Digital marketing is advancing at a breakneck pace.
We know keeping up with the newest trend can sometimes feel daunting., so we're highlighting a handful of trends that we think you should focus on as a priority.
Over the course of the past few years, we’ve witnessed numerous technological advances. However, with each passing year, there’s something new in the digital marketing world you should know about.
Not keeping up with new marketing trends could expose weaknesses to your marketing plans and leave room for new competitors to take hold in your backyard.
In this blog post, we will take a look at the top four 2020 digital marketing trends contractor businesses should know about.
4 Digital Marketing Trends Contractor Businesses Should Know About In 2020
Invest In Chatbots
Video Marketing
Artificial Intelligence
Implement Voice Search Functionality
Invest In Chatbots
Nowadays, people don't like to wait around. They are looking for instant answers. And that's exactly what you should focus on the most in 2020. A recent survey revealed that nearly half of consumers expect a response within 10-15 minutes, with respect to sales, marketing, or customer service inquiry.
For most contracting business owners, especially those with small teams, it's nearly impossible to respond to each inquiry within ten minutes. This is where chatbots can really help. In addition to live chat options, which we covered in an earlier post, chatbots can provide that customer interaction without you needing to monitor interactions all day.
Chatbots are nothing but computer programs that automate specific tasks, typically by responding to your customer's inquiries via a conversational interface. Chatbots will provide your target audience with a quick and easy solution to their problems as well as inquiries. Not to mention they are a great lead source for your business.
For instance, let's say a website visitor is on your bed-bug page...you could initiate a chatbot that opens up after 20 seconds that says...
"Hey there, I see you might be interested in our bed bug service, would you be interested in a free quote?"
From here you could capture the lead or provide further chatbot automations. The possibilities are pretty endless and this can all happen without you getting involved.
The reality of the matter is that your chat solution should really be able to use a combination of live chat and chatbots to provide you with the best coverage and service. For these reasons, we made sure to integrate both options into our chat solution for our clients websites.
Video Marketing
Video marketing has been one of the hottest topics in the digital marketing industry for quite a few years. And over the past few years, it still hasn't lost its touch. It's no secret that people just love to watch videos. Its popularity, as well as effectiveness, has witnessed a massive surge in the past few years.
Nearly 83% of the overall marketers have claimed video marketing to deliver them an outstanding ROI. That doesn't mean that you should completely omit other kinds of content out of your content strategy. Instead, you should focus on video marketing now more than ever. Not only is a video an engaging form of content, but it will even help you explain your products as well as services in an efficient manner.
Artificial Intelligence
With technology evolving at a rapid rate, artificial intelligence has turned out to be one of the most talked about things in the digital marketing industry.
Think of various tasks such as seeing, talking, learning, reasoning, socializing, as well as, problem-solving. Such tasks when handled by computers, that's what AI is all about.
For instance, isn't it amazing how Spotify recommends your songs based on your past playlists? Alongside this, Facebook automatically recognizing and tagging a person are the miracles of AI.
It's not about replacing humans. Instead, artificial intelligence will help you connect with your audience at an emotional level. Plus, it will even help you solve their problems at a faster pace.
We utilize a combination of automations and AI in our clients marketing strategies to drive down their cost per lead and help scale their business. For example, we leverage AI in our client's digital marketing campaigns to find consumers who may be looking for contractor services based on their digital intent.
Implement Voice Search Functionality
These days, we interact with smart devices all the time. The one thing these all have in common is a digital assistant interface. We've even given some of these digital assistants human names like Siri, Cortana and Alexa or more descriptive names like Google Assistant. Nowadays, people have started using them even more.
For instance, if you are looking for a nearby coffee shop, all you need to do is to take your smartphone out of your pockets, say a catchphrase like... “OK GOOGLE” and ask: “Where’s the nearest coffee shop?” And soon, you will have an answer to your question.
What if someone in your local area searches for a contractor business? He/she might ask something like: “What's the nearest contractor business open now?”
If your business isn’t optimized for voice search, you might not be appearing in the search results. Hence, it’s really important to start optimizing your website for voice search.
Conclusion
The era of digitalization is finally here. And if you don’t adapt to the latest marketing trends, you will be missing out on a lot.
If you're looking to grow your contractor business, take the first step today, and learn how we can help with our all-in-one contractor marketing platform.