The year 2020 is shaping up to be quite a year for marketing. Here are 20 trends you can expect to see in the year 2020 so that you're properly prepared for the coming decade.

1.  Smart Speaker Optimization

Smart speakers are wireless speakers that can be activated through voice commands. They are going to be a major trend in the coming year in with as many as 56 million speakers being sold in 2018. Optimizing your search results for devices like Siri and Echo is certainly going to be a good idea.

2.  Conversational Type Marketing

People like to be spoken to at their level. So, marketing that specifically tries to mimic conversational human speech is likely going to be particularly popular in the coming year.

3. Marketing from Insights

The age of Big Data is upon us and it's only continuing to pick up steam as time goes on. The key phrase here is customer analytics. There's research that those who focus on analyzing customer behavior through analytics are over 20 times more likely to do better than other companies in the field, for example.

4.  Privacy

Given the shenanigans happening with companies like Facebook, privacy in relation to customer data is going to be of utmost importance in 2020. While it's critical to use customer data to get ahead, it's also critical to be transparent about it and to get customer approval.

5.  Alternative Approaches to Tracking

The old methods of tracking people online such as using cookies are falling out of favor, with many customers blocking them. Instead, there's a trend towards using partnerships with companies like Google Play to keep track of customers in a more willing way.

6.  The Digital Marketing Revolution

While companies have already started working on digitally transforming their marketing approach for several years now, it's going to come to a head in 2020 with many companies seeking to invigorate their campaigns with better testing and optimization as well as integrating digital approaches more effectively.

7.  Tech Specifically for Marketing (Martech)

Obviously, marketers have been using technology modern technology like the Internet or digital billboards since forever. However, there's now going to be a trend specifically towards tech designed solely for marketing. This is now becoming a huge field, with things like call tracking, social media publish software, and SEO site crawling being just some examples.

8. Purchase Right Through Social Media

Social media is becoming one of those trends that's getting harder and harder to miss. It's pervasive. As a result, the trend towards posting something on social media that people can immediately buy is going to be a crucial trend in the new year. An example is how a study showed that 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product through Instagram.

9. AR and VR

These terms stand for "Augmented Reality" and "Virtual Reality." The use of AR, which is putting digital images over regular reality like making a cartoon bear appear in Times Square, or Virtual Reality, which is creating a completely fictional space, are becoming more and more popular. They are also fantastic marketing tools and many companies are making use of it more and more, with Evolution Gaming being an example.

10. Personalized Marketing

The old style of marketing focused on trying to appeal to as many people as possible in a large crowd. A new trend is rising that focuses on trying to appeal to individuals instead. This means more email lists and other tools that are tailored specifically to one person are on the rise.

11. Content Remains King

As much as content has been an emphasis in the past, this will be even more the case in 2020. People are tired of content-free posts that just pointlessly clog up the Internet.

12. Streaming

With companies like Twitch being on the rise, everyone is looking to live video for marketing. Even Facebook and Instagram have a heavy emphasis on live video these days, and it's an effective marketing tool to make people feel engaged. One in five videos on Facebook are live streams, according to Facebook.

13. Chatbots for Everyone

Going along with the trends of conversational marketing is the chatbot, which will be able to answer consumers' questions about products and services as they are asked with no need to wait for a live person to be available.

14. Message App Marketing

It seems like a strange combination, but companies are starting to make their own message apps, and monetizing them by adding the option to buy right through the app. Companies like Google are getting on board with this.

15. A.I.

This trend is a bit of a combination of all the rest. The trend will make use of chatbots, conversational marketing, and customer data to create mega ad campaigns.

16.Transparent Practices

Due to the obsession with privacy, companies will be seeking to make sure they communicate to their customers that they are doing everything upfront. There's even a recent study that says companies who are transparent with their practices have 94 percent customer retention rates.

17. Brand New SEO Options

There are newer and newer SEO algorithms coming out. This means an increasing trend towards keeping up with how search engines are changing how they respond to user questions.

18. Customer Retention

There are only so many customers out there for any individual company to capture. As a result, a strong 2020 trend is going to be towards keeping the customers they have as much as finding new ones.

19. Zero Click Results

A "Zero-click" result refers to where a company like Google adds a card that automatically answers a question a user has. It just shows up right at the top of the page as an apparent part of Google and not a link. Taking this trend into account and trying to get your site into this card is going to be an important trend in the New Year.

20. Marketing for the Life Cycle

Some of the best marketing is word of mouth marketing from actual customers, and pitching your marketing efforts in this direction is becoming more and more important. The idea is to attract buyers, sell them something, and then make them your ambassadors for other customers by impressing them.

Overall, it's important to keep up with the new trends for the New Year so you don't end up getting out-competed. Fortunately, there are some exciting trends out there.