The Future is Interactive Content: 5 Predictions for Marketers in 2020
In this piece, Dmitry Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of GoMeta, dives into trends marketers should take advantage of in 2020 if they want to capture the attention of consumers and ultimately compete in the digital era.
Social Media Posts Will Look Dramatically Different
There’s more noise and competition than ever on social media.
Every minute, 1.3 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook, 350,000 new tweets are posted, and a hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Yet brands are struggling to keep up and produce content that excites their audiences. While 90 percent of marketers use social media, only 58 percent believe they’re truly effective at it.
To make matters more complicated, this new generation of consumers that have been raised on digital, are wise against content strategies and engagement tactics. According to a study from Kentico, 68 percent of social media users ignore the brands they follow. So unless brands rethink what they’re posting in 2020, they’ll continue to get ignored.
Brands also can no longer rely on ads to increase their reach. Ad costs are only getting more expensive and the overall performance of ads are decreasing. Today, 63 percent of millennials use ad blockers, with 47 percent citing the reason being that “ads are annoying or irrelevant.”
In the new year, brands will continue to face the hurdle of creating social media posts that users actually want to engage with. Interruptive and intrusive marketing will no longer be tolerated. Users will not passively ignore brands with boring content – they will actively unfollow and unsubscribe.
The good news? Innovative brands that effectively cut through the noise can leverage “first mover” effects to dramatically grow their fans and followers.
“Remixed” Interactive Content Will Become Widespread and Rule Engagement
Today, 81 percent of marketers say interactive content is better than static, and 80 percent of consumers acknowledge that their experience with a brand is as important as it is with its products or services. So, why don’t we see more unique, interactive content online?
Because Making Interactive Content Is Difficult, Time-Consuming, and Expensive.
However, companies are rapidly empowering a new generation of makers and creators. We’ve seen this happen before with tools that made it easy for anyone to create and publish text, image, and videos – the next great frontier is interactive content.
In 2019, we saw the rise of video with consumers watching more content and reading less, but in the new year, consumers will be playing more and watching less. Consumers love branded games, or ‘playables,’ so much that data recently collected from Facebook and TikTok revealed remarkable increases to conversions and click through rates when comparing playable ads against video ads.
Learn More:
What Is Content Marketing? Definition, Types, Best Practices, Benefits, and Examples
It’s Clear That the Future Is All-Things Interactive.
In the words of Seth Godin, “Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.” If marketers want to rise to the top in 2020, they’ll need to begin experimenting with these new technologies in preparation for the future.
5g Will Lead Mobile to Dominate, Marketers Will Leverage Branded Games
Mobile-first will come to mean much more than just responsive design or targeting. Devices are becoming increasingly powerful, and with the rise of 5G, internet speeds are going to surpass many households’ broadband connections.
Consumers will begin to expect brands to deliver innovative and powerful new experiences. In 2019, consumers showed us that they don’t care about platforms as much as they care about exciting post types. This was best illustrated when Instagram stole users from Snapchat by copying its “stories” feature. With the rise of new technologies in 2020, winning content will be powerful, memorable, and work across social channels.
As consumers spend more time on their phones and demand more engaging content, it’s easy to predict that brands will get more invested into gaming. Games are by far the most popular app category. We’ve seen Fortune 500 companies use branded games as a powerful form of content with new creation platforms making it faster and easier to create playables. Combine that with 5G internet speeds helping content load without lag time, games will become all the more viable.
Customers Will Overtake “Influencers” for Brand Promotion
The world of influencers is changing rapidly. At first, celebrities became influencers — but fast forward to today, and influencers are becoming celebrities. As consumers chase authenticity, brands will rely less on big celebrity endorsements (Does Shaq really drive a Buick?) and more on influencers that consumers can relate to. In 2018, micro-influencers were called, “the marketing force of the future.” Looking ahead to 2020 the real power will lie in your actual customers advocating and promoting your brand.
Viral content is the lottery “jackpot” for brands, but how do you stack the odds in your favor? Games and interactive content, again, are key, as they invite competition, word of mouth, and sharing across social media channels. Games have also been proven to delight and create a positive emotional connection between consumers and brands.
The best way for brands to succeed is to “gift” games and other fun interactive content to their consumers, challenging them to play and compete. The inherent virality of playables is key to unlocking new levels of success.
Focus on your customers to be your biggest advocates – give them content that they naturally want to engage with and share.
Data Analytics Will Shift From Near-Term to Long-Term
There is a profound interplay between ephemeral (e.g. Instagram Stories) and permanent content. Many marketers today are still trying to figure out where to make investments and how to maximize their performance using these tools. But instead of thinking of these two types of content as competing, they should be considered complementary. Leverage ephemeral content to drive deeper engagements with permanent content. An example could be using an Instagram story to announce a new brand game to fans (ephemeral). That traffic can then be driven to the game (permanent) where consumers can play and engage for dramatically longer periods of time.
Taking users on a journey from short-term engagement to longer-term engagement is key to building deeper relationships and driving key metrics.
Another great benefit of channeling traffic to permanent content is that you can easily take users off-platform to a site where you can gather more analytics than what social media platforms give you (e.g. placing a google analytics script on your web game). More accurate metrics empower companies to experiment more and ultimately capture more value.
While marketers still need to optimize for near-term results, it will be equally important to focus on the future of the business. Top brands will need to find ways for people to engage over and over again with their content. Interactive content and games have the best “replay” factor compared to other post types – users are more likely to spend hours replaying a game than re-reading an article or watching a video.
In 2020, marketers must make sure they find ways to increase engagement with consumers over an extended period of time, or else another brand will steal away their audiences’ attention. Looking ahead to the new year, it’s clear that playable content will be a critical asset to successful marketing campaigns.
