Prioritize Top Digital Marketing Trends in 2021

There were rapid and dramatic changes in digital marketing trends in the year 2020. thus, it was a struggling year for many marketers. You could see a lot of different scenarios among digital businesses. Few of them have shut down, some are facing huge losses, and some are struggling to keep up with changes.

Whatever the scenarios maybe now, trends and development are still going on. It has impacts on the marketers either directly or indirectly. Those marketers who are going strong in the market have the right strategies implemented. They know which and how to prioritize the digital trending trends.

It is advisable to follow the current trend growing in popularity whether you find it significant for your business or not. The right marketing plan would bring traffic leads, increased sales, brand awareness, and many other things. Hence, it is vital to scrutinize the business goals or marketing goals, KPIs, and performance metrics for better results.

Various kinds of evolving technology stuff do seem attractive. They may be beneficial and profitable enough when applied correctly, such as voice search, integration of natural language processes, messaging apps advertising, etc. You can find such kinds of services and techniques in almost every digital marketing agency out there.

However, with the growing digital marketing industry, keeping up is a must for every marketer. Then again, you might be confused by the many trends in the market. In this resource, you can learn about the few top digital marketing trends in 2021.

1. User Experience (UX)

SEO experts could sometimes overlook the significance of user experience during optimization. But, UX is equally important as any other SEO tool like off-page/on-page SEO. It is now a significant ranking factor for search algorithms, not only as a digital experience design for users. As of May 2020, “UX signals” are added in Google’s Search Ranking factors.

It is a central ranking factor due to users’ expectations of speed, convenience, and easy usage on whatever device and from anywhere. If the user does not receive what they want within a specific time frame or on the expected site, they will move on. The enhanced user experience would create better search visibility.

Hence, you and every other digital marketer should prioritize the UX soon. You have to ensure that your websites reach the UX perspectives. You will have to emphasize better on SEO strategies (technical) and off-page strategies. Your content on the website must be able to load fast, easy to find and use, and accessible through all platforms and devices.

2. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising and PPC Automation

PPC Ads are not new. Above that, digital marketers have become more important for PPC campaigns as it is highly efficient. You could easily see a considerable improvement in PPC campaigns. All thanks to the integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence with PPC. Thus, came the highly preferred PPC automation.

Stuff like manual bid automization is forgotten due to automated PPC. Use of it can predict the conversion rate and click-through rate. You can make better use of PPC automation in the areas like error checking, automatic ad copy generation, bids, and PPC reporting.

As per Google Economic Impact, for every $1 that you spend on Google Ads, you get $2 in return. Now you cannot deny that PPC advertising is not totally ineffective. For effective and efficient PPC campaigns, you need to focus on few things. You need to understand the user/audience behavior, target keywords, and data privacy.

To do such tasks, you can now find many PPC companies available in the market.

3. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversions, too, are now significant enough with the inflow of new advertising channels and automation processes. With the successful applicability of the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), you can easily pave the way for vast Returns on Investment (ROI).

In layman’s words, CRO is transforming your websites’ visits into revenue-generating results. Therefore, you should estimate your CRO from two perspectives – how visitors reach your website (digital experience) and what they do after getting on your site.

To enhance the conversion rate optimization, you can consider the following vital tools for touch-up:

  • Blog posts
  • Landing pages
  • PPC advertising
  • Email and messaging campaigns
  • Forms
  • Website copy
  • Page speed and navigation

Conversion Rate Optimization’s crucial digital marketing trends in 2021 are Mobile Optimization, Personalization, Transparency, and Data & Design.

  • You can prioritize mobile optimization with new experiences like augmented reality (AR), voice assistants, mobile search experiences, and mobile checkout experiences. Your mobile abandon rate will show the revenue loss and goal incompletions by friction points.
  • Personalization is very much relevant to customer experience. It contributes to the profitability of the business significantly. You can prioritize digital experience differently for different sections of customers. Such as personalized landing pages, web pages, etc.
  • Transparency and data privacy is the concern of every other tactic available. You can gain your customers’ trust by building more transparency like a secure system, default review of data usage setting, showing apps accessibility, and disclosing data usage.
  • The integration of data and design is “data synchronicity.” Data and design can be built separately and refine your customer journey. It has a crucial impact on UX as well.

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media holds immense power. It can build things and even destroy things. These days, social media has pretty much great control over the shifting of demand. You cannot even predict what could happen overnight. Someone’s business may attract lost customers in lots, and others could be popular in a matter of time.

Marketing/advertising/promoting on social media is a big trend in 2021. That’sThat’s why it is now even a digital marketing tool. As a marketer, you must be familiar with the standard social media strategies.

Few areas of social media marketing that you should prioritize are:

  • The estimated usage (time spent) of various social media platforms by the users like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
  • Digital marketers have to be informed on the canceled culture of social media. A collective backlash of something on social media would pretty much bring a downfall on that business or its product. Hence, protection of brand reputation is a must.
  • Social media transparency is of utmost necessity for digital marketers in 2021.
  • There is enormous growth in the paid social media advertising in 2021. Paid ads are highly targeted. You can do paid social media advertising through Facebook ads, video formats, Instagram ads, reels, LinkedIn ads, etc.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is not a new digital marketing tool. It is one of the original techniques of businesses to contact potential clients/customers online. Email marketing will never be out of the marketing strategies.

Email marketing is also a component of paid social. It allows the follow-up of long decision-making with no budget commitments. Few ways to improve the effectiveness of email marketing are:

  • Personalization
  • Re-engagement
  • Dynamic segmentation

Whereas email marketing’s personalization seems practical enough, it is also a labor-intensive task, especially for businesses with more significant numbers. To eliminate this issue, automated email marketing came to force.

You can send personalized emails by connecting web analytics with email marketing platforms based on user behavior. This process is appealing as the customer data are automatically collected and segmented for personalized campaigns. To get the most benefit from email marketing, you should invest in suitable web analytics and email marketing software.

Below are the few tactics to automate email marketing:

  • Enhancement of existing confirmation emails
  • Integration of your website with email marketing
  • Launching customer anniversary emails
  • Sending emails to the users who left during mid-purchase

Email marketing is also good in nurturing leads. It is helpful for both B2C and B2B prospects.

Wrap up

Whatever the year, digital marketers need to keep up with all the trending technology advancements, tactics, and strategies.  Keeping up with the trends may be successful or not. It all depends on the external market conditions of the time.

The COVID-19 has indeed struck hard on digital marketers and their businesses. You might be conscious and unsure whether to follow the ongoing trends or not. Even if you do, which one to implement.

If you count in the video ads, then YouTube is one of the best digital marketing channels for video support in the market. Moreover, a survey by Social Publi showed that influencer marketing is so on-trend now. About 93% of all the marketers are engaged in it.  Because influencer marketing can bring higher ROI than any other tool. Be it PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising, content marketing, or search engine optimization (SEO).

However, an increase in costs is what dents influencer marketing. This marketing trend manages to engage customers/viewers with appealing videos and different brands’ products and services.

Apart from all those digital marketing trends mentioned above, there are still many left to discuss on. For instance, video marketing, Responsive Search Ads (RSAs), Google My Business, Zero-click Search Results, Search Intent, Semantic Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), ChatBot, and many more. Thus, do not limit yourself only to these digital marketing trends.