Trends Update: Looking Ahead to 2020

At the Conex conference, produced by our friends at Uberflip and Convince & Convert, I spoke to a crowd of cross-discipline marketers about trends in multimodal content—content that combines modes of communication, such as voice, music, text, graphics, video, etc.

With device functionality converging and consumer expectations shifting to making multimodal content the de facto experience, let’s talk about the trends that will impact our work as marketers in 2020.

Content creation—and consumption—continues to fragment

Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every minute, according to a study by Domo (who produced this graphic). With that in mind, is it any wonder that content consumption is more fragmented than ever? Your customers will continue to become more selective about what content they want to see at any given time, and it is our job as marketers to make content pull them in. They have to WANT to seek out your content, not just happen upon it whenever they take their 2-minute LinkedIn break of the day.

Smart device ownership continues to rise

We are nowhere near the peek of the smart device revolution. Everything from your speakers to your refrigerator will become delivery devices for content. Is that a good thing? As a consumer, I’m liable to say no. I’m tired just thinking about it.

As a marketer, I think we must be judicious about which devices we try to colonize and how. Content for new devices shouldn’t take an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach; rather, they should be narrow and focused, so they don’t cause decision fatigue in our customers.

Combining modes will deliver better experiences

If you were to access your bank account using an app, Siri, or Alexa, would you want the voice assistant to read out your most recent transactions? Speak your bank balance out loud? Probably not.

And beyond the privacy concerns, using voice feedback isn’t the most efficient way to receive information from our computers, even if speaking our commands is the best way to deliver our questions. Combining voice AND text or charts is actually a better way.

Furthermore, in Dr. John Medina’s book Brain Rules, he explains that visuals are an important key to memory creation. When we read something without a visual, we recall 10% of that information on average three days later; when a relevant visual is added, that percentage jumps up to 65%. Therefore, having visual representations should be considered essential to sharing information. Notice that I take my own advice!

What’s next?

As we think ahead to 2020, we MUST be more thoughtful about how device proliferation and evolution changes the ways in which we deliver content to our audiences. It’s a changing game, so we better learn the rules now.