Whether you are in a service-based or product-based market, you can’t ignore these digital marketing trends that have surfaced over the past year. In years past, businesses could get by on traditional marketing and simple website and social media platforms. Since the outbreak of COVID last year, the digital landscape has evolved to necessitate multiple forms of digital marketing for a business to get noticed online.

Many successful businesses have an online presence. A digital presence is required to be thought of as a legitimate business nowadays. To keep up and be consistent with your digital marketing efforts, you’ll want to consider these new technologies and tools as the changing online global scene forces marketers to adapt to keep their organizations at the top. The digital marketing scene has so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with trends and content creation – especially if you’re a small business.

Digital Darwinism is an unforgiving reality, and if you don’t adapt, you’ll indeed be left behind. Learn what’s new on the digital marketing front and where you can discover the digital marketing trends to be ready for in 2021.

Trend #1: Facebook Usage Skyrockets with Boomers

After the data breach scandal in 2018, Facebook has lost significant credibility, with many people growing frustrated and resentful with the platform’s proliferation of fake news, political propaganda, and cyberbullying. Although Facebook is continuing to lose popularity with younger demographics, TechCrunch speculates that it may be dead to Gen Z.

Digital marketers need to take time to look at who their target market and avatar are that they are advertising to when they post on social media. Facebook may be very unsuitable for some campaigns, especially as it continues to trend downwards with younger people. Marketers should be cautious with who they are trying to connect with and make sure their target audience is still on Facebook. If not, you could be wasting your marketing budget, targeting the wrong social media platform.

Trend #2 Instagram is Gaining Popularity with Millenials

Instagram’s meteoric rise has passed one billion users this past year. This makes Instagram one of the most rapidly growing social media platforms. If you’re targeting a younger demographic, then you’re in luck! Much of its user base is the coveted, more youthful demographic, especially people under 30. Facebook is losing much of that cohort due to its reputation as the social media platform for “old people.”
Instagram recently decided to remove the platform’s likes feature, with many influencers voicing concerns about this move. Businesses need to keep a close eye on the impact this will have on social media feeds. While it could lead to an uptick in content quality, many users may drift away from the platform searching for vanity metrics elsewhere.

Trend #3 Chatbots Will Take Over Customer Service

Chatbots are artificial intelligence, AI software, that acts as a virtual “concierge.” They are robot communicators that allow users to type in a question and search a database for a quick and easy answer to their problem. Chatbots interact with humans primarily through the use of text chat windows. As the system collects more data insights over a period of time, the AI learns more about the customers, making it possible to offer a continuously improving service.

Over 80% of businesses started to use chatbots last year. When you consider the benefits, it’s easy to understand why:

24-hour service
Instant responses to customer queries
No need for breaks, vacations, or overtime pay

Tidio’s research from January 2020 found that 43% of consumers prefer to message an online chatbot rather than phone customer service centers when communicating with a brand. With businesses and customers keen to interact with chatbots, you may want to look into getting this technology on your website pages.

Trend #4 Video is a Digital Marketing Must for Your Website

People are watching more videos in a mobile-savvy world than ever before, with smartphones as the #1 device to watch and share videos. Viewers turn to videos to learn more about brands, find how-to tutorials from companies and YouTubers and find out products and services a business offers. If you’re wondering if a video is effective for your business, consider these stats from ImpactBND:

70% of consumers have shared a brand’s video.
52% of consumers claim that watching product videos makes them more confident and guides their online purchasing decisions.
72% of businesses believe video content has improved their conversion rates.

Video marketing is highly engaging, especially if it’s live video. Live streaming is a powerful method of digital marketing when combined with influencer marketing. Whether it’s the new generation of social media influencers or traditional sources, such as celebrities, athletes, and musicians, having a live stream with an influencer interacting directly with comments is a huge draw for an audience.

Trend #5 Quality Content is Important for Digital Marketing

Content marketing continues to be an essential component of digital marketing. While quality is going to matter, there’s now more emphasis on context and targeting. Google is developing a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of online content. With this newer development, marketers must think carefully about their target market and how they can better tailor content to their followers.

Consider the BERT algorithm Google uses on their platform. This algorithm helps the search engine giant better understand the natural language in user search queries. Advice from Google is that “rather than chase the latest SEO trends, it’s more important to ensure a site has fast speeds, useful links, and well-written content.”

Trend #6 Personalization of Email in Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Email continues to be a significant channel of communication, with billions still using it for personal, commercial, industrial, and scientific purposes. Email is in front of your audience daily. Email marketing is a critical player in attracting and retaining new clients to your business.

Like other forms of digital marketing, email marketing is evolving. Generic marketing emails aren’t as effective as they once were. Today, to create a successful email campaign, a company needs to combine automation and personalization for an effective open rate.

When you can trigger your email marketing to a niche message with a personalized email, this can be very effective for your advertising ROI. Email is often the final trigger to motivate an action, especially when combined with your remarketing techniques.

Trend #7 Creating Interactive Content for Digital Marketing

Interactive content is anything that people can click on, swipe, or interact with online. According to Outgrow, 93% of marketers rate interactive content as highly effective at educating the buyer.
More companies have experimented with interactive content types, such as:

Quizzes and polls
Augmented reality ads
360-degree videos

These formats leverage cutting-edge marketing technology such as augmented reality and video content. These interactive formats offer people a more immersive, engaging experience. Nowadays, consumers want this type of unique, fun content from brands, as it helps them feel more connected to the company.

Trend #8 Voice Interaction Gaining Popularity

Thanks to Siri, Google, Alexa, these three pieces of hardware and other ‘smart devices have seen an increase in popularity. Verbal interaction with devices is continuing to rise. The takeaway for marketers and business owners is to understand that people like to talk as a preferred way of interacting. Today machines are finally catching up to the way people want to search, shop, and discover new ideas and practices to learn on the net.

Conducting a voice search is different from typing a query. The results are going to change based on the words and phrases used in verbal communication. When a text-based search is used, the screen displays the results one page at a time. However, when a verbal query is posed, and the device replies verbally, it may only give a few choices and frequently supplies only one option.

Adopting a voice search for your business creates a unique and optimized customer experience that will foster relationships and build brand loyalty. Marketers targeting voice search users need to keep in mind to write in a conversational tone. When doing so, it’s important to remember to use keywords that people will speak rather than type. Doing this will help you get the coveted position zero or featured snippets on Google.

Trend #9 Message App Digital Marketing

While traditional channels like email and social media are active, people are also flocking to instant messaging apps instead of using text messaging from their phones. In the next five to seven years, messenger marketing is expected to be the number one marketing channel globally. To stay at the top, brands need to start connecting with people on these platforms.

Trend #10 Omnichannel Digital Marketing

Omnichannel marketing is the practice of marketing across multiple platforms, including email, apps, social media, and your website blog. This is also known as all the platforms used in your digital marketing approach. This approach enables businesses to connect with customers on more digital touchpoints, effectively offering a better user experience.
By delivering a seamless, consistent voice and cohesive brand message across all channels, you can generate over three times as much engagement as a single-channel approach. Better yet, customer retention, average order value, and purchase frequency are all higher when you have multiple channels.

Let Visual Web Group assist your company website in dominating your vertical! We offer digital marketing packages to enhance your brand message and digital marketing. Not sure where to start? Contact us today for a complimentary consultation to see how Visual Web Group can boost your user’s experience with quality digital marketing to start connecting with your customers today!