Agency Buzz

On Thursday, September 26, 2019, EGC Group held a private event at The Space in Westbury, NY. The fireside chat and panel discussion with Facebook’s Global Director of Partnerships, Brett Prescott, covered the top performance marketing trends every marketer should be planning for in 2020.

1. Frictionless experience
   Making the customer journey – from searching online to purchase – completely frictionless may seem an obvious goal. Because of changing customer demands and new technologies, however, the online customer experience is being completely revolutionized. One of these changes is voice search, where customers ask or command information from their devices as opposed to typing text into a search field. The practice of voice search is growing increasingly popular and is predicted to account for over 50 percent of search volume in the near future. This is an opportunity for brands to – literally and figuratively – be seen and heard. Local listing management platforms are helping advertisers provide users with the correct information they are seeking through voice search with seamless integration across online properties, thus simplifying the shopping process by making it simple and quick – and ultimately, successful.

2. The ongoing optimization of creative assets
   Despite the gaining momentum of voice search, a picture is still “worth a thousand words” for many, and the importance of using visuals to front-load information cannot be emphasized enough. In the mobile-first world of today, where content is swiped or bypassed quickly, attention spans have become shorter. This has made the creation of assets for visual content more involved and complex than ever before. As it was stated at the event: “The time limit to tell your brand story and get consumer attention is six seconds.” Editing longer form content into shorter, digestible pieces has become the accepted rule. Slick, cutting-edge photography and video is being phased out in favor of more natural looking user-generated content. More than 50 percent of the content shared by brands is user-generated, so campaigns must be structured to follow this form. Millennials in particular don’t wish to be “sold to.” They prefer organic-looking (read: user-generated) content that will attract them to what a brand has to offer.

3. Balancing organic and paid search. Studies show that many brands favor too many resources in paid search, with not enough in organic search – and vice versa. The right combination of paid and organic search means leveraging community, relationships, and engagement while also planning for paid media to drive new customers into the funnel. Without that continued support of speaking to new audiences, brands will slowly start to see their growth decline. In addition to reinvesting to attract new customers, marketers should also pay attention to interactivity, especially taking the “higher funnel perspective” into consideration. People want to interact with ads which are customized exclusively for them. Marketers must find their customers outside of Facebook and Instagram and be able to serve them relevant ads, along with different options (e.g., vertical creative, lots of movement and animation).

4. Letting the computer optimize: Platforms now want brands to use data signals (i.e., any tracked customer activity) over other types of targeting. Marketers can let machine learning guide the targeting as this technology can quickly assess the search, browsing, and purchase history of existing and potential customers. This will help ensure a quick and convenient targeting process, and in time should prove to be as seamless for marketers as the goal to creating the most comfortable shopping experience for customers.

The EGC Group takes pride in providing clients with opportunities such as the Performance Marketing in 2020 Event. Through conversations and networking, everyone from brand guardians to marketing leaders can work and learn together in reaching our common goal: Helping successful brands grow.