Digital Marketing is in these days. Wanna know about the ongoing trends? Read on to know more
People online are changing their behaviour drastically, and it’s becoming harder & harder to market. To add to the problem, users are forming an immunity to promotional & advertising content. So it’s imperative that brands & businesses change their approach as well – traditional digital marketing practices (from half a decade ago to 2020) aren’t enough & in many cases, have stopped working altogether.
Another source of heat marketers face is the number of choices available to customers. Buyers have the option to choose between an endless number of varieties, making the conversion process quite meritocratic.
Today, the business that comes in front of users more often and solves their problem easily, elegantly & fast, wins.
Consequently, marketing as a whole is being replaced by newer, advanced practices that involve creating better overall experiences for the users & providing massive value upfront.
Here are six present-day digital marketing trends that are working the best & will help you reach your customers solving their problems better in 2021.
- Interactive Content
Marketing is no longer about talking to customers, shoving promotional stuff down their throats. With the sky-high tech rise – it’s becoming more about interacting with them.
And it’s a potential game-changer owing to twice the value it creates. Your users not only get the value they desire but they do so by engaging & participating. It’s a way more immersive & personalized form of marketing than any other traditional content marketing means.
When you convert your blogs, ppts & long-form content into quizzes, slideshows & interactive polls – you are 2x more likely to engage & convert the user (said a report by demand metric).
The only thing that’s stopping marketers from completely shifting their marketing game to interactive content is the ability to churn such highly personalized pieces at scale.
But with the rise of no-code tools & martech, even this problem is not too far away from perishing once and for all.
- Video Marketing
Video is the best working content form in 2021 and will be one of the most influential beyond.
Reports revealed, 52% of online buyers say that product videos make them more confident before their purchase. It’s no secret that video content is any day better than text forms for conversion rates – even 72% of marketers from a global sample-size survey experienced a massive increase in their conversions enabling video content.
With video marketing, you unlock a lot of important marketing tools like live videos, 1:1 videos & short-bite-sized reels.
Using videos in your marketing can a big boost as:
- Social Media & search engines reward videos massively – for instance, the boom of reels on IG & google ranking videos higher.
- Your audience is more likely to be engaged as stats show a lower bounce rate & increase in likeliness to view on video content.
- Influencer Marketing
March 2020, when the whole world locked down – a new world started. Digitally. With social platforms raking in huge numbers, and people starting to recognise the creator economy, we saw a huge rise in influencers and thereby influencer marketing.
Brands & businesses – both b2c & b2b, have been investing heavily in influencer marketing. And the huge factor is the comparative authenticity. 63% of consumers find their favourite influencers’ opinions on products they promote genuine and more convincing compared to watching product ads.
Investing in Influencer Marketing enables you to reach out to your customers from channels they are more likely to trust and eventually convert.
- Augmented Reality
We talked about interactive content above. AR is the epitome of interactive marketing & it will be a key differentiator between good & ultra brands.
Augmented Reality has the ability to replace static dry content with living & breathing experiences that hold the audience’s attention leaving an unforgettable impact.
It attempts to bridge the gap between reality & the digital environment, and even in the nascent stage, it’s doing a phenomenal job.
Ikea, for example, with their latest innovation – Ikea place, made it possible for their customers to view 3-D renderings from different angles of over 2,000 products on their devices.
Here’s the first look –
- Personalization
Humans on the internet have been forming an immunity against generic promotional content thrown at their face interrupting their daily routine online.
Brands have been shifting towards personalized ads & messaging, which fares far better than broadcast ads.
Stats from reliable sources reveal that personalized marketing compels every 7-9 out of 10 customers to visit again.
Many popular brands have garnered a loyal following using personalized messaging. Let’s have a look at a few of them:
Source: https://medium.com/swlh/a-tribute-to-wendys-awesome-social-media-strategy-7f55a66bcf94
Source:
shorturl.at/kwJQU
- Voice Marketing
“ Alexa! How many people use voice assistants to shop online?”
“41% of consumers prefer voice-search for buying online”
Google Assistant, Alexa & Siri have been the go-to assistants for search queries in 2021, and marketers believe it’s just the beginning.
This can be a huge revolution in the domain of personalized marketing & advertisers who ride the wave will fly over the competition.
A study by Juniper Research, predicted that the voice ad spend could reach $19 billion by 2022.
There’s a big potential first-movers can capitalize on by investing in sonic branding, audio content & voice search optimization.
What’s ahead?
The road to marketing online will be bumpier than ever. The future would demand a more inclusive, interactive marketing game. But the advancements in technology would lessen the burden a bit, unlocking better marketing tools. Users undoubtedly will be hard to please moving ahead but the marketers that focus more on making marketing feel less like marketing will always stay ahead.
