7 Digital Marketing Trends To Watch in 2021

My focus in this blog spot is to zero in on 7 Digital Marketing trends to watch in 2021.  There’s so much changing and evolving that it’s hard to know what to watch in the new year. Here are my top picks. If you’d like to listen to the podcast that goes with this blog post, click here!

#1. Video Marketing  

In the last year, Video Marketing has exploded with the growth of TikTok. Instagram has come up with their own version of TikTok, “Reels”, which is basically a blatant copy.  Then, YouTube “Shorts” came along.  All of these platforms are trending towards video marketing. Remember, I shared a while back that a Facebook executive predicted their platform would host all video and no text by 2021 (Courts).

Here are some stats to pay attention to:

• Eighty-one percent of businesses are now using video as a marketing tool; up from sixty-three percent over the last year (Hubspot).  
• According to Google, six out of ten people would rather watch online videos than television.  
• By 2022, online videos will encompass greater than eighty-two percent of all consumer internet traffic;  that’s fifteen times higher than it was in 2017 (Cisco and Social Media).

Look at the Impact!

 One video shared online receives up to twelve, one hundred percent, five hundred percent more shares than text and images combined (Word Stream).  Additionally, video on a website is fifty-three times more likely to reach the front page of Good if it includes a video by insignia.

So how do you practically apply this for your business?

1. Talk through your products, presentations, webinars (this was jump started by COVID), video ads (these outperform static and carousel images), customer testimonials, interviews, live streams, live videos, tutorials, and blogs.  
2. Try and incorporate more video into your marketing whether that be with Instagram Stories or Productions of a weekly or monthly IGTV.  
3. If you have a podcast, record a video at the same time on Zoom and upload it to YouTube or even incorporate an Email series with a tutorial throughout it.

#2.  Micro Moments

What is a “micro moment”? Micro Moments are intense, rich moments when a person turns to a device to act on a need to know, go do, or buy. Marketers have to, as Google says, “be there, be useful, be quick.”  Think of this trend as “on-demand marketing”.  To take advantage of Micro Moments in 2021, you need to be where consumers are searching for information in the moment and have a more dynamic, unpredictable path to respond to rapid changes in customer desires.

With the mobile age, people want instant gratification.  As they think or talk about something, they want to see it.  “When we act on our needs in the moment, our expectations are high and our patience is low.”  

(Mention)

The quality, relevance, and usefulness of marketing is more important than ever.

A good example of using Micro Moments is Facebook.  If you are searching for a product and talking about it, suddenly it’s right there in your newsfeed with a link to click a button to Amazon and buy it. Honestly, it’s kind of creepy how good of a job Facebook does at this type of marketing!

What can you do to take advantage of a micro moment?

1. To identify when your customers want to buy, be there in those moments of need delivering relevant content to make it easy for them to purchase. 
2. Remember the one-two-three!  If you’ve made the process longer than three steps, evaluate and condense them making sure you measure every moment that matters. 
3. Look at your insights and pay attention to what it is that is making people tick.

#3. Content Marketing

Mark my words, Content Marketing is going to continue to rise.  Overall, Content Marketing has a lower upfront cost and deeper long term benefits.  I love a quote by Seth Godin from Content Marketing Institute.  He says, “Content Marketing is all the marketing that is left.”

Small businesses with blogs generate one hundred twenty-six percent more leads than those without blogs. (Hubspot)

At the end of the day, when people think of you, they think of your content.  They think of what you have said and the things you have poured into your content.

People are going to have front of mind what you said/poured into your content when they consider buying from you. 

Ask yourself the following:

1. What is it that makes your product unique or stand out?  
2. How does your story play into your product?  
3. What kind of an impact do you want to have as you market your product?

#4. Interactive Marketing

Interactive Marketing goes hand in hand with being there in those Micro Moments; people are looking for something that is interactive and dynamic.  In other words, something that’s moving!  Michael Ballard, Digital Marketing Center Manager for Lenovo, said, “…it allows us to measure engagement, which makes content production process much easier. We gain key customer insights from tools like assessments and quizzes.”

Eighty-eight percent of marketers say that at least ten percent of their static content will be made interactive in the next two years; that could look like anything AR and VR.

(demandGen)

With social media, there are quizzes, polls, and a lot of ways to use those interactive videos to get feedback from people within twenty-four hours.   Content Marketing with customer interaction allows you to attract customers and build relationships with them in real ways that deliver long term results for your business.

Here are several ways to use Interactive Marketing of your products:  

1. Virtual/automated/interactive videos
2. Infographics
3. Quizzes/polls, leveraging of Instagram or Facebook stories to poll or quiz audiences
4. Live stream (ask questions from those commenting to get them to interact.  

#5. User Generated Content

User Generated Content has been around for a while but is continuing to grow.  An example I’d like to share regards a women’s clothing company, Aerie.  They made a pledge to stop retouching photos of their models wearing their bathing suits.  Additionally, for every Instagram user posting an unedited photo of themselves in a bathing suit using #aeriereal, they will donate one dollar to the National Eating Disorders Association.  

“Consumers demand a more engaging shopping experience.  They’re looking for fellow shoppers to answer questions about products and share insights about purchases.” 

Jim Davidson (Director, Aerie)

Some stats to pay attention to:

• Shoppers under thirty report a greater influence of User Generated Content in purchasing decisions versus older respondents.

• Since nearly two thirds (or sixty-three percent) of shoppers believe User Generated Content creates a more authentic shopping experience, it’s a good idea to keep your audience in mind.  

