In this video Eric Siu outlines seven marketing trends he believes will dominate 2020 and offers concrete tactics and tool recommendations for each. He starts by urging viewers to subscribe, then dives into the trends: (1) LinkedIn’s still‑strong organic reach, which he sees as a fleeting window before paid ads erode visibility; (2) TikTok’s rapid growth as a short‑form video platform, likening it to Vine and highlighting its discovery feed; (3) Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) such as Hull.io that unify user data across touchpoints, enabling automated segmentation and higher‑value deals; (4) Practical AI applications, citing Gmail Smart Compose, Pattern 89’s ad‑performance optimization, and Descript’s transcription/editing capabilities; (5) SEO split‑testing of titles and meta descriptions to combat Google’s zero‑click results; (6) Chatbots and messaging tools like ManyChat, Twilio, and Front that scale conversational interactions; and (7) A multichannel/omnichannel distribution model that repurposes content across podcasts, video, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and SlideShare to maximize reach. Throughout, Siu shares personal anecdotes, metrics (e.g., 16‑17k LinkedIn post views, 9% ad lift, 266 million daily messages on ManyChat) and emphasizes the need to act now on these trends. He closes with a call‑to‑action for comments, subscriptions, and further content.
Chapters
Okay, so today we are going to talk about 7 can't-miss marketing trends for 2020. But before we do, whatever channel you are coming from, don't forget to hit the subscribe and the bell button if you're coming from YouTube because you want to grow faster both personally and professionally. So here we go. The first marketing trend that I am super excited about is, well, guess what? LinkedIn engagement, the organic reach. You gotta take advantage of that right now before it goes away, right? Every social platform out there, when you think about the Instagrams of the world, the Facebooks of the world, these feed-based social media channels or networks, eventually the organic reach just starts to go down. So your chance right now is with LinkedIn and I really recommend it. I mean, I just wrote a post the other day and it's not like I have a ton of followers, but I wrote something and I got, I think like 16 or 17,000 views on it. And that's not bad for something that I just posted organically, right? I just thought of something, I wrote for 5 minutes and that came out. I think that's not going anywhere. So I think that's, especially if you're based in the English-speaking countries, I think that's gonna get, um, that's eventually Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is going to be like, okay, it looks like everything is pretty good. We have a pretty good user base. So now let's start driving more ads into the newsfeed, the, the, the newsfeed. And then guess what happens? Your organic reach will start to drop. All right. So that's number one. Number 2 is TikTok. And we don't know how long this is going to be a marketing trend for. ByteDance is the, the world's largest startup now and they are actually a Chinese-based company. And they actually just requested a loan for about $2 billion to grow TikTok faster. So ByteDance owns TikTok, right? And TikTok is, to me, it's what Vine used to be. Basically, you know, for TikTok you can post short videos and then, you know, you know, there's a discovery feed and then basically things grow quickly. And I think there's a, there's a nice opportunity there. And so I think for that one, like especially in the first quarter of 2020, I think there's an opportunity there. So if you want to jump on 2 big opportunities, I think LinkedIn and TikTok, those are the ones to jump on. And then number 3, I still am really big on CDPs or customer data platforms because not enough people are doing it. It's been talked about quite a bit. Um, Guillaume, who's worked at a bunch of awesome companies, Guillaume Cavan, and probably butchered his last name. Sorry, Guillaume. Customer data platforms, we use Whole.io. Customer data platforms combine all the data that you have into one single source of truth. So if I have someone that visits, puts in their email address, and then they're on my CRM, and then they also chatted with us, I can see the history of what they've done, how they behaved, and also at the same time, I can dump all the data I have, and then based on behavior that they've done, I can drop them into a sales enablement tool like Outreach, I can dump them into a dynamic retargeting sequence, I can do a lot with that data based on their behaviors, right? Instead of having, needing to have a human being do that. So we were able to close a 7-figure podcast deal because we use our customer data platform, Hull.io, And we use it in a smart way. So that's allowed us to, you know, well, open the doors to more opportunities down the road. You know, I've been really kind of big on them maybe the last 2, 3 years or so. And I still think it's in the very nascent stages. Like when I still show people right now, their minds are blown, right? So it takes people a long time to adopt this stuff. So I think if you jump on this, I still think it's very much a trend for the entire, the entirety of 2020. When I think about artificial intelligence a couple of years ago, people were just, ah, AI, AI, AI, right? But now it's like you are actually able to see good results from AI. So I'll put it to you this way. For those of you that use