We are in the fourth month of 2021, watching the effects of the pandemic changing the way customers use to shop for products or services. The consumer behavior will never go back to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit us.
This has forced marketers to look for strategies that can help businesses survive through the new customer behavior and the increased competition in the market.
The following list by Richard Bishara consists of the top 8 digital marketing trends that you should be aware of in 2021. So, without any further ado, let’s read about each one of them.
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Data and Analytics
When you back your marketing campaigns with data, you are surely going to get a competitive advantage in 2021. By collecting the relevant data through data analytics tools, you will get gain valuable insights into various aspects of your process.
As per Gartner, 73% of the CMOs who were surveyed said they are planning to put monies in data analytics in 2021. Smart marketers will use data to predict customer behavior and boost their revenue.
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Voice SEO
With the help of voice search optimization, your organization can optimize existing and new website content for voice search. The goal is to get your website to the position zero spots in Google search results or get the featured snippet.
Voice assistants such as Siri, Amazon Echo, etc. use featured snippets to respond to voice searches. The search queries are different when users search through voice assistants, and therefore voice search optimization is important. With more and more people switching to smartphones, voice SEO should be present in every digital marketer’s checklist – for sure.
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UGC – User Generated Content
Does your product or service cater to the Millennial or Gen Z audience? If yes, it’s high time that you encourage your audience to share user unique content by incentivizing them with discounts or offers. It is one of the quickest and most effective ways to increase brand engagement and drive more audience.
There is a simple fact about these generations – they trust others like themselves than they trust any organization. The user-generated content includes social media comments, blog posts about your product or service, testimonials, and videos. When your new audience base sees this content from existing users, they are likely to buy your product or service.
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Focus on sustainability
It might come to you as a surprise, but according to a survey, 81% of the consumers feel that organizations should be thoughtful about the environment. The hunt for a greener planet is increasing and consumers are expecting the brands to take this initiative. For instance, by changing the content they use, their packaging, or something else.
A great example to explain this point is The Ocean Cleanup. In late October, they showcased their very first product made out of the plastic collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Interesting, isn’t it?
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Social Media Marketing
Let Richard Bishara tell you something that most of the businesses do on social media:
Keep posting boring and repeating promotional updates to followers on every social media platform.
If this is something you are also doing on your social media, stop NOW! That’s not social media marketing at all. So, what should you be doing?
Make an effort to understand your audience and see how you can serve them. Post content that is relevant to them and with which they can engage. And yes, of course, you can post promotional content once in a while to keep your audience updated on the ongoing offers.
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Automated bidding in Google Ads
Speaking of automation… Google Ads marketers need to constantly tweak the campaigns, keywords, and bids to get the best returns on their marketing budgets. However, this constant adjustment comes at a cost – more work hours and consequently, more management fees.
Through automated bidding, you can automate the prior moves to adjust your bids in real-time. Even though it was introduced in 2016, it made its due break-out in 2021 owing to the continuous improvements made in it.
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Live interactions with virtual events
Digital marketers are understanding the potential of virtual events. However, they are a success only when the communication is two-way. It is a huge mistake certain companies make – they turn the virtual events into a boring broadcast rather than coming live and interacting with their audience in real-time.
Yes, there are complications incoming live, but the associated reward is much greater than any risk associated with it. The target audience is looking for many such events to know more about an organization.
So, if you have not yet started organizing virtual events such as webinars, it’s high time to create a schedule for it.
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Customer segmentation
This trend is not something that has popped up yesterday but has gained new popularity amongst marketers. The objective behind it is simple – rather than having a small number of huge marketing campaigns targeting a general audience, it’s better to have a large number of small marketing campaigns targeting the desired audience.
You can use customer segmentation to divide your audience on the basis of demographics, shopping habits, certain behaviors, and stuff like that. It will help you meet your customers’ preferences and generate more revenue from the same marketing budget – a win-win situation for you.
Wrapping up
With digital marketing, your business has endless opportunities to reach more customers around the globe. Ranging from SEO to social media to email, there are so many digital marketing strategies available in the market showing their magic to the business owners.
To sustain the growing competition in the market, you should know what’s trending in the market. That’s why Richard Bishara has compiled the above list of trending digital marketing strategies for your business. When you use them right, you will surely drive more traffic and generate more sales.
And we all know what more sales will lead us to… more revenue for your business!
