Organizations worldwide have had to endure a big hit because of the flare-up of COVID-19. Since then, people have changed the way they shop. In-store shopping, at this point, is an inclination. Purchasers are effectively shopping on the web, and numerous organizations have gone online to keep in touch with their customers.

With this monstrous expansion in internet shopping, the competition between organizations is quite high. Numerous brands are recruiting digital marketing companies as they are young and equipped with present-day advertising patterns.

But while there has been a shift toward online strategies, let’s not forget that digital marketing and the shift toward it are nothing new. The shift has already been taking place but has been accelerated. And some of the strategies are gaining popularity not because they’re fresh on the scene. Rather, they’ve been around a while but their efficacy as a channel for reaching potential customers has skyrocketed in this stay-at-home, virtual age.

Below is a list of the top trends for digital marketing in 2021:

1. Shoppable Posts: 

Digital media has overpowered offline shopping. Now even digital shopping is evolving continuously – the aim being to make the shopping experience as seamless, easier, and inspiring as possible. Shoppable content is one such innovation that emerges as a new-age shopping venue through the integration of social content with eCommerce. This led to the emergence of shoppable posts and social shopping. Billions of people globally browse social media platforms and most of them get inspired, find new products, explore styles, and much more.

This mirrors the recent information provided by Smart Insights that people are now spending a total of 2 hours and 24 minutes scrolling through their phones on different digital platforms, giving brands a generous amount of time to reach consumers through shoppable posts, meeting consumers where they already are.

2. Voice Search: 

One of the biggest developments impacting the world of digital marketing today is the widespread adoption of voice search technology, which is changing how search marketing professionals optimize websites to rank for targeted keywords and queries. Just a couple of years ago, voice search accounted for an incredibly small fraction of total searches worldwide. Today, we’re seeing more than 20 percent of all mobile searches being done by voice.

Marketers will need to optimize their content to voice-friendly terms and phrases to increase their searchability as they are becoming more common in modern households with their usage only expected to increase with further lockdowns or quarantines.

3. Video Marketing: 

92% of marketers state that using video content is an active part of their campaign strategies. Video content helps persuade and attract consumers to a brand for potential conversions as people are much more likely to engage with a video as opposed to other forms of content such as a blog post or written content.

But as we’ve seen above, the nature of video content is constantly being changed and enhanced. This is why businesses need to be aware of the rising video trends so they can bring relevant content to their consumers.

4. AI-Chat Boxes: 

Consumers still want a “human touch” while they shop online. This is why marketers are using artificial intelligence chat boxes to meet customers’ needs. These chat boxes speak to consumers in comprehensive sentences while answering any questions a customer may have while shopping, giving the illusion of a human interaction and involving the customer more in the process.

5. Virtual & Augmented Reality: 

Technology has been expeditious in recent years with novel innovations and advancements released and tested in the market. It is a no-brainer that agencies, especially media and advertising, are always seeking opportunities to enhance their communication with the consumers. A lot of reasoning and effort goes into finding an apt way to reach out to their viewers. Agencies usually come up with creative campaigns which serve the best interest of their customers, but where they truly struggle to excel is the medium.

VR and AR technology came into existence for the sole reason to make the user experience stand out from the existing competition. These new-age immersive and interactive mediums opened gates to a lot of unutilized opportunities to communicate with consumers. 

6. Interactive Content: 

Marketers are finding new ways to keep consumers interested through interactive content. Approaches such as online quizzes, polls, and shoppable posts will be commonly seen throughout eCommerce social media platforms as well as their websites. With pretty much everyone now vying to attract user attention due to increased online usage, it’s crucial that you ensure your brand is creative and stands out from the competition. Creating interactive content that matches your brand identity and ethos will help with this.

7. Social Messaging Trends: 

While some social media platforms are perfect places for users to chat with their friends and family, other platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are now being utilized for networking purposes by business owners. In 2021, marketers seem likely to be using these social messaging platforms to help reach their target audience as well as network with other brands at the same time.

