SOME DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS TO LOOK AT AS WE SEGUE INTO 2021 – OMNICHANNEL TACTICS ARE KEY TODAY

Author

Sabrina L. Matson, Principal - SLM Consulting

     US adults are constantly surfing the internet, 28 % in fact according to the Pew Research Center. This statistic is but a part of 81% of Americans who go online every day. However, users are not using the internet in the same way because of the many devices, browsers, sites, and content competing for majority of attention. There are a few ways around this.
     A recent study put out by Finances Online – A Review for Businesses, revealed 14 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021 to watch out for that may help prevail a marketer’s efforts at staying ahead of the game.

1. #Omnichannel Marketing - allows you to keep track of all customer interactions across channels without losing context.
2. #Artificial Intelligence and #Data Analytics - allow organizations to be more data-driven rather than being only steered by inaccurate intuitions, wishful thinking, and gutfeel.
3. Going Mobile and Progressive Web Apps (#PWAs) - mobile and app-like usability is becoming a rage nowadays when it comes to getting your brand not only visible but also engaging. As such, changes have been made to the ranking algorithm to reflect these.
4. Keeping up with #Voice Search – The global smart speaker market has reached 20.7 million units in the first quarter of this year. What this voice search data tells us, is that we can expect voice search usage to continue to rise in the future.
5. #Augmented User Experience with Augmented Reality - Augmented reality allows users to insert digital objects into real-life video capture. You can even mix this up with your Progressive Web App or an app to augment user experience and content.
6. #Native advertising - 47% of all internet users worldwide have ad blockers. To avoid this, you can seamlessly embed ads into content that look and feel like part of the content, these are native ads. Native advertising is not new but there is more to learn. They help to circumvent the problem with ad blockers and keep ads less intrusive.
7. Becoming More #B2C Marketing Focused - When B2B buyers step out of their business suits, they become B2C buyers. Many desire to have B2C experiences crossover to B2B transactions. In other words, B2B buyers and B2C buyers seem to want the same experiences and has become more rampant in the SaaS industry.
8. Create #Experiences: events and promotions - In B2B terms, this is profit and competitive edge approach. For end consumers, events and promotions provide improvement to quality of life making an experience more rounded, essentially, it is a form of omnichannel marketing.
9. More #Video Content Marketing - Internet traffic research results point to the fact that 82% of content will be video by 2022, $90 billion were spent just this 2019 by businesses on video content alone. Audio-visual stimuli induce a sense of spatial and temporal understanding of things that are closer to our everyday experience of the real world than words and symbols.
10. Leveraging User-Generated #Content - Is a good way to measure where your business is with customers, how they use it, and how your marketing efforts are. While social media chatter and engagement may seem the dominant source for use of user-generated content, other uses like creating a knowledge database and listening for inputs for your product development can be used to measure content effectiveness.
11. Podcast Marketing - I relation to digital marketing podcasting is highly targeted at preferred audiences and a good way for brands to reach the right people at their preferred times. Current #podcast statistics indicate that 70% of the US population is familiar with the term podcasting. Also, 51% have listened to a podcast. A respectable 22% listen to podcasts weekly while 6% consider themselves to be ‘avid podcast fans. These mini films of sort can spark engagement and just increase your brand visibility all the way around.
12. Influencer Marketing - #influencers with 1,000 followers generate 85% more engagement than those with 100,000 followers! According to IMPACT, micro-influencers with small audiences tend to have more peers than fans and generates more hands-on and personal engagement. Add the statistical fact that 84% of consumers trust recommendations from peers more than advertising, this is where the action is at for brands.
13. #Chatbots - Experts believe that waves of adoption will come in the next few years. Why? Questions can be answered almost immediately and can cut wait times when you are using live agents. However, they are not as intelligent as they should be or as we want them to be. But Chatbots are a work in progress and should not be overlooked.
14. Mind your Local #SEO - This component focuses more on businesses with brick-and-mortar facilities like restaurants, malls, boutique shops, and the likes. When a local SEO is in order businesses are visible to target audiences. 

     In a nutshell, your digital marketing, omnichannel approach depends upon the requirements of your business. The best way to leverage the #omnichannel approach is to use a mix of everything I have mentioned above. Ideally you want to provide value to your target customers, remembering that ranking is not everything, what is more important is positioning your business to be more profitable from products and services than your competitor’s and that creates #brand recognition.