This is a lot of people talking about shopping and how it is influencing their decisions.

The study by Aerie demonstrates User Generated Content is outpacing traditional marketing tools when it comes to increasing shopper confidence as well as influencing decisions.  Markets who want to connect with the consumer must find ways to incorporate User Generated Content into each step of the customer journey, not just the product page and quote.

Find Creative Ways to Pull in User Generated Content.

1. One idea is to have a contest where people submit a photo (with a stated theme) and then pick someone at random to receive a gift card.
2. A campaign using a hashtag with the photo could be tied into the contest. 
3. Create a Facebook Group dedicated to your users/followers. A great example my sister introduced me to is related to a clothing company I love called Grace and Lace (they are actually a part of Shark Tank).  Grace and Lace has a Facebook group with a plethora of User Generated Content on it.  People ask and answer questions about products they want to buy on the group page. I love shopping that way because I can get a sense of what I am buying before I even buy it.

#6. Automation 

The Automation trend was gaining momentum in 2020 and in 2021, it is a huge hot button item. We’ve been seeing chat bots and now automated Emails.  Neil Patel has a podcast in the world of digital marketing that I enjoy listening to. He shares really good insights. One of those insights is that “marketing will become a more even playing field and you’ll have no choice but to use automation (in 2021)”.

Automation improves customer retention and loyalty because it’s more hands off for you while allowing you to interact with customers on a regular basis.  It helps you predict the behavior of your customer with propensity modeling and predictive analytics.

The variety of ways to include Automation in your marketing strategies include:  

1. AI powered chat bots to improve user experience.
2. Leverage the power of AI to boost search engine ads.
3. Scale up content marketing with AI generated content.
4. Deliver a highly personalized website experience for every user, identify hot leads, optimize voice search queries, voice search (Alexa and Google queries), reduce cart abandonment, and/or target customers across different channels.  

Here are a few things you can easily add right now.

•  Adding an automated series to your Emails; or a welcome email to each new subscriber.

• Adding chat bots to your Facebook page (There is a feature which allows you to do this in your messages and I encourage you to check it out.  It’s called “frequently asked questions” in your inbox.  This enables you to run ads with messages because it automatically allows you to send a message right back to the customer if they ask a question you have already predetermined.

A word of caution: too much automation can actually work AGAINST you. Make sure your use of this trend still sounds like you and not a robot.

Maplewild Marketing

#7. Smart Bidding and Google Ads.  

Competition on social media can suffocate your organic reach. We’ve all expressed frustration over this through the previous year.  This type of paid advertising will become a more trusted force in 2021.  It allows you to try to use many different signals for bid optimization.

Google’s smart campaign takes the strain off of you with the following features:  device physical location, location intent, weekday time of day remarketing list ad characteristics, interface, language browser, and operating system.  They claim machine learning algorithms train on data at a vast scale to help you make more accurate predictions across your account about how different bit amounts might impact conversations or conversion value.  Those conversations are people actually buying from you or taking action on your website or watching your video and these types of things.

 I’ve used smart campaigns in the last year and they’ve done so much both for myself and for my clients that I cannot speak of them highly enough.  

Two honorable mentions are:

1. Reducing the Number of Social Media Channels You’re Using. 

There are so many social media channels available now!  Many companies have tried to stay relevant on all of them.  It’s like opening a closet you haven’t used in a while and realizing you need to go through it to declutter.  This year, 2021, is the year to start wading through those social media closets.  I know for me, the only way to survive is not to stay relevant to all of them. Declutter as much as possible. Stay on those platforms that are absolutely necessary to yourself.  Businesses as well as individuals have begun this process and it’s going to be even bigger in 2021.

2. Repurposing Content across Channels. 

If you have engaging content with fewer resources, it makes sense that next year will begin to bring a bigger focus on repurposing content across channels.  When you spend time and effort to create content, you want to share it with as many people as possible.  The best way to do that is to repurpose that content for different channels. 

 I love the quote that says, “I’m most excited to see how content teams repurpose content instead of starting from scratch (Sales Hacker Head of Content Brooklin Nash).”  In 2021, content teams (or as I like to say, “Me”) will begin figuring out how to most effectively use content from webinars, podcasts, and conferences to stoke the content; bonfire! With every discussion, there are at least five social media posts or blog posts and a newsletter mentioned. 

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just get it turning faster.  

maplewild marketing

If you’re like me, you’re only one person—you and I don’t have content teams or round table discussions with a team of people.  We have ourselves to rely on.  If we can make life easier for ourselves in 2021, let’s do that.

Concluding Remarks

Out of everything I’ve researched related to new trends in social media marketing, I’ve highlighted my favorites and zeroed in on “trends to watch”.  However you look at blog posts, there’s about forty-two different ways the content or digital marketing landscape is going to change in 2021.  Why are the trends I’ve shared my favorites?

I really think these trends are going to impact the landscape of not only digital marketing, but social media marketing as well. This is why I bring them to your attention.  Admittedly, there is a lot of information here.  I hope you join in with me on my social media stories as on Tuesdays, you’ll hear “Tuesdays Tips” and on Thursdays, you’ll hear “Did You Know” where I talk about some of these trends more in depth.

For now, you have an overview of my favorite trending points.  I like keeping my finger on the pulse of what’s going on and what is going to make the biggest bang for your buck as a small business owner coming to the table as a party of one to this digital marketing and social media marketing landscape.  Until next time!