Digital Marketing // 5 Insider Trends to Look Out For in 2021

Digital Marketing is a fast-paced industry that continues to evolve every waking day. To stay ahead of the competition, one has to keep their head in the game and stay up to date with the latest trends.  

The internet has revolutionized marketing by making it easier for businesses to understand their demographics and to provide what they are looking for so as to meet their needs.

The ongoing pandemic has heightened the need to remain connected to access work opportunities, knowledge, markets and to ensure that businesses are sustainable.  As of January 2021, there were 4.66B active internet users worldwide – 59.5 per cent of the global population. Of this total, 4.32B (92.6 per cent) accessed the internet via mobile devices (Source Statista.com).

We live in a time when technology marketing accelerates fast and consumer interests and behaviours are hard to predict. At one time, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data-Driven Marketing and Voice Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) were ambitious futuristic concepts. Now, many businesses the world over have managed to incorporate these into their marketing strategies and are now actively looking for new unchartered territories. 

Marketers should no longer stick their heads in the sand in the hopes that educated guesses and using the same old methods will be effective forever. Thriving businesses anticipate changes in the marketplace and take this opportunity to pivot business models aimed towards optimizing sustainability. 

As a marketer understanding the trends that are experienced in digital technology work is a critical step in leveraging your numbers so as to have a bigger impact on your market. We’ve put together 5 digital marketing trends to look out for in 2021 and beyond: 

Programmatic Advertising

A digital marketing trend that uses AI to automate Ad buying so as to make targeting focused on more specific audiences. Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic Ad buying. 

Traditionally, you would have manually prepared insertion orders or Ad tags, which was quite labour-intensive. With programmatic ads, marketers have more time for the optimization and improvements of the ads. 

Programmatic-centric software empowers those who are doing the job to better plan, better optimize and target their advertising more efficiently. It helps to effectively utilize the marketing budget, you can rely on an algorithm that will determine where your ad money is best spent. 

All you have to do is feed your programmatic solution some information about your campaign as well as key performance indicators. In the end, this results in higher conversions and lower customer acquisition costs. 

Video Marketing

A digital marketing trend that has gained popularity over the recent years with applications such as Tiktok & Instagram reels taking the social media world by storm. They enable the target audience to grasp more information in a shorter period which is a win as the human attention span online has been proven to be short. Video marketing is one of the most important digital marketing trends today and likely for the next 5-10 years. 

According to Impactplus, 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video and 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. On the other hand, videos make it easier for brands to gain credibility with their target markets as well as to become relatable which makes it easier for their markets to connect with them.

Visual Search

This digital marketing trend has taken the user experience to a totally different level. Through the use of search engines, people can now upload an image to get more specific search results. It is more like turning the camera on your mobile device into a search bar. 

As per Social Media Today, 62% of Millennials are more interested in visual search capabilities than any other new technology and there are over 600 million visual searches on Pinterest each month. 

Marketers can get the edge on competitors by jumping on the visual search trend in 2021 to draw customers and serve them the perfect product.

Business of e-Commerce // 9 Simple Ways to Increase Sales

Browser Push Notifications

Millions of people every minute are on a search engine trying to find the answer to something. Incorporating browser push notifications is a great way of tapping into these numbers and using that traffic generated to convert into sales. You need to ensure that the notification is captivating as you have a short period to capture the attention of your target market. 

Micro-Moments

A micro-moment is an intent-rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need – to know, go, do or buy. The internet has made it easier for consumers to search for & complete a purchase just by the touch of a button through the evolution of the payments industry. People generally make instant decisions within these micro-moments.

Here are 4 micro-moments to consider:

• I-want-to-know moments– when someone is exploring or researching but is not necessarily in purchase mode.
• I-want-to-go moments– when someone is looking for a local business or is considering buying a product at a nearby store.
• I-want-to-do moments– when someone wants help completing a task or trying something new.
• I-want-to-buy moments– when someone is ready to make a purchase and may need help deciding what to buy or how to buy it. 

Understanding micro-moments is important because, in these moments, consumers want what they want when they want it and they are drawn to brands that deliver on their needs. 

In summary, keeping tabs on the latest digital marketing trends will help your business to have a competitive edge. It will make it easier for you to reach your customers and maintain a connection that enhances personalization in marketing.