If you want to know more about where digital marketing is headed, then there’s no better person to talk to about this than Lance Bachmann. Lance Bachmann is a well-known digital marketing expert that created one of the leading digital marketing firms in the country, 1SEO.com.

Bachmann also co-founded Shock IT support and is the former Vice President of AT&T. He also created the YellowPages.com Premise Division.

Bachmann has evolved with the digital marketing industry, having been active within it while both the cellular and digital technologies experienced their first booms. When Bachmann worked as the Vice President of AT&T, he was the youngest person in history to achieve that position. His idea to create the Premise Division at YellowPages.com came from his concept of realizing how to prime a digital space for business success.

When Bachmann realized that many who stated they were digital marketers were neglecting the potential opportunities the Internet could provide, he decided he needed to adapt to digital marketing to stay ahead of the evolution. We recently sat down with Lance Bachmann to ask him about his thoughts on the future of digital marketing. Below we’ve broken down the main points of that discussion.

Bachmann feels that two crucial trends will take place in the content marketing industry that will occur during 2020. The first trend is artificial intelligence or AI. Bachmann sees a lot of opportunity in the use of an AI-driven content marketing strategy. Since sixty percent of the content most websites create is never used, AI will start making websites reconsider what they are creating, and why they are making those creations.

The second trend Bachmann feels we need to pay attention to is employee activation. While AI can help us with our digital content by guiding us on what we need to create, the people that are the best storytellers will happen to be employees in your business. Companies need to use strategies to keep these employees active as creators since this is a great way to share content.

Bachmann points out that there is a paradox behind the use of AI. The more we are told what to do by AI, the more we need people on the inside to create the content and share it across their channels.

One of the growing trends we see today that Bachmann insists people need to pay attention to is the use of smart speakers and assistants like Alexa and Google Home. While the mobile trend will continue to be popular even as these devices are more trendy, people are increasingly using hands-free technology like Alexa and Google Home to interact with their mobile devices.

So, companies need to pay attention to the growth in the voice search powered smart device market. As that market continues to grow, there will be an opportunity to use digital marketing within that area of business.