Today, it is a well-acknowledged fact that digital marketing is the staple of success in the corporate world. A good marketer is always interested in gaining insights into the digital marketing trends and innovation. As you are aware, businesses have been facing unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19. The last couple of years were unpredictable, to say the least. However, in order to sustain or adapt the new normal, it is quintessential for marketers to enter into the mental landscape of current market scenarios. Most notably, eCommerce sales have been increasing by leaps and bounds, people spent a lot more time on social media, and video conferencing became the new normal. This has led to a major shift in the way brands are connecting with their consumers.
Digital marketing is the core driver of marketing strategies in an organization. Not only by organizations but digital marketing has also been opted by individuals as a successful career option. Digital marketing has gained the status of a well-reputed field of study globally. Digital marketing courses are being run by reputed institutions and professionals are enrolling for this course to enter into an evolving world of learning. It is essential for a marketer to understand the lead conversion process and how to create personalized content, and track results. In 2021, the top 8 digital marketing trends are:
1. Optimizing Social Media Shopping
Generally, people spend a lot of their time on social sites, like Facebook, Twitter, mobile applications, and on other digital communication technologies. Over the last one year, that amount of time has been increasing exponentially at a rapid pace. According to Whatagraph, in 2018, the average time spent on social media in a day by an adult was 142 minutes, which rose to approximately two and a half hours in 2019, followed by 3 hours in 2020. This is bound to increase as more than 3 billion people are expected to access social media sites in 2021. (https://zenmalik.com/digital-marketing-trends-in-2021/)
This shows that businesses have more chances to make a sale if their product is available on different social media platforms because that’s where the users are, and shoppable posts make the process so much easier for them. Facilitating discovery, personalization, payment, and delivery is so important for users to have a good experience while shopping online.
Social media platforms are also helping marketers in making their products more accessible to people. They are including features that make it easy for brands to upload and showcase their goods, and for customers to purchase items without even leaving the app. This is a trend that will keep on growing during 2021 and it’s a wave retailers should ride in order to keep up with the pace.
2. Cutting Back On Social Media Platforms
It is becoming important for the brands to be actively being present on the most common social media platforms and to remain up with the trends in the market as mostly the customers will be relying now on the social media platforms of the companies to buy goods and services. But it is also necessary for the brands to know that a new social media platform is born every other minute. Nobody knows what the next big thing will be, and even when we don’t expect it, there emerges another channel with millions of users wherein brands have to create their presence.
Designing and creating fresh, valuable content for each social media platform with a constant publishing flow can be draining and an uphill battle for brands, especially for the small businesses. Digital marketing trends for social channels in 2021 suggest brands stop trying to maintain a presence on all platforms and focus their efforts in a more sustainable way.
Businesses need a mindset change and start prioritizing their social media on which they feel they can grow and rely more on for better profitability. They need to focus on working efficiently and intelligently on specific social media channels where their audience is more active. It’s better to have a strong presence on 3 or 4 platforms than a weak one in all of them.
3. Interactive Content
With users spending more time browsing the internet every day, it is important to offer them a valuable experience. You want to connect with your customers, and want to know about their expectations, creative and engaging content is a must-have for your brand.
Content marketing has been a trend in the digital world for a while. However, for 2021 digital trends, it is considered more of a best practice. Engaging content goes hand-in-hand with personalization. Some of the popular ideas to engage customers with interactive content are Quizzes, Polls, Surveys, Contests, Giveaways, Interactive videos, Games. Encapsulating such creative content strategies in your digital marketing efforts can do wonders for your business. Content at every touchpoint should be consistent, engaging, and interactive so as to prepare the potential prospect for the final phase of the purchase journey.
4. Sharp Local SEO In 2021
Small business owners must know that it’s extremely important to keep their digital presence strong on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). If you own a store, you are probably aware that most of your customers are drawn mainly on a local level. The most important thing you can do is to ensure that your store appears on “near me” Google searches.
