In 2020 many things happened. They were unexpected. And we don’t know what will happen in 2021. But when you are a business, you should think about it now to better it than the last year. One way to prepare for 2021 is to pay special attention to the marketing trends for 2021 and make your business better so that your customers have a good experience with your business.
To help you out, here are six digital marketing trends they recommend watching out for in the new year. Study up and prepare your strategy now!
What’s in it:
- Short content will be important
- Data will help marketers make more decisions
- Chatbots are a new way to market
- OmniChannel marketing has become the new norm
- Brand Authenticity
- Paid ads will be giving result
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Short content will be important
Video marketing is a current marketing trend but it is changing. Today’s internet users can only pay attention for 8 seconds. To have people watch your video, make sure that they are short. This type of video will be popular in 2021.
So where should you start? Emelina Spinelli, an Instagram marketer, suggests the 15-second video format. She says that Instagram just rolled out Reels to compete with TikTok. And then they started giving priority to Reels bit was making a lot of growth for many accounts.
The good news is that Reels are a great way to attract attention and deliver results. Anyone can make them. Here are some tips:
- Teaching something is a great way to grow followers. When you teach, people see that you know what you are talking about and they want to hear more. This also helps in business because when you teach people it makes them feel like they can trust you more and be more willing to buy from your company.
- Give a behind the scenes look. Short content (like movies) is made to be friendly and informal instead of fancy and official. So don’t worry about making perfect content. Instead, take your audience into the back room to talk about how difficult it can be, or how you won something. This will build trust for your brand because people will see that it’s just like them working in their own back room!
- It’s good to have fun with Instagram videos. You can make them more interesting and engaging by playing with how long they are, adding music or text, or experimenting with AR effects.
Data will help marketers make more decisions
The CEO of Mixpanel said that most people will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. Lucky people may be right, and those who are wrong will not know. But if we want to know which marketing activity was the best use of our marketing money, then we need data. Roxana Motoc from SocialBee says that if you don’t track results, then you won’t even know how much money you spent on marketing trends and what you got in return.
What can you do with the marketing trends that is coming in 2021? Samir Elkamouny, founder and CEO of Fetch & Funnel, suggests a tool called Hotjar. “Watch those videos to see what people are doing on your website,” he says. “I bet you will be surprised that half the people don’t scroll past 50% down your website, or they didn’t realize they could scroll on the slider.”
Sarah Bond, a senior director of marketing strategy at Lucky Orange, suggests that you use their Dynamic Heatmaps for your website to get the clearest possible view of visitor behavior. And she also says that you should share this knowledge with other teams in your company because the insights you are gathering about customers and prospects can help them make better decisions.
Chatbots are a new way to market
Chatbots are going to do well because they help people. They can do a lot of things that people can’t. It is important to have chatbots because they make more work for people and so the work we need to do will be less. Also, chatbots are easy to program and share with other people.
Amanda Stevens, the director of conversational design at Master of Code, says that chatbots will be used for many things. She thinks that people are going to use chatbots to buy things and get information. People will like chatting with a bot.
See some chatbot best practices that can help you build a better bot for your business:
- It is important to understand why a business needs a robot.
- Chatbots are useful for both e-commerce and nonprofit organizations. They help with shopping and donations.
When you are using a chatbot, make sure you personalize it with your customer’s needs. You can build separate chatbot flows for people with different needs. You can customize the experience by using different user attributes. And if you are more advanced, Amanda recommends “use APIs and AI to understand your customers’ needs and wants, and then show only the content that is relevant and interesting to them.”
OmniChannel marketing has become the new norm
72% of people say they would rather connect with brands across channels. If people want to buy something, they can go to the most convenient channel for them. That means in 2021, you need your brand on all major platforms including chatbots and social media. Each channel needs a voice and strategy that is the same.
George Hartley, the co-founder of SmartrMail, says that your marketing channels don’t work independently. He gives an example: You can combine chatbots with email marketing by optimizing for collecting emails in the chatbot. If you want to be smarter than that, you can ask questions in the chatbot that will segment customers and then send them on a different customer journey with email automation.
But remember: when you are trying to get people to buy something, the most important thing is that they convert. That is what you want them to do, not just come on your site.
Brand Authenticity
People are scared of going outside because of the coronavirus. They want to feel like they are with people. So if your brand can help them, they will be happy and you can make more money. Austin Iuliano says that personal touches will make people happy. Here are some things you can do to show people that you care:
- Engage people one-on-one in DMs. Austin says to use Facebook’s ads that go to Messenger and Instagram DMs. That way you can generate a lot of trust and sales by talking back and forth with people there.
- Live streaming is a way to show people the humans behind your brand. Zack Franklin predicts that because it is live, viewers will feel like they are with you or near you. He also says that people want authenticity and they can see it right away. They want the live stream to take off because of this, and he thinks that it will keep getting bigger and bigger.
- Encourage people to share their own content about your product on social media, like when they talked about it or took a picture of it. The internet is hard for some brands because people don’t trust them. But UGC makes it easier because if they see other people talk about the product, that helps them believe in it more too.
Paid ads will be giving result
People are spending more time on their computers and phones, so they can see your ads. There are lots of people who are ready to look at your ads. We just released a new feature that you can use to link your Messenger chatbot to Facebook Ads! Try it out by clicking the Facebook Ads Entry Point.
In the new year, it will be important to promote your own content. You can use ads or do it on your own. You should spend 20% of your time creating content and then with 80% of the time you have left, you should promote that content.
Do not forget the new marketing trends of forging authentic connections, as mentioned above. This applies even when you are running ads. Alexander Fedotov, founder of AFMedia, recommends: “Focus on those things that unite people. Even though we’re all stuck at home because of the pandemic, people still want to be part of something,” he explains. “And if you can incorporate that into your Facebook advertising, then this will provide a better user experience—and in turn, Facebook will reward you with better costs and better-quality traffic.”
Conclusion
The marketing trends you need to know for the coming year are outlined in this post, but if they still seem too far off or intimidating, don’t worry. Our team of experts will be ready and waiting to partner with you to create a stellar SEO or digital marketing plan that drives sales by considering how your customers think.
FAQs
Marketing trends are the science of understanding what customers want and how they react to different marketing messages or products. Marketing trends have been evolving for centuries, with a large change in its definition since the social, mobile, and instant access era. This rapid evolution makes it critical that marketers keep on top of these changes if they are going to stay relevant.
A benefit of marketing trends is that they can provide valuable data on what consumers want and how their needs and wants change over time. This data is particularly valuable for companies looking to update or create new products since it provides them with huge insights into how their target market’s perception of the company has changed.
One of the best ways to find out what people are talking about in the world of marketing is to search online for industry trends. This can be anything from looking at videos on YouTube, reading blog posts by other executives in the field, or checking out popular forums frequented by marketers.
You need to understand marketing trends because they change the way you create a brand platform and plan a marketing strategy. Marketing trend research can give marketers an idea of what is happening with customer behaviors and preferences, as well as changes in the marketplace.
One strategy to use google trends for marketing is to find topics or questions related to your company and monitor the number of searches on a given topic over time. Topics may include your products, competitors’ products, specialized topics within your industry, etcetera.
