The business world is dynamic. While many brands run in the race, only a few are fortunate enough to witness the winning moment with flying colors. The winner’s title here is not forever. A brand needs to evolve, adapt, and flourish as per the market scenario. It is all about evolving or getting left behind here. Digital Marketing has a massive hand in shifting the buyer’s journey in the past 10 years. People used to take second opinions from peers. Now they simply Google to check and compare the business offerings. And, this is where your business needs to excel. We have enlisted the most exciting and vital digital marketing trends for 2021?
Digital Marketing emerged as the clear winner in 2020
The success mantra for businesses in 2020 involved Digital Marketing. Amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, the real benefits of keeping your business online have been realized. SMEs that were already in sync with the trends incurred fewer losses than others. Entrepreneurs, especially, in India, are now more inclined to digital platforms than ever before. The adoption rate of digital strategies is increasing. It means ‘Digital is the present & future of Marketing”.
Tune In to the Digital Marketing 2021 Trends
The hack to lead in the business market does not lie in only having a Digital Presence. You need to go with the trend. It is always a smart choice to adapt to potential innovations fast. The earlier you adopt, the more you reap the benefits in the future. Many new technologies are teaming up with digital marketing. These technologies can evolve the ways marketing is done, and customers interact with the brands. Hence, 2021 is a significant year for digital marketing. SMEs must adapt to digital innovations now to flourish in the years to come.
Here’s a list of Digital Marketing Trends For Businesses to follow in 2021
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial Intelligence or AI with Digital Marketing is on the rise. AI helps to personalize the customer’s decision-making and buying process. The results it gives are based on the data and user behavior. You can observe that you often see related ads, products suggestion to something you’ve searched before or purchased. This is possible through AI. Brands like Spotify, Amazon have successfully integrated AI with their digital strategies.
PRO TIP: According to the Salesforce Research, 64% of marketing leaders who use AI say it’s substantially or greatly increasing their overall marketing efficiency. Well, most of them use it to improvise their Email Marketing Strategies. These figures suggest that AI is the future of Digital Marketing and beyond.
SOCIAL COMMERCE
As the name suggests, Social Commerce is selling products/services within a social media platform. Customers can directly purchase products from the feeds without leaving the platform at all. It is different from paid marketing that businesses do to attract referral traffic to their website. The shoppable posts within social media shorten the buyer’s journey to buy products online. Even the response rate is higher than the remarketing paid ads. People tend to open automated promotions in messenger more than they open in emails. Better sales, engagement, and brand relations are the reason you can expect the growth of Social Commerce in 2021 and beyond.
PRO TIP: Nowadays, people are 24/7 connected via smartphones and often shop online. The popular social media platform Instagram has already introduced a feature “Checkout on Instagram” to make the shopping experience bliss. Customers can find the product and buy it on the app without leaving the app even once. From color choices to payments, all can be done on Instagram, amazing!
Local SEO
In the year 2020, everyone is promoted vocal for local. The buying behaviour is shifting towards local shops. While you have a strong digital presence, ensure you have excellent Local SEO to stay on the top of search results. Indians are actively shopping from nearby stores and it is an excellent opportunity to get maximum traction on your brick-and-mortar setup. Once they know you exist, the repeat sales graph will increase soon. Being visible whenever someone searches ‘near me’ can bring enormous business growth. An SEO company in Pune can help you achieve it with smart SEO strategies.
PRO TIP: 72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their current location. The conversion ratio is very high for businesses with good Local SEO. So, don’t delay your business growth further. 2021 will be more about local market growth.
STORYTELLING
Wonder why you still remember the famous moral ‘Slow and Steady Wins the Race’ from Aesop’s fables “The Tortoise and the Hare”? Well, this is the power of storytelling. If the narration is strong and the story is captivating, it stays with a listener for life. In a world full of promotional pop-ups, storytelling can set your brand apart. It gives a fresh way to connect to your customers without the cringy promotional feeling. Besides that, humans relate to stories that sound similar or show a journey. Storytelling generates a brand image and can persuade people with the same beliefs, ideas to buy your offerings over others.
