7 Digital Marketing Trends That Will Rule in 2021 and Beyond
Due to the advent of digital technology in the last decade, the digital marketing strategies have started dominating the importance of conventional marketing practices. Fierce competition and due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many traditional businesses have realised the importance of digital marketing. More small businesses are in desperate need of digital marketing to thrive in this reality and build on their investment.
The digital and on-demand platforms have significantly substituted face-to-face interactions for brands and hence understanding the change inflicted upon us by the pandemic. It is quite generalised to say that digital marketing strategies can always work well for businesses but it is only true if it is used properly. We hear everyone saying that content will dominate but will that be the case for 2021 and beyond? If businesses plan to provide personalised experiences to their customers and stand apart from the competition will matter irrespective of the global circumstances. Here’s a list of the top digital marketing for 2021 and beyond.
Featured Snippets
In its early days, SEO was all about getting to the first page of the search engine. Now, we have moved ahead and are looking for the zero spot or the featured snippets. It is one of the first digital marketing trends that needs to be identified.
For the people who are not aware of what a “featured snippet” is, it is a search result that is displayed in a small box at the top of the search engine result page right before the organic results. It can be presented in the form of a list, paragraph or a table and responds to the query searched instantly. You can enhance your content to present in the “featured snippet” box by giving a detailed description to the exact queries searched by the users. For example, offering a detailed answer on “how to get more Twitter followers” can give you a spot on the zero position of the SERPs while giving you ultimate exposure and improved CTR.
Customer Segregation
Customer segregation or segmentation is not a novel concept but it is expected to reach newer heights in 2021 and beyond. Major tech companies like Facebook and Google have abundant data on their users that they can understand on a deeper level than a human brain could. These days, manual segregation is becoming outdated and not used by brands anymore. From more than hundred segmentations, the big digital ad algorithms can micro-segment the ideal user base. The primary goal is to increase more engagement and customer retention which leads to reduced ad spending and greater customer lifetime value.
Google Ads – Auto Bidding
Automated bidding was first introduced on Google Ads in 2016 but we expect it to take a leap in 2021. We believe that 2020 might have been the last year that marketers had to manually optimise Google Ads. But now, Auto bidding can adjust and optimise the advertisement better than any human marketer. Will this mark the end of digital marketers? On the contrary, it will give them more time to work on other goals to increase the brand awareness and brand recall which is not possible to automate.
Shoppable Posts on Social Media
A recent research by SproutSocial indicated that more than 40% of Instagram users bought one or more products that were put in front of them in a sponsored post. We have been expecting social media channels to explode as a medium for eCommerce retail with simpler integrations to let users shop without actually leaving the app. However, it would be great to see if brands can sell exclusively on social media channels? Well, there are certain home based setups who run small scale businesses either on Facebook or Instagram and do not actually have a website or an app.
Image and Video SEO
The world is evolving rapidly and so are the users. They are now looking to use voice search for any query rather than changing the query to type in the search bar. The results obtained through voice search are quite different from the ones you get through text search and hence brands need to optimise with the target keywords in the correct way. Apart from that, users are now submitting images to find the related content. All businesses are more importantly the eCommerce stores need to optimise their content images with appropriate alt tag and meta description. Providing images in the sitemap can also allow you to optimise the web content while optimizing Google lens can also work well for your business.
Ad-Blocker
As more than 25% people are expected to use Ad Blockers in the beginning of 2021, digital marketing managers need to modify their engagement and reach strategies. It is definitely not going to reduce or impact the traffic coming to your website, but it can significantly impact the rankings of some websites. Hence, the businesses should invest in other digital marketing avenues for increased exposure like influencer marketing or sponsored content. It can provide the necessary traffic from the younger audience.
Local SEO
Google frequently updates its local SEO algorithm and hence it is important for businesses to invest their time and energy in uplifting their local SEO game. If you are catering to the local audience then investing in local SEO will give your better results than focusing on any other channel. It is best to register your business on the Google My Business page and frequently update your profile with relevant keywords. Making use of an optimum keyword strategy and modifying it in your business listing can make room for easy customers and improved ROI.
Conclusion
Rather than worrying about the impact of 2020, it is best for brands to focus their energy on the new trends that came along with it. It is possible that many digital marketing trends might not be relevant in a few years from now but some of these trends will definitely help you to rank higher and increase your ROI. To gain a competitive edge in these testing times, brands must devise a solid plan to provide customised experience to their users to stay on top. We hope these trends will help you devise your digital marketing strategy in 2021 and beyond. Let us know in the comments below about the digital marketing trends that you feel will rule in 2021.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joining December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.