Google constantly updates their local SEO algorithm and you should update your local business information as well. Tools such as ‘Google My Business’ offer extremely valuable information for customers, but it’s up to you as a local business owner to keep it up to date for them.
Claim your business property first and then get yourself verified by Google. This will help you then provide information about your business such as its opening hours (that are constantly changing due to Covid restrictions), geographic location, and services.
5. The Boom Of Voice Search
Voice search commands have been around since 2011 with the appearance of Siri. In recent times, with the introduction of devices like Google Home and Alexa into our living spaces, users are becoming more accustomed to accessing information using voice search. According to Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, 20% of search queries are done by voice.
As this tendency grows, businesses need to start considering optimizing their content and including voice search into their digital marketing strategies. The first step for this is to create content that adopts a more “conversational” and natural style that matches how and what kind of questions consumers ask. Voice search optimized content allows businesses to reach new audiences, given that the results are often different than if the users typed in a regular text search.
6. Optimizing Digital Marketing With Artificial Intelligence
Digital marketing strategies can be greatly optimized and improved with the correct use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI offers marketers the power to collect valuable insights on user behavior, campaign performance, and analytics which they can use to optimize their digital marketing campaigns and overall communication with customers.
Once all the data is collected by AI, Business entities can organize data by creating performance metrics, spreadsheets, charts, graphs, and other forms of visual applications needed for making complex decisions more easily. This makes it possible to provide a better customer experience with personalized content. E-commerce sites can attain benefits from artificial intelligence by showing users the products that are relevant for them based on their previous behavior, such as searches, purchases, and views. By collecting and processing data from user’s behavior while they’re browsing a site, web push notifications are triggered and delivered with hyper-personalized content based on the user’s actions.
Once a user accepts to receive them, they’ll get messages specially designed for them based on what they did on the site. If they browsed a category, product or added an article to their shopping cart, a message will be delivered with specific information regarding what they liked.
7. Video Marketing And Webinars
Audio-visual content is an important and powerful tool that easily grabs attention and engages viewers. It offers the possibility to share lots of content in a short amount of time using a very dynamic format. Most of us prefer to watch a short video than to read long articles or posts. Social media is a great channel to share video content since all platforms have included features to create and share short videos like stories and reels.
With the rise in the pandemic these are getting even more popular for customers to watch and also the pandemic has contributed to the rise of video marketing as a key element on any digital strategy. Webinars, for example, have become necessary to substitute face-to-face events in all kinds of industries. 2021 trends aim that this isn’t going to be a temporary thing and marketers need to include video content as a regular on their digital marketing mix.
8. Automated Smart Bidding Strategies In Google Ads
Automatization is the future of many digital marketing strategies. When running a Google Ads campaign, marketers spend lots of time and resources in manually optimizing their keywords and bids. Automated bidding on Google Ads takes away all that guesswork and helps businesses achieve their goals more efficiently. Google takes care of analyzing all the data and adjusts the bids accordingly to improve the performance of your campaigns.
To sum it all, we can say that these digital marketing trends are essential for better growth in the corporate world. A digital marketer should possess the skills to bring together all the elements of digital marketing in order to create customer-centered marketing strategies and personalized content strategies. Today, certification of Digital marketing programmes is a must-have for every professional to ensure continued success in their respective careers.
With a desire to advance your career by introducing a new culture of constant learning NDIM has introduced an Online Certificate Programme on Digital Marketing. The programme covers a plethora of pivotal topics of Digital Marketing such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), Website Conversion Rate Optimization, Web Analytics, Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Email Marketing, and Digital Marketing Strategy. The course will also help you master tools and platforms such as Google Analytics, AdWords, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook as it is important to understand how social media works as a communication and marketing tool.
This course will prepare you to enter the creative, fast-paced business of promoting, developing, and selling products and services to unique customer markets. The certificate offered will be instrumental in helping you achieve digital marketing positions in your career.
