2020 was an extremely taxing year that tested human beings all across the world. Other than affecting and posing a great risk to our health and survival, the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on businesses.With such a large number of people switching to remote working across the globe, digital technology became the foundation of business transactions. Since the entire world shifted on the digital platform, brands became much more sensitized to use the power of digital marketing strategies.
Although the digital marketing trends are looked out for every year in the world of marketing, in 2021 they increased much more. Hence, reviewing the digital marketing trends, technology, and multiple platforms in this year can enable marketers to find new opportunities that businessmen and marketers can use.Until now, online marketing activities seem to majorly revolve around two different and opposing concepts. The first one is general humanization that focuses on real-world issues and customizing content for advanced personal engagement. The second one is a rather mechanical and technical optimization technique that streamlines SEO and structures digital campaigns.
With every passing day, people are rising to a more inclusive, equal, and optimistic world. The youth and any marginalized society groups desire to see a much more engaging, effective, and positive depiction of equality in the digital content from popular brands. In other words, the content that we are used to from previous times will no longer be valid at this time.Digital marketing also includes media options and subject matters that cover religions, culture, sexualities, etc. along with the representation for people with physical disabilities. One of the best lead generation strategies can be to create content that focuses on an inclusive worldview in images and videos.According to a report by Accenture, concepts of diversity and inclusion have the capability to affect purchasing behavior severely. Over 41% of retailers moved their business and canceled the deals with retailers who do not realize the importance of an equal world. This report also highlights that over 29% of customers happily switch from brands that do not support inclusivity.
Organizations must be prepared for dedicating more resources to social media marketing in 2021. Ever since the world has been affected because of COVID-19 pandemic, digital marketers have been paying attention to customer retention. This is expected to continue in 2021 as well because the pandemic has increased the amount of time spent by people on the internet.The consumer shift has created new opportunities for marketers. It offers them a chance to increase their reach with prospective audiences and engage with long-time customers. Making it to important online marketing activities, developing a detailed content plan, posting regularly, monitoring and driving customer reaction, and attracting new business is all-important. In case your business has been avoiding adding social media services to the marketing mix, now is the right time to begin.This is all the more so because social media is expected to become a top channel for purchase as well, instead of only discovering things. The platforms such as Facebook and Instagram work on making it simple for clients to buy things without leaving the platform while creating a simple path to purchase. As social commerce advances further, retail brands will be adapting to new rules in 2021.
In case you own a small to medium-sized business, an important thing that can be done is ensuring that the local listings are always verified and valid on search platforms. This is because B2C businesses attract customers who majorly work on a local level while the Google My Business listing offers important information on services and locations.This is an important factor counted in search and many business owners are often blown away to understand the directories that are listed on the internet. An important tip to learn here is that businesses must ensure to have a well-defined geographically defined service area in the local listings because this shows the business in all “near me” searches.So many search engines prioritize importance in their algorithms. This might as well seem counterintuitive to many for limiting a business, but by using the listing, a person can be deeply interested in the search results. Keeping the lists updated enables the customers to put away all changes in hours, promotions, blogs, or other information that a person might wish to convey.
In 2021, many businesses will be rising to the dominance of artificial intelligence for better business techniques and as an important digital marketing trend. Artificial intelligence will be at the foundation of many businesses while taking over many simple jobs.The Harvard Business Review in 2019 and a report by Gartner in 2020 declared that AI technologies will be used in almost every software product and service. In 2021, AI will become a big commercial benefit for the organizations, industries and companies in the coming decades. It will increase the global GDP up to 14% until 2030. This also means that the companies that do not understand the importance of implementing artificial intelligence will be at a loss and a competitive disadvantage in the coming years.The thing with artificial intelligence is that it can effectively analyze customer behaviour and search patterns while using the data from social media platforms. Its implementation can enable businesses to understand the perception of customers about some products and services.Hence, it will not be wrong to say that artificial intelligence has the potential to become the driving force of many services when implemented in content creation, product recommendation, basic communication, email personalization, and e-commerce transactions. The businesses that will adopt artificial intelligence in 2021 will be able to cut down on staffing costs and enhance their growth while getting an edge over the competitors.
Digital marketers change their campaigns, keyword focus, and bids regularly for getting maximum results on marketing practices. The main problem is that not all these changes come without costs. Implementing these changes means including more hours, increased fees, etc. The process of automated bidding enables Google to automate for adjusting a bid in real-time.In addition, it should also be realized that the process of automated bidding is not new and made its debut some time ago. However, with the improvements seen in the last year, automated bidding will be seen in full gear in 2021.There will be an increased reliance on automated bidding techniques which means that it will become possible to devote time for optimizing aspects of SEO and PPC performance. This will eventually deliver desired outcomes at a reduced cost.
This is one of the digital marketing trends that have been on the list for some time now because of the simple reason that it dictates the search results. The different kinds of voice search queries lead to different results as compared to when the user types in the text-based search.As far as SEO is concerned, this is a good idea for businesses to stay on their toes with various voice search components for customers who wish to adapt and switch over to the medium. It is therefore important for digital marketers to realize the importance of optimizing the content for voice search.The content must be interactive, engaging, and direct so that it shows up in perfect sync with search queries. This further helps in increasing traffic, staying relevant and clearly visible to the customers.
One of the most important online marketing activities, video marketing is on the verge of ruling the digital world and will stay on the top in the future as well. The majority of customers share the brand videos which eventually lead to an improvement in conversion rate. In addition, watching videos makes a customer more confident about purchase decisions. In fact, the customers have an increased tendency to visit a brand’s website after watching a video.Video marketing is not merely limited to YouTube. It includes Instragam, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. An important issue that marketers face is the growing shift to mobile devices. The long-form of sales pages and emails are fading away because they are difficult to be read on small screens. However, with the help of video, it becomes easier to present important information in a format that works well on all devices.More than anything, if a website includes more videos, it is likely to draw more engagement as compared to text. This is because more and more people find the content of a video much more compelling which is why Google pushes the pages to have higher rankings.A great thing about video marketing is that it helps in reformatting the content effectively. If you have made a video then you can get it transcribed so that you have a text version. Now, this text version can be published under the blog section as well which helps in better rankings. Uploading a video with subtitles gets a higher share of impressions and engagement. In addition, you can also use the audio from the video recorded for using it as a podcast episode.
The practice of adding more interactive and engaging elements to a website or social media is a good way to offer great value to the visitors. This is one of the lead generation strategies that engage visitors and also helps them learn more.For instance, if you have a fashion house that ships clothes internationally then adding an effective currency conversion calculator on the website can be helpful for many customers. This will help you offer value to the visitors while making you learn more about the customers based on data that is entered in a calculator.Some other examples of engaging content marketing include conducting quizzes, contests, polls, games, assessments, interactive videos, etc. Fun contests are a great way to increase your reach and visibility quickly. With interactive content, you can present your brand in front of new prospects quickly and economically.Many customers also take this a step further by making this a referral contest and keeping a reward to the customers who help in bringing more business.
Although the above-mentioned digital marketing trends do not represent a complete list, they offer a great place to begin while beginning the marketing strategy. In 2021, the marketing managers will improve their chances by shifting more resources to social media and local search while adding interactive content to achieve the goal of better customer engagement.The trends will help in improving website traffic, increasing leads, improving sales, and retaining a hard-earned customer base. In case you want a more customized approach for developing your business in 2021 then contact the digital marketing consultant from Encaptechno today.
