The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way business owners conduct their operations. Day by day more companies are providing their products and services online.
Many office spaces are being vacated and employees are preferring to work from home. After having this pandemic for almost half of the year, we can draw some trends and gather insights on how we can step in the new year to maximize our business.
Based on the current scenario, we have drawn nine key digital marketing trends to help you not only survive but also to take your business to new heights. We recommend that every company owner and manager look into these digital marketing trends and invest their valuable time and effort to get maximum returns in 2021.
1. Social Media
As the pandemic hit the world, more people are engaged online. Social media especially saw a surge in numbers as compared to pre-pandemic times.
People nowadays are researching companies, brands, products, and reviews on social media before even buying the product. It helps them to have an idea about the pros and cons of the product before even holding them in hand.
Marketers are thriving to keep their products afloat. Hence they are finding social media helpful to stay connected with their previous customers and generating new leads. You can do the same.
As an organization, you can make this a priority to hire the right person for the job, who knows the structure and how social media works, and make it work for you. They can develop a plan, create engaging posts, interact with customers regularly, and collaborate with new businesses for expansion.
2. Improve Communication of Available Products and Services
People are sticking to those brands and companies that continued to offer their clients and customers like they used to do. If the products and services are not available in the market, people are moving to look for different brands.
One strategy that you can consider to retain the consumers is you can increase the daytime slots and reduce the nighttime and weekend hours to keep your products and services alive.
If adjusting the working hours is a challenge for you, you can also try timely and accurate communication measures.
Let your clients know that you are running short on products or staff. There will be some delay in the delivery of the product or a service professional may take longer than usual to reach out to them. This honesty can help you restore the faith of your customers in your company.
3. Google Verified Listings and Local SEO
Since people are reluctant towards traveling long distances and they understand the current situation very well, they are becoming more dependent on the local businesses than before.
As a business owner, you should grab this opportunity without fail. Get your local listing verified (if you haven’t done it yet) and market your business on various search platforms.
B2C businesses are primarily drawing local customers. Your Google My Business page will keep the customers informed about your business hours, the kind of services that you are providing, your geographical location, and your contact details.
Having your location updated in these search engines, especially Google, will help other customers find you when they search for your products or services with the “near me” tag. As per the algorithms of search engines, they are showing local business results before any other relevant information. Thereby pushing the local businesses forward.
4. Employee Engagement
Many managers and business owners have foreseen the current situation at a very early stage. For many employees, it is their first experience working from home and they were thrilled about this opportunity.
But when faced with reality, their excitement started to fade. Many of them didn’t take into account that children can be distractions while they are working and they feel stressed out dealing with the world. No wonder their morale is down and so is their productivity.
It is necessary to keep the employees motivated. Since a motivated employee can communicate better than a worn-out one, they can yield better results. You can make use of various collaboration tools and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to stay connected.
As a manager or business owner, it is your responsibility to make your team understand that even though you are not physically together, all of you are working towards the same goal.
You can break down your large goals into small easily achievable chunks and set clear milestones. Whenever you successfully achieve a milestone, make sure you celebrate with your whole team.
5. Automated Bidding in Google Ads
It is no secret that Google is making a huge chunk of its revenue from Google Ads. The marketers constantly keep on updating their campaigns, bids, and keywords to get the most out of it.
These tweaks are not free of cost. They come with long working hours that means more fees to the management. Google handled this problem by introducing Automated bidding. This empowers Google to automate prior moves to adjust your bid in real-time.
The concept of automated bidding is not new in the market. Google has been using it since 2016. The constant enhancements in this technology have made businesses deeply rely on them.
This further implies that a business should devote a good amount of time and energy to optimize PPC performance, which will result in better outcomes at a lower cost.
6. Voice Search
As IoT devices and technology are gaining more popularity, people have started moving to use voice search technology more. It is highly likely that by the current digital marketing trends, voice search is going to break out soon. It will be an added advantage to the business if they can optimize their result query.
Voice search results are different from text search results. So the content needs to be optimized for voice as well. It needs to be more direct and should sound more conversational. This will enable your business to stay relevant and visible to customers.
7. Improved Retention
Generating new leads needs more effort and time than retaining the existing ones. Due to this reason, marketing experts always emphasize more in the later stages of the buying journey of the customers.
Happy and satisfied customers act as brand ambassadors themselves. They will promote the brand and company to their family, relatives, friends, and colleagues which will help you to increase your company’s revenue.
If you are changing anything within the organization that might affect your relationship with your customer, you need to keep them in the loop.
You can always keep in touch with them through email marketing or social media. By segmenting your customer base based on your previously collected data, you have an opportunity to know your customers better. This way you can target your product and services to a more specific group of customers.
8. Interactive Content
Adding interactive elements to your social media page and website is a great way to make more people aware of the products and services that you are providing. Visitors can engage with your brand and when you ask for their feedback, they feel valued.
Some examples of interactive content for marketing include quizzes, games, polls, interactive videos, surveys, and contests. Marketing via interactive contests is a great tool in your arsenal to grow your business further.
An interesting way to popularize your brand is to conduct a contest to share your advertisement post on social media. You can make it more competitive by providing rewards to the winner.
9. AR and VR Technology
The trend of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) is being evaluated as one of the most fast-paced technologies and digital marketing trends in the market. AR and VR have been used for multiple purposes in different industries.
Customers, when introduced to AR and VR have said that they feel more connected with the brand and it seems more realistic. People can interact with your product more intuitively.
You need to keep an eye on these two upcoming revolutionary digital marketing trends.
Final Thoughts on digital marketing trends in 2021
These nine digital marketing trends can help you generate new prospects, increase site traffic, and grow your customer base in addition to retaining your existing ones in 2021!
Bryan Osorio is a Blogger, SEO enthusiast, Content Marketer, and Digital Marketer with 3 years of experience within the Tech and Digital Marketing Industry. He likes to read, write, and talk about Science, Technology, AI, Video Games, World News, and more. He studied Psychology at the National University of Colombia and enjoys writing about leadership, remote work, team motivation, and others.