8. Programmatic Advertising: 

As a method of eliminating the guessing game of ad placements, marketers will now be able to buy an advertisement in real-time situations, placing ads in desirable places while their target audience is present. This is also a great strategy as brands will be able to spend budgets more wisely when it comes to marketing their products.

9. Artificial Intelligence Growth: 

Generally speaking, artificial intelligence growth has continued to rise in 2021. Marketers are discovering new technologies to better handle customer service along with using AI to obtain in-depth information quickly. Whether it is for gathering consumer data, tracking sales and user patterns, freeing up time for employees by removing repetitive tasks, or looking to implement improved email marketing trends; 2021 is taking full advantage of artificial intelligence.

10. Email Marketing Trend

Email marketing maybe 40 years old but it’s as strong as ever. Perhaps even stronger as brands have made the shift to digital marketing channels as we navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape brought about by COVID-19. If you’re new to email marketing, now is a great time to start.

As more and more consumers shop online, there’s an even greater need to engage and connect digitally, and email marketing is a great way of doing this. You can combine personalization and automation to create a strategy that speaks to your customers while increasing your return on investment (ROI). Especially effective in a remote work environment, email marketing can be used to promote your products, vocalize your brand ethics, and send out newsletters. Emails can reach thousands of people, all at a click of a button, which is why it’s so important to prioritize building your email list.

11. Influencer Marketing

Influencers continue to be a hot topic on social media, and by the looks of it, you can expect to keep seeing more #sponsored posts flooding your feeds. Influencer marketing is on track to become a $15 billion industry by 2022 and it shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, 63% of marketers intend to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next year. 

Brandon Perlman, Founder, and CEO of Social Studies, Inc. predicted, “2021 is the year we believe influencer marketing will be seen as its media channel outside of tactical ‘problem solving’ or ‘nice to have content’”. Whether the demand comes from followers, brands, or new technological developments, influencers are pros at evolving to the new trends.  

12. Local SEO

Small business owners must know that it’s extremely important to keep their digital presence strong on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). If you own a store, you are probably aware that most of your customers are drawn mainly on a local level. The most important thing you can do is to ensure that your store appears on “near me” Google searches. 

Google constantly updates their local SEO algorithm and you should update your local business information as well. Tools such as Google My Business offer extremely valuable information for customers, but it’s up to you as a local business owner to keep it up to date for them. 

Claim your business property and get verified by Google. Then you can provide information about your business such as opening hours (that are constantly changing due to Covid restrictions), geographic location, and services.

13. Automated Smart Bidding Strategies in Google Ads

Automatization is the future in many digital marketing strategies. When running a Google Ads campaign, marketers spend lots of time and resources manually optimizing their keywords and bids. On top of being very time consuming, there could be lots of speculation that could be detrimental to your campaign. 

Automated bidding on Google Ads takes away all that guesswork and helps businesses achieve their goals more efficiently. Google takes care of analyzing all the data and adjusts the bids accordingly to improve your campaign’s performance. 

Even though automated bidding isn’t all that new, Google has improved a lot in the past year, making it essential for digital marketing strategies in 2021. Marketers can rest assured and dedicate their valuable time to optimizing other aspects of their marketing mix. 

Conclusion

The world has become increasingly digital-centric since lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing requirements have been enforced. Brands need to think about what the best approach to digital marketing will be specifically for them and then work on executing it successfully for their target audiences.

As time goes on, more trends will pop up to fill other customer needs, allowing industries of all sorts to enter the digital world and compete against industry rivals. Businesses need to learn new marketing approaches for times of crisis to offer significant and relevant benefits for their consumers’ at a time when this is needed most.

If there’s one thing the pandemic has made us realize, it’s that plans can change easily. Whatever it is you predict today, may not be accurate tomorrow. You need to constantly keep an eye on the latest trends and projections to stay ahead of the competition.

