Keeping up with the latest trends in digital marketing can sometimes feel like an impossible task. The minute you get to grips with one trend, along comes another acronym to add to the mix. With just a few days left in 2019, I’m here to help you out with the definite mix your brand is going to need for 2020 – SEO/CRO/UX/AI (let’s call it The Foursome for short).
In this article, I’ll tell you what each of these are – and how they work together to improve visibility for your brand.
SEO
I’ll start with the most simple one. Unless you’ve just arrived from a galaxy far far away, you’ll be aware of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This is the act of choosing keywords, phrases and terms for your site which will score big on search engines like Google.
Why do you need SEO? Google and its pals use clever algorithms to sort out the best responses to internet searches. If your site isn’t SEO’d to the max, your customers won’t be able to find you.
CRO
Next up is CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) – this one’s a biggie for anybody who has a website. CRO is all about turning people who visit your site into paying customers. For the most part, this means keeping them engaged enough to journey through your site to the checkout and then make that all important purchase.
Marketers spend a great deal of time on CRO – specifically, on finding out where customers are falling through the gaps before reaching the checkout stage. CRO is super-important as there’s no point in having lots of site traffic if the visitors aren’t actually buying anything.
UX
Just two little letters but, this one can have a major impact on your brand as a whole. UX – or User Experience – takes into account the way your brand is perceived by the customer as a whole. This encompasses everything from how easy your site is to use, to how great your product is and, the quality of your customer service.
As I skate into a new decade, a brand should be fully immersed in ensuring that its UX is the best that it can be.
AI
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is going to be a very big deal for marketers in 2020. More and more companies are already integrating AI into their business, with many more set to follow. These days, AI is used to help streamline and automate everything from customer service to social media scheduling – and it won’t stop there.
In the very near future, I can expect sophisticated systems such as facial recognition and customer service bots to be the norm for every marketing department.
Connect 4
Now that you’ve met my four players, it’s time to take a look at how they come together to form the digital marketing dream team.
The journey begins with SEO as, this is the process of actually grabbing customers and driving them to your website. A digital marketing team which doesn’t have its SEO locked down is almost doomed to failure in a world full of websites all jostling for attention.
Once SEO has done its stuff and deposited the customer onto your site, it’s time for CRO to take over. Kind of like the Big Brother of digital marketing, CRO will take your customer by the hand and lead him or her through your site – giving them an extra nudge when they get to the checkout to ensure that a purchase is made.
UX joins the party at the same time as CRO – and stays long after CRO has skulked home to bed. UX keeps an eye on the customer journey through the site and continues to follow (not in a creepy way) as the customer receives the product or service and engages with customer service.
The one player in my foursome who is omnipresent is AI. From making sure that SEO is at a premium to ensuring smooth checkout and delivery, AI is the magic ingredient which lifts the entire process to a new, more efficient level.
Where do you come in?
With all of this, you would be forgiven for thinking that us human marketers are about to become obsolete. On the contrary, as great as tech tools and AI are, they need real life human beings to show them the way. Although AI can improve UX and customer service, it can’t tell you what makes great UX or customer service.
For this reason, I think that real life people will still have a place in digital marketing for a long time to come.
