrian Mateos ($20,019,436) also have outside shots at their current rates.
It doesn't feel right to have Ivey slipping so far down, but that's the state of poker, and Ivey, in 2020.
5. Legislation Sets Up the Breakthrough Year...
...but that year will be 2021.
It's been a crazy year-plus for those hopeful for online poker to finally return in force to the U.S. First, there was Michigan's 11th-hour attempt to push through legislation — seemingly successful but ultimately snuffed out by a lame duck governor.
Then, things took a massively positive turn in late 2019. Pennsylvania's long-awaited launch finally occurred, and PokerStars PA blew expectations out of the water. Prize pool guarantees for the Pennsylvania Championship of Online Poker were increased, then increased again after the smashing early success, then most were still met with ease.
After all these years, there's still an appetite for online poker, particularly in the poker-crazed Northeast.
As 2020 dawns, things are looking up on several fronts. Legal sports betting has proliferated and will only continue to grow, with online betting a key component to maximizing revenue. The potential for expanded online betting could be a boon for poker, which can ride the coattails of legislation authorizing more lucrative games.
States like Kentucky and New York (again) are looking hard at expanded gambling, while Michigan finally did the damn thing and West Virginia builds toward a launch.
Of most import is the ongoing case between New Hampshire and the Department of Justice, in which the state fought back against the government's attempt to reinterpret the Wire Act as applying to more than just sports betting. Initially successful, that suit is currently being appealed, with some observers saying it may go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Adding Michigan and Pennsylvania to the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement would be massively impactful as those states boast large populations that would hugely boost liquidity. Pennsylvania alone would double the potential player pool. However, those states are staying ring-fenced for fear of Wire Act reprisals from the government until this case gets settled.
I've learned to be very pessimistic when it comes to U.S. legislation. It has been nearly a decade since Black Friday and I recall people back then predicting things would be back to normal in five years at most. Even so, I'm actually liking where things are headed.
It feels like the initial victory by New Hampshire means the only thing preventing more expansion is a parlay: namely, New Hampshire losing in the appeals courts, plus the Trump administration winning re-election. Another administration would seem unlikely to keep spending government resources on this, especially with the cat out of the proverbial bag as states have begun raking in dollars thanks to gambling taxes. They aren't giving that dough up without a serious fight.
Also, I'm certainly no legal expert, but the government's latest arguments, largely nitpicking at wording, feel pretty weak.
So while I don't think 2020 will be the year we remember as the one where online poker broke through, I do feel like it could lay the groundwork for big things in 2021.
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