20 Things Marketers Should Experiment with in 2020

Congratulations! Looks like we survived another decade! If the 2010s taught us anything, it’s that things change extremely fast, and being agile, adaptable, and always on the lookout for new technology and trends is what it will take to thrive in today’s (and tomorrow’s) marketing climate. Here are 20 things to experiment with for 2020 and beyond that will get your year (and decade) off to a roaring start:

1. Bid Optimization - To fill ad space programmatically, publishers send thousands of bid requests per second — and most requests go unanswered. This leads to unfilled ad space and wasted money. But using an AI-powered bid optimizer predicts which DSPs are most likely to respond, removes those that won’t, and avoids removing those that might — all in real-time.
2. Diagnose Your Compliance with Data Laws - The CCPA goes into effect this year, and you have spent the last year getting compliant. But are you compliant with Nevada’s law? Or Vermont’s? Take time to run a diagnostic against all current data privacy laws to make sure you are complaint and avoid headaches in the future.
3. Watch For Other State and Country Privacy Laws - Besides the CCPA, there are other privacy laws that are currently being discussed in state legislatures (saying nothing of the privacy laws being discussed in assorted countries), and each one may have significant impacts on how you collect data and do business. Be ahead of the game by having someone keep an eye on these bills and give quarterly updates.
4. Jump into 5G - 5G will be majorly expanded in the next year, and it has the potential for changing how we do business. 5G is up to 100x faster than 4G LTE, and this means businesses will be more wireless, and the internet of things more interconnected. It also means untapped potential, with brand new avenues of growth available. Take some time and mental energy to understand 5G’s capabilities.
5. Optimize for Voice Searches - It’s estimated that half of all internet searches are done verbally, through cell phones or smart speakers. If you haven’t optimized for voice searches, do so! If you have already gotten your company ready for voice searches, find ways to improve the experience.
6. Optimize for Visual Searches Too - The same is true for visual searches. Pinterest reports that they receive over 600 million visual searches every month using their Pinterest Lens feature. Be sure your customers can reach your brand any way they choose to, be it text-based, voice-based, or visual.
7. Experiment with AI-Powered Chatbots - Time is valuable to your customers. So is their sanity. That’s why, when they are confronted with an unhelpful robotic voice that wastes their time when all they want is an answer to a simple question, they tend to go berserk. Keep your customers happy by experimenting with AI-Powered chatbots that can quickly answer simple questions and leave the complicated stuff to your staff.
8. Hire Data Directors - Understanding data is a daunting task, especially when decisions are made cross-departmentally. This is why you should consider hiring a data director. Data Directors are at the intersection of IT, marketing, and analytics. Their roles cover everything from AI implementation to data hygiene, and should be one spearheading the analytical understanding of customer behavior from a marketing perspective.
9. Break Down Team Silos - Hiring a data director is a good start in increasing communication and efficiency between departments, but that should only be one part of the plan. Find ways to break down team silos and bring teams together. Make a company-wide concerted effort to include input from all teams, and encourage an all-for-one atmosphere.
10. Consolidate Technology - One way to break down silos is to consolidate technology with new martech tools. Consolidating technology not only makes tasks simpler, they also expunge redundant or outdated tools. The first thing to do when considering new martech tools is looking over our martech rollout article here.
11. Offer Better Product Recommendations - Improving product recommendations is easy with the right machine learning tools. With machine learning, you can easily find patterns within large amounts of data and with the right algorithm, you can offer spot-on recommendations in real-time. Lineate can help personalize product recommendations with its data-driven recommendation engine for companies of all sizes. To see how it works, reach out on our contact us page today.
12. Play with No-Code Tools - No-code tools bridge the barrier between coders and non-coders within your company. No-code tools are visual-based software programs that allow the less code savvy members of your team to do things that previously had to be done by web developer. Not only do no-code tools breed creativity and understanding, it also allows your gold-star coders to focus on the important stuff.
13. Better Strategize with Google PPC - Google PPC is easy — you tell Google what you want to pay if potential customer clicks one of your ads, and Google decides where to show you. But search terms can be exorbitantly expensive if not done right. By using AI algorithms, you can avoid bidding too low on PPC ads for qualified leads, or overbidding, which undermines ROI — and you can do it autonomously.
14. Start Holiday Planning Early - The holiday season may have just ended (or, depending on when you’re reading this, maybe it hasn’t…), but it is important to strategize your holiday season early. Why? Because most businesses make most of their money then, so you can’t approach the season with a half-baked plan (bad for cookies and marketing strategies!) that has very little time to be implemented. Take the offseason to strategize.
15. Create Smarter Content, Not More Content - Content is king, but it’s quality over quantity. If you’re creating content for content sake — stop. Spend time reevaluating what your customer wants or needs to hear from you, through website visits, blog reads, and direct feedback. Once you know what your audience wants, focus on that and become a thought leader in your field.
16. Integrate AI and Human Teamwork - AI tools are becoming more and more ubiquitous, but don’t forget the human touch! Generally, people get creeped out if they sense a machine is making all the decisions. So, let AI enhance but not replace human interactions, and be sure that reports from human interactions become a part of the data set. In short, create a feedback loop that improves both the AI and the humanity.
17. Find A Tool That Gives Customers Data Insight - Hoarding data for the sake of it is over. Consumers expect to know (and, often, are legally entitled to know) how their personal information is being used. Spend time this year finding a data management tool that spotlights your most engaged audience segments with the click of a button. Keep an eye out for Spotlight, Lineate’s audience targeting tool that analyzes the audience engagement data within your digital campaigns and automatically builds experiments for you to run based on the top-performing subgroups within your overall target audience.
18. Implement Custom Search Functionality on Your Site - Your site’s structure wasn’t an accident. Unlike Google plugins, custom search ensures that when your users look for answers, they can use the language that works for them and still get results organized for your context and vocabulary — ensuring less frustration and ultimately, more revenue.
19. Ask For Help from an Expert Tech Vendor - Sometimes, the workload becomes too much, or a problem becomes too difficult to overcome on your own. It’s okay to ask for help. Perhaps you need assistance creating an effective predictive analysis tool, developing a plan for martech purchasing, personalizing cross-channel content, or just making sense of data. Breathe. Step back. And reach out to trusted professionals, like Lineate to help you out.
20. Don’t Forget to Have Fun! - There are a lot of things to experiment with in order to have success in 2020 and beyond, but it’s important to remember to have fun! Find joy in what you do, and find ways to spread that joy to others. Always remember that if you are creating marketing content that you find fun yourself, it is much more likely to reach other people in the same way.