In 2020, approximately 93 million more people purchased a smartphone. That means 93 million prospective customers, use smartphones to shop and browse services online.
Throughout the beginning of the internet, digital marketing has seen quite a few ups and downs. While digital marketing trends come and go, it can get quite exhaustive to keep up with them.
But if you don’t keep up with the trends, you might lose out on potential customers to your competitors. So it’s important for marketers to only use trends that have the growth potential for their brand instead of blindly jumping into the trend that everyone is following.
Follow recent trends in digital marketing to keep your communication relevant to your audience, to help your brand stay sharp, and for you to have a competitive advantage over your competitors.
Let’s deep-dive into the top digital marketing trends of 2021, to put your brand in the palm of your audience’s hand.
Digital marketing trends of 2021
1. In-email Purchases
While email marketing has existed for years now, its purpose has always been limited to marketing communication or directing people to a landing page, product page, or blog post.
Now according to mail chimp’s new feature, you can further boost engagement with emailers by adding app-like features such as purchase options, embedded video, and interactive tools all within their inbox.
Also, MailChimp now offers super sophisticated targeting, based on user’s purchase history, google search history, most visited apps or websites, and much more.
Emailers have always been a great medium of understanding one’s consumer and their requirements, receiving feedback, and generating leads.
However, now brands can go a step further with emailers and can conduct actual sales via email. In-email purchases are a must-use digital marketing trend for e-commerce businesses all over the globe.
2. Virtual reality
This pandemic has changed the world in a lot of ways and has accelerated digital transformation in all fields. Brands have started creating simulated environments, to enhance user experience.
Companies are now creating immersive experiences with virtual reality by giving inputs to the computer. The high engagement rate that VR garners make it a great tool for education and entertainment purpose.
Youtube, a popular video streaming platform has launched its standalone app optimized especially for VR called ‘Youtube VR’. With this app, users can choose to watch any video with an immersive VR experience. Brands can be ready for this changing dynamics of the digital world, with these small changes in user experiences.
3. Voice Search
The key factor that a digital marketer should consider at each stage of marketing is how can they further make the user journey convenient for their audience.
20% of the search queries are voice searches, according to Google’s Ceo Sundar Pichai. Voice search saves the user from the hassle of typing and scrolling.
And now with gadgets like Google Home and Alexa, users are more inclined towards asking for information through voice search versus typing it out.
As this user behavior grows, companies need to start incorporating voice search and accordingly optimize content for their digital marketing strategies.
The foremost step would be to create content in a more conversational style that matches their user’s style of asking questions while searching. Try voice search, the latest digital marketing trend to reach new audiences and outdo your competitors.
4. Artificial intelligence
It is of utmost importance for marketers to segment their audience for digital experiences. Your audiences preferences could be difficult to track but for your digital marketing strategies to perform well, you need to have a clear segmentation.
AI can much more efficiently dissect and analyze behavioral, psychographic, and demographic data than a human doing it manually. These AI collected valuable insights can then be used by digital marketers to optimize and improve their marketing strategies.
A brand can be creating fresh content daily to keep up the engagement, but is the content meaningful to the user? With AI, brands can create personalized content which is key to driving engagement.
AI is capable of consuming and crunching large amounts of data per user to create customized content for them. Netflix with the help of AI provides personalized recommendations to the users on basis of their interests and search history. Using this digital marketing trend, Netflix has successfully created a huge audience base all over the world.
5. Chatbots
Chatbots allow businesses to converse with their customers in order to improve customer relationships, earn brand goodwill and garner more sales.
When it comes to consumer products, businesses have discovered the convenience and effectiveness of chatbots. Chatbots are a relatively new trend in digital marketing, However, 80% of the marketers are already using or plan to use chatbots in their digital marketing strategy.
6. Video Marketing & Webinars
Audiovisual content continually outperforms any other type of content. It is a powerful digital marketing tool that garners quick engagement and gets the undivided attention of the audience.
It packages information and entertainment in a short amount of time and gets your brand the much need traction. Most people prefer watching videos to reading blog posts or articles, making the video format highly relatable to most of the audience.
With video content being such a massive hit, audiences enjoy any type of video be it tutorials, sneak peeks, fun bloopers, or short stories. Just keep the video relevant and in alignment with your brand voice.
During the covid pandemic, we have seen a tremendous rise in the consumption of videos and webinars. Webinar’s interactive nature makes learning easy and efficient for the audience.
They act as a much-needed substitute for face-to-face events, making life simpler for most people. Hence, most brands conduct webinars with an underline motive of marketing their products or services.
The unexpected nature of 2020 has compelled businesses to rethink how they interact and engage with their customers. Lockdown had forced people to stay at home, which resulted in them spending a lot more time online.
As a result, marketers have been compelled to develop more human-centric ways of communicating with their customers. Brands can immensely benefit from these digital marketing trends and be ready for the changing world.
Bright Brain Marketing Technologies, a Digital Marketing Agency, provides top-notch services for various brands with a focus on building digital solutions for branding and increased sales efficiency.
Our expertise includes Digital Advertising Campaigns, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Development, and Online Branding.
Our Google Partnership brings a unique opportunity to work with the internal team at Google, adding even more value to our team & clients.