As a truly tremendous system of channels, digital marketing adorns many feathers – online marketing, internet advertising among many others. The true potentiality of this intricate cross-channel world has justifiability made it big, inevitable even.  Marketing your product or service online via meaningful engagement marketing has impacts that are quite astounding.  Add that with the skyrocketing internet usage, and you will see why this shift massively affects the purchasing power of people and ultimately, how they interact with the businesses.

• In the simplest of terms, digital marketing is the use of the Internet to reach consumers.
• Digital marketing is a broad field, including attracting customers via email, content marketing, search platforms, social media, and more.

Some marketing experts consider digital marketing to be an entirely new endeavor that requires a new way of approaching customers. And also new ways of understanding how customers behave compared to traditional marketing.

How does a business define digital marketing?

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. It helps to introduce consumers to your product or services and convince them to buy it.

From the website design itself to a business’s online branding assets — digital advertising, email marketing, online brochures, and beyond. There’s a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of “digital marketing.”

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created. The company’s social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business’s social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more information on the company. We’ll talk more about these specific digital marketers in a minute.

Here are the basic concepts of Digital Marketing

Paid Search Advertising
Google, Bing, and Yahoo all allow you to run text ads on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Paid search advertising is one of the best ways to target potential customers who are actively searching for a product or service like yours.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising
That covers any type of digital marketing where you pay for every user who clicks on an ad. For example, Google AdWords is a form of PPC advertising called “paid search advertising” (which we’ll go over in a second). Facebook Ads are another form of PPC advertising called “paid social media advertising” (again, we’ll get into that shortly). 

PPC campaigns can segment users based on their demographic characteristics (such as by age or gender), or even target their particular interests or location

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  
The process of improving the organic search engine ranking of any kind of website, product, or services or any content on SERPs. It is important to drive traffic to the website. And with that ranking over search engines matters as more likely users pay heed to the first 5 searches on google. Moreover, users find google refined search results more authentic and specific.

The channels that benefit from SEO include websites, blogs, and infographics. There are a number of ways to approach SEO in order to generate qualified traffic to your website. (On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO).

Content Marketing
The goal of content marketing is to reach potential customers through the use of content. Content is usually published on a website and then promoted through social media, email marketing, SEO, or even PPC campaigns. The tools of content marketing include blogs, ebooks, online courses, infographics, podcasts, and webinars.

Email Marketing 
It’s the oldest form of marketing and still going strong. Many people confuse email marketing with spam email messages but that’s not what email marketing is about. It is the medium to get in touch with potential customers or the people who are interested in your brand. 

Most digital marketers use email marketing to advertise special deals, highlight content (often as part of content marketing), or promote an event. They create customer acquisition funnels to turn those leads into customers.

Social Media Marketing
The primary goal of a social media marketing campaign is brand awareness and establishing social trust. As you go deeper into social media marketing, you can use it to get leads or even as a direct sales channel. The channels you can use in social media marketing include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat. These platforms also allow you to run ads on their sites. You can increase your sales and traffic with Paid Social Media Advertising. 

Video Marketing
YouTube has become the second most popular search engine. And a lot of users are turning to YouTube before they make a buying decision, to learn something, read a review, or just to relax. There are several video marketing platforms, including Facebook Videos, Instagram, or even TikTok to use to run a video marketing campaign. Companies find the most success with video by integrating it with SEO, content marketing, and broader social media marketing campaigns.

Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the art and science of improving your online user experience. Most of the time, businesses use CRO to get more conversions (leads, chats, calls, sales, etc) out of their existing website traffic.

Affiliate Marketing
It is one of the oldest forms of marketing. And the Internet has brought new life to this old standby. Basically, affiliate marketing is paying someone else (a person or a business) to promote your products and services on their website.

One Last Word
Digital marketing is a great option for any business. At HPSK Enterprises LLC, we’ve used digital marketing to help all kinds of businesses grow—from small jewelry shop businesses to big retailer businesses and beyond. That’s the beauty of advertising online. If you know who you want to target, you can use digital marketing to target anyone, anywhere.