PRO TIP: Storytelling can make your brand 22 times more memorable than any fact or data about your company. It is an excellent way to build relations with your customers, not just for today but also for the future. The more you connect, the merrier it gets!
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Major brands now realize the power of influencer marketing. Today, a social media influencer with the same ideas, content, and followers can amplify your brand more effectively than traditional advertisements do. Well, many entrepreneurs misunderstand that Brand Ambassador and Brand Influencer is the same term. No, it’s different! If you are looking for ways for business growth and your target audience is youth, do not miss out on the perfect opportunity and pitch social media influencers. Ideal influencers and smart campaigns can lead to one of the fastest conversions. Go, get it because 2021 will see bring more growth to influencer marketing. It is the best time to jump into the vast marketing ocean, full of Instagram influencers.
PRO TIP: Interestingly, the Google search for the term ‘Influencer Marketing’ has seen a whopping 1500% increase in the last three years. This statistic predicts the rise of Influencer Marketing is on the way. Be ready to grab the best opportunity from now on!
SOCIAL MEDIA STORIES
People use Social Media to connect better and collect memories via images, videos, and statuses. While these media acts as a reservoir of nostalgic memories, Stories rolled up and made everyone think – Will this 24 hrs story format stay or vanish with wind. And, the rest is history. Today, you can post multiple stories on your Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and more. Snapchat was the first to bring 24 hrs story and later followed by all major platforms. Brands find IG Stories as a powerful way to promote despite its limited time. Reason? People are interested in daily sneak peeks/updates of their friends. 2021 will be more about short duration yet captivative content. Be ready to make the most of every post!
PRO TIP: Around 500 million people worldwide use Instagram Stories daily. No wonder why brands are focusing on content for high story engagement. The stories with the Swipe Up option get more instant leads than a regular post. So, the trend will grow in the upcoming years with more advanced options. Time to focus on story engagement!
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS
Sentiment helps brands gauge audience perception and intent, enriching their understanding of social media audiences and consumers. However, it’s just one of the many essential signals needed to completely understand how audience engagement with brands should be analyzed on social media. Using sentiment analysis helps websites to understand their customer experience with their offerings. The star rating system is a basic example of sentiment analysis. People leave star ratings on movies, service feedback, and more. Here one star can clearly say the customer/viewer is not happy, whereas the five-star rating means an overwhelming experience. APIs play a stronger role in understanding customer’s written feedback and streamline it into calculative measures. So, it is a must go for trend for all the entrepreneurs out there.
PRO TIP: Quick Search by Talkwalker is a sentiment analysis tool. It can show your social media channels popularity by reflecting how people feel about your, your business. It evaluates search, mentions, comments, and other data to give an insight into your brand. It helps businesses to add new elements in their strategies, improvise, and grow better. There are many tools available for Sentimental Analysis. 2021 is expected to bring more ways to carry out sentimental analysis to understand the buying/response behavior of audience post COVID-19 normalcy.
INTERACTIVE EMAILS
Those days are long gone when email was limited to just professional communication. It is still considered the most serious way to connect to people online. However, the times are changing, and people feel regular mails are annoying. This is why brands go to the extent of using videos, images, GIFs to engage their target audience in the best possible way. People want brands to treat them with exciting posts, offers, and deals. More than information, they look at how well you present your business. So, sending interactive emails with irresistible offers can win your business more clients and brand loyalty in the long run. This will continue to grow in the future as well. Consider Interactive mails as the new compelling force to drive more conversions.
PRO TIP: Interactive content generates 2x more conversions than passive content. This statistic itself says if you wish that your emails not just get opened but also bring the business, then interactive content-filed emails are essential. The demand for interactive emails will rise with time. In the future, we may be able to go live for every opened mail. Be ready to interact from day one!
