Seven Digital Marketing Trends For 2021: A Growth New Era

We are living in an incredible era of marketing! Prior to television, radio, and the internet, businesses were able to market a product only at a local level, and with more traditional forms of marketing including paper ads. Or if you’d like to compare to ancient history, marketing messages were written on stone. With the emergence of the internet, businesses have the power to market their products on a global scale.

It’s now the year of 2021 and now digital marketing has evolved to a new level. New digital marketing trends have taken hold. Usually, Digital Marketing consists of:

– Email Marketing

– Search Engine Optimization

– Content Marketing (in the form of video, podcasts, and blogs).

– Pay Per Click Advertising (Including Google Ad, Bing Ads). 

– Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc).

– Display Advertising

Businesses are devising various forms of marketing strategy and interactive content in order to keep up with the latest of digital marketing trends. Here are some of the latest trends of 2021 that you can use to help shape your digital marketing campaign:

1. The Importance of Video and an Increase In Influencer-Driven Content Grows

With Covid-19 taking place and businesses not having any option but to migrate their marketing campaigns to the digital space, having video play the role of bringing the personal touch to your customer can do wonders for your target audience.

According to Social Media Today, with events cancelled and people unable to attend in-person events, there was an uptick in the number of people tuning into live-streams whether it was a branded live-stream, a live video from their favorite influencer, or an online workshop.

This means that if you’re looking to implement a digital marketing strategy, it’s important that video is a part of it. It’s a lot more important that influencers are a part of that video.

According to gen.video, 90 percent of social media users are influenced to make a purchase after seeing content on social media and it is effective in consumer electronics, fashion, food/beverage, health/beauty, and travel.

A lot of potential buyers would like to see a person’s face and feel the person’s desire for that product when making that decision.

2. Developing Purpose-driven Missions To Increase Brand Loyalty

Any business that has a mission and purpose behind what they do is highly likely to do better than a business that merely sells products and services. This is one digital marketing trend that is often overlooked especially in an era where people focus more on which platform they would use to promote over others.

Customers tend to purchase products from familiar brands especially in today’s globalized world.

When you create a purpose behind your business, there is a higher likelihood that a customer would stick with you through thick and thin. With social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, MeWe, it has never been much easier for someone to create a strong loyal following amongst themselves.

Our message to all businesses that want to grow: build your brand following. It can benefit you in the long term.

3. The Establishment of Chatbots

A lot of digital marketers would rather focus on creating blog and social content rather than interact customers. But in the last couple of years, chatbots have been one of the major digital marketing trends that have taken place.

Surveys show that:

– Chatbots will power 85% of customer service by 2020

– Certain benefits of chatbots include 24-hour service, instant responses, and answers to simpler questions.

If you are a digital marketer, see if you can implement chatbots to automate the process with your clients.

4. Increase in Voice and Visual Search

According to Market Land, about one in four US adults over the age of 18 now own at least one smart speaker. It is also true that 54% of US adults over the age of 17 used voice search and 24% of that group does it daily.

This has been a major digital marketing trend over the last five to ten years, but it has since accelerated in the last year. This may be due to the number of people living at home and the convenience of conducting search queries with the use of their voice. This marketing trend is expected to prevail in 2021.

My recommendation would be if you have a business that serves your local area, implementing voice search as a means to enhance your local SEO strategy (example would be “local Japanese restaurant near me” or “best Sushi in LA”) can help your potential customer make a quicker and easier decision when seeking your products and services.

5. Incorporate Podcasts Into Your Content Marketing Strategy 

2020 has been the year when businesses have implemented easy to use interactive content including podcasts, video, blogs, and even newsletters. This is another of the major digital marketing trends taking place.

In my opinion, podcasts are a major source for interactive content creation for these reasons:

– Infinite Dial reports that 197 million Americans are familiar with podcasting in 2020.

– According to the Spoken Word Audio Report, 43% of the US population over the age of 13+ listen to daily to spoken word audio. This includes podcasts, news, sports, talk radio and audiobooks. Your content marketing strategy could come in handy here.

– Also according to the Spoken Word Audio Report, COVID-19 pandemic has impacted spoken audio consumption where 40% of respondents say they’re listening more since quarantine restrictions. This is where deploying an influencer marketing strategy could come in handy. Your customer experience would be enhanced through this.

For 2021, podcasts have more growth potential with more and more potential customers in search for more personalization of their customer journey. If you are looking to promote your brand, podcasting can make your content marketing strategy easier.

6. The Volume Of Social Media Stories Will Increase

In the past decade alone, social media has taken off like a rocket as the go-to tool for creating stories that can enable your audiences to take action. This has been the go-to tool for influencer marketing.

This had initially started with Snapchat where users were able to create snippets of what they were doing. The tool was called “My Story”. Then Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have taken that feature and implemented that feature onto their platform.

With the evolution of social media stories across various platforms, this latest trend is not expected to fade away especially with marketers utilizing this tool to tell more stories about their brand. In particular, Instagram Stories is a favorite way to show social proof of satisfied customers or to keep people updated of what is happening in your business.

7. Omnichannel Marketing Will Create New Experiences

According to Single Grain, omnichannel marketing is the process of using multiple platforms (such as social media, apps, or blog content) to give your target audience a multi-channel experience. When you’re implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy, you are looking to make sure that your customer is willing to take action based upon what you provide to them.

For example, a B2B company that sells a CRM software to potential software businesses would have a difficult time marketing the product to its target audience if it were to focus on one channel. Having a presence in multiple digital marketing channels would enable the business to diversify its strategy and better grow its business by better 11finding its target audience.

If you have a business and are looking for a strong digital marketing trend to follow, I highly suggest figuring out three to four channels and producing content for those channels.

Deploy these great digital marketing trends to grow your business in 2021 with the help of Prime Marketing Experts. Reach out to us for a free consultation today through this form or by calling us at 617-651-1457!