the Gmail app, Gmail helps you autocomplete sentences now. They almost know what you're gonna say for like 1 complete sentence or 2 complete sentences, right? And oftentimes, let's say, you know, someone sends me an email address, I get 3 options at the very bottom. Like they'll say to me, hey, Eric, how about this time? And I can just put, works for me, right? I don't even need to type it out. It saves me time, right? At Single Grain, the ad agency, We use Pattern 89. I'm pointing over there because that's where, you know, our beautiful people are. But anyway, Pattern 89, that's what we use. And we used it for a very large publicly traded company. And within the first week they saw a 9% lift in their performance, right? Usually the typical performance over time is like a 21% lift. Pattern 89 will, will look at patterns that you have and say, hey, you should be doing this with your ads, right? And eventually, you know, may be able to make the changes for you. So I think AI applied to the context of a lot of things that we're doing is actually becoming very practical now. I'll give you another example. We use Descript right now, it's a podcasting app, and we use it for editorial purposes, right? Or I should say transcription purposes. So, it's actually better than any other transcription tool that we've used in the past. You can delete entire sentences and then basically put words into my mouth, right? So, there's a lot of ethical concerns around that, but Descript actually allows you to do that. SEO split testing, you're testing your title, your meta descriptions to see, Uh, which one gets a higher click-through rate. So a practical example of that would be, um, if you are, if one title is shoes and the other one is shoes top reviewed for 2020 and beyond, let's say 70% of people are more likely to click the second one. You're going to get more, a lot more revenue, a lot more lift on that one, a lot more traffic going to that page. So you want to make the most of what you have. The trend here is that SEO is getting more difficult. Google's occupying more and more space. Google zero-click result searches are actually rising. So SEO is becoming tougher and tougher to do, so you gotta be able to defend yourself from that. Chatbots are another one. So I spoke to the founder of ManyChat, and we did kind of an update on the Leveling Up podcast. Couple years ago I had him on, and he said, you know what, Eric, right now we're getting about 1 million messages a day going through our platform. And now they're at, after the update, they're doing 266 million messages a day. So chat is huge. I think whether you're using Messenger bot, whether you're using text, if you look at A lot of people out there, they'll say, hey, text us, right? And I think we have this in some of our videos too, text us, you can basically text us, right? And we can respond to you that way. There's a lot of different opportunities, I mean, you can use something called community.com, we just use Twilio right now, and we hook it in with Front, which is our shared inbox tool that we use. And so chat, chat's getting bigger and bigger, this is why Twilio stock is getting bigger and bigger as well. Now number 7, you know, people talk about marketing, the rule of 7. I no longer think it's a rule of 7, so people think they need 7 impressions to take an action on your business. I think it might be closer to 21 actions that they need to take in order to, you know, take an action, right? So because I think people's attention is so spread out right now. So my take on it, you know, we talked about SEO getting tougher, right? So how do you do things? I think you should be diversifying. You should be diversifying to podcasts. Uh, if you're doing a video, that's automatically a podcast. Chop it up into different pieces too and then throw it up on Instagram, Instagram stories too. Um, and then make a carousel, throw it on Instagram, uh, and then, you know, put that carousel on LinkedIn as well. And then make a SlideShare too and, you know, post natively to Twitter. So it's a lot of work, but it pays off at the end of the day because you have all these smart people hanging out in different areas. Just the other day I posted something to Twitter and, um, you know, one of my, one of the most recommended books on the podcast, uh, Leveling Up is called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. And Ben Horowitz actually retweeted that and I got, I think the reach that I got on that post was actually not bad on Twitter. Usually my reach is not that high, but our reach went up to like 65,000 or 70,000, which is like more than 10 or 15x what we usually get, right? You know, whatever platforms you're good at, you know, attack those channels. Like, I like writing, so that's why I enjoy writing on Twitter, I enjoy writing on LinkedIn, and I also enjoy doing podcasts too, right? But the things that I can't do, like I don't know how to edit that well, I don't know how to design that well, that's the stuff you should hand off to people, but you should be attacking these different channels. So, taking that multichannel, omnichannel approach, that is going to continue to be the trend, I believe, in 2020. Let me know in the comments what you think I missed. And if you're actually coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there. And whatever channel you're coming from, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you'd like to see more content like this, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