DIRECT MESSAGE (DM)
DM or Direct Message is one of the most actively used ways to connect to users//target audience directly using digital platforms. You can send a private message to people. This communication remains visible to the sender and receiver only. Hence, pitching your services to clients with personalized communication gives an edge to your marketing strategies. Businesses can choose social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to reach out to their target audience’s DM. Chatbots and Live chats on websites, social media pages also play an important role in keeping good communication overall.
PRO TIP: Facebook Messenger has an average of 70-80% open rates and 20% click-through rates. It is far more than the average open rates and CTR of Email Marketing. It is beneficial to approach clients where they hang out more. So, what’s better than a personalized message pop-up when a person is relaxed and open to initiate a new conversation. The year 2021 is expected to see the rise of Direct messaging innovation.
NICHE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS
Social media is indeed social, but it is now expanding. The niche channels, pages, groups have shown enormous growth in the past 2-3 years. These channels let you connect to people with the same interest as yours. Right from gaming to the machines, you can find many channels of your interest. The same applies to businesses. If you are a B2B, niche social media channels can serve as a gateway to success. You can consider these channels as ready-made filtered leads for you. Most of the B2B business happens on these channels. It’s a big platform to connect and convert.
PRO TIP: Since the COVID-19 lockdown started, many people have moved towards these big or household channels to read and gather more information on topics, connect to like-minded members, and more. Even in 2019, Reddit saw a 30% hike in the average monthly users. This clearly says niche social media channels have the potential to elevate your business in the future. This trend is expected to grow in 2021.
PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
If you are spending your money on advertising across various digital platforms without evaluating the benefits in real-time, it’s time to pause. Programmatic advertising enables advertisers to plan their promotions wisely with the help of data-driven results. You don’t have to guess where to invest your money, programmatic advertising already exists. Programmatic advertising will bloom along with the help of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and 5G in the future. So, make use of programmatic advertising soon and make your ad buying simple!
PRO TIP: Programmatic Advertising is expected to become worth US$147bn in 2021. It means programmatic advertising will contribute to 72% of digital media ads. Experts are expecting a downfall in this form of advertising in 2021. However, the coronavirus pandemic has likely reversed the scenario for the future. So, it’s better to switch to the smart way of digital ad buying now.
VLOGGING
Vlogging is a Video Blog or Video log. It is a collection of videos that you share on video-sharing platforms or social media channels to put your knowledge, experiences, ideas, opinions, daily life, and more online. People can see your video and follow you. It is becoming one of the most adopted ways to trend. Not just companies, people are investing their huge time in creating video content that can add value to viewers’ lives. YouTube is the biggest example of Vlogging success. Growth is inevitable in vlogging as long as you tap the right audience with the right message. So let’s get started asap!
PRO TIP: For SMEs, Vlogging can do wonders. People today like the brands that communicate and add value to their life. In the recent statistics, around 83% of video marketers said that their videos had brought many leads as compared to other organic tactics. And we think, the more actively brands vlog, the more business they can attract. However spamming is a big no, plan vlogs strategically!
MEME MARKETING
You say it Meme, maymee, or maymay, the love for it is infinite in people’s hearts. It is a part of viral marketing where an image, gif, or video is used and compared to the current issue, situation, daily life, or more. Relatability is the keyword of Meme Marketing. People love memes because they relate to them. Brands have certainly understood the power of Meme Marketing. Big brands like Zomato, Hotstar, Edelweiss Tokio, and more are inclining towards memes for the User Engagement Posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. After all, what’s better than engaging people the way they like?
PRO TIP: Brands often hesitate to adopt Meme marketing as their way of promotion for a matter of fact – it can harm the brand image. Well, it needs a wise thought process. You must act according to your audience base. Meme marketing for an orphanage/old age home/NGO may not go right. Meme marketing will grow in the coming years, but it’s ultimately the business’ choice to adopt it or not. Try to tickle the funny bones of your followers using memes once in a while. It can spark the engagement rate.
CHATBOTS
A chatbot is a software application. It felicitates smooth online communication as a company’s representation via text or text to speech mode. Right from starting a conversation, giving automated replies to generating leads, sending updates, and selling your products/services online, a chatbot can do a lot for your business. A website without a chatbot is already missing leads. Human agents can take over communication to help better, but chatbots can surely initiate. And that’s an essential part of sales.
PRO TIP: Around 80% of the organizations considered implementing chatbots by the year 2020. Chatbots will evolve with time. TO be honest, if businesses wish to grow their business using digital platforms, Chatbots are hard to ignore in 2021 and beyond. Your business needs it. Stay live 24/7 and grow faster!
VOICE SEARCH
Voice search is not a new flower in the digital garden. However, it is blooming now. Since IoT has come into play and products like Amazon Alexa and Google Home Mini launched, the voice search rate has climbed up. People prefer asking rather than typing in many cases. So, what does it mean to businesses? Well, businesses need to optimize their website content to fit in the voice search results. The voice search mostly reads out the featured snippets and hence, the goal is to rule the SERP. Businesses must focus on long-tail keywords that cover the question that users may ask. Create content that adds value, gives answers in natural language. We will dig more in-depth on this topic soon. Till then, do add voice search in your optimization list.
PRO TIP: As we said Voice search is on the rise, around 60% of smartphone users have used voice search in the last year. This itself suggests that working on voice search optimization is the smart move in 2021. Go for it!
VIDEO MARKETING
Videos have been a great companion for businesses for the last few years. An MNC or an SME, video marketing can be done at all levels, for all business niches. The reason behind the need for video marketing is that people prefer understanding products via demonstration over reading a long article. It helps a lot in making purchase decisions. Another fact, during the Coronavirus lockdown, there has been an enormous growth in video marketing. Businesses like Education, Fitness, Mental Health Counselling, and more have invested a lot in videos. Today, people have time to watch your video content. So, seize this opportunity and go viral with videos!
PRO TIP: Around 88% of the marketers who use video marketing say that they are satisfied with the(ROI) return on investment of their video marketing efforts on social media and websites. Video marketing can bring qualified leads, promote your brands, keep the audience informed, and more. Hence, the perks of video marketing are motivating enough to get, set, shoot!
OMNICHANNEL MARKETING
Omnichannel marketing is delivering a unified brand experience to your customer across multiple channels. In simple words, when the online store and offline store offer the same support, offers, products, and treats both online & offline customers similarly, then it is Omnichannel marketing. More and more businesses are switching to this form of marketing for the past 10 years, and the demand for seamless experience is rising. Omnichannel marketing should be highly considered in digital strategies.
PRO TIP: According to Google, Omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher LTV (Lifetime Value) than shoppers who use one channel to purchase. Well, it’s about how effectively you brand yourself at various touchpoints. Why would someone drive to your 20 miles away Store for a gadget that you sell at the same deal online? It’s about customer convenience and establishing a good brand value in the market. A must in your future digital strategies!
QUALITY & CRISP CONTENT
The content was, is, and will be the most crucial digital marketing strategy. Earlier it was about writing to the point, but today, your audience is not interested in the same problem-solution story. Feel free to throw that strategy in the trash. The audience today wants engagement. Your content should engage them and deliver the right message at the right time via the right channel.
PRO TIP: The demand for quality content is ever increasing with more websites coming up every day. More than 80% of marketers expressed the desire to spend more on content marketing. Content is never enough for a business that wishes to grow uninterruptedly. Just keep up with the content trends, write and shine!
Conclusion
Phew! The list of future trends in Digital Marketing is long, but it’s all worth it when you decide to run in a long race of Digital Marketing and wish to rule the SERPs one day. Trends will change; innovation will uplift the various business niches. The year 2021 is bringing lots of hope for businesses that got impacted due to Coronavirus. It’s not too late to start working on digital marketing. If not today, your business will most likely experience the benefits in the coming years. So, be ready and update your digital strategies for the future.
If you need digital help, we are here for complete support, we are a leading digital marketing company in Pune. We have multi-domain expertise, in multiple industries. Our team is all set to serve you the best digital marketing solutions today and years to come, cheers to 2021!
