The end of 2020 has marked the beginning of a new era: an era of opportunities in digital marketing. It promises to bring radical changes to the approach of digital marketing. That is to say, things will not be the same as they were before; a lot will change with the transition of technologies and methodologies.
With a long list of things to come by in 2021, digital marketers have their tasks cut out for identifying their priorities. To better focus on achieving their objectives, they need to segregate the imperatives. If you are a digital marketer, there are certain things that you cannot overlook. Read on to find out everything that you would want to know in this connection.
1. The increasing role of chatbots
The emergence of chatbots in customer service has been helpful for both companies and customers alike. As far as companies are concerned, chatbots have helped cut down manual labor and improve productivity. Plus, it has also enabled companies to communicate with customers 24x7.
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On the other hand, chatbots provide readymade answers to customers. The best part about employing chatbots for this purpose is that they can store a vast amount of data, perform tasks as directed, and can do so without tiring out.
2. The predominant role of personalization in promoting local businesses
Local businesses are more specific to the target audience of a particular region. The current and potential customers from a specific region play a vital role in the growth of such businesses. Opting for personalization has been and will be the best way to boost or enhance brand image among them.
Oftentimes, local businesses engage in local SEO and email campaigns. By collecting information about the target audience of a specific region, local companies can reach out to customers in a more proficient way. The more customers they reach out to the better it is.
For any business, getting meaningful customers matters the most. This is precisely where personalization makes a big difference. Among other things, it provides a brand with those customers who are more likely to invest in its products. From a company’s standpoint, it not only helps widen the customer base but also promotes sales. Both these aspects go hand in hand in making a positive contribution to the achievement of objectives.
3. The growing inclination towards AI-powered voice search
Things are changing rapidly in digital marketing due to the advent of technology. As a result, the things that were possible only in imagination have started becoming a reality. Nothing exemplifies as well as the combination of AI and voice search.
Instead of typing, more and more people now prefer saying “Sup Siri’, “Hey, Alexa”, and “Ok Google”. Whether you attribute it to the growing popularity of smartphones or improvement in technology or both, the fact remains that most people prefer to use voice assistants now than before.
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While the traditional method of entering text queries to search for local businesses still exists among mobile users, the use of voice assistants is gaining traction. Experts believe that sooner or later, it will become the order of the day. There are two primary reasons for the growing influence of voice assistants: they are easy to use and they provide quick results.
It is the element of artificial intelligence (AI) that makes voice assistants more useful. Given the increasing role of the latter, businesses are hiring Python Programmers and incorporating common voice search queries along with the answers to general questions. The rationale behind it is to help customers discover relevant and reliable businesses based on their location within short notice.
4. The versatile approach of video marketing
You might have heard the cliché “Old is gold”. While it applies to other cases or situations, it is on the contrary when it comes to digital marketing. The word “digital” itself indicates that the method of marketing revolving around it has links with digital technology. No other form of digital marketing highlights the role of digital technology other than video marketing.
It is all about promoting the products of a brand through video on the Internet. Though YouTube has grown up as one of the popular channels for it, there are also other ways in which businesses can utilize this modern variant of digital marketing. Because it involves multimedia in the form of a video, it generates more user engagement and traffic than text-based content.
These days, more and more bloggers have started transcribing videos and publishing them along with their blogs. It is a useful practice that not only informs the customers of a brand but also encourages their interaction and engagement. As a result, they are more likely to express their views in the form of comments or reviews in the fields below such blog posts.
Because customer engagement is one of the priorities for most brands, they allocate ample resources towards video marketing. This trend is likely to grow more in the next decade.
5. The growing focus on Google’s BERT update
The Bidirectional Encoder Representational from Transformers (BERT) update by Google is the next big thing that can either make or break the deal for businesses. For a change, this deep learning algorithm processes language in a more natural way than in the past.
What’s more, it comes with smarter and enhanced abilities to provide more accurate search results to users. From the standpoint of businesses, its implementation has been a new challenge. Unlike the approach of businesses in the past, which centered on Google’s algorithm, there is more stress on educating customers on websites.
As a result of this update, Google will reward those websites with higher rankings that would provide direct answers to the queries of customers.
6. The popularity of influencer marketing
Influencers are celebrities who are popular faces among people. Product-based companies that look for ways to promote their products consider influencers as reliable sources to get business prospects whom they can convert into customers. To most potential customers of a brand, influencer marketing is more trustworthy than corporate marketing.
When it comes to influencer marketing, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The right influencer marketing strategy for your business will depend on your industry, products, target audience, and budget. However, there are some general principles that all businesses can follow to maximize the effectiveness of their influencer marketing campaigns. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that not all influencers are created equal. Nano influencers, for example, tend to have smaller but more engaged follower bases than macro influencers. This makes them more effective at driving conversions and sales. However, they also tend to be less expensive to work with than macro influencers. As a result, they can be a great option for businesses with limited budgets.
Keeping this in mind, more and more businesses are employing influencers with sizeable followers on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms to promote their products.
7. Social media stories
It all started with Snapchat’s “My Story”: a concept that passed on to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Owing to its growing penetration among the young target audience, brands are keen to invest in it for enhancing brand awareness.
Speaking of its advantages, it is budget-friendly and can work wonders in generating meaningful traffic for a brand by connecting more target audiences to it. These factors constitute the cogent reasons for which companies are paying attention to social media stories. For companies that have a tight budget, including social medial stories in the scheme of things can be a game-changer.
Social media has had a decisive role in popularising digital marketing. It has been relevant in the past and the same can be expected in the next few years down the line.
8. The influence of AI in digital marketing
When it comes to gathering or utilizing information from social media platforms or analyzing customers’ behavior from their shopping patterns, artificial intelligence (AI) has no parallel to it. Nothing beats AI in collecting inputs from sensors and implement them into business processes and customer services to deliver the best outcomes for companies.
Following the deep penetration of AI in digital marketing, it has become next to impossible for companies to overlook its importance. As a result, firms have started investing in it or at least include it in the scheme of things for e-commerce transactions, product recommendations, email personalizations, content production, fundamental communication, and more.
For any company that is operational in 2021, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) is akin to that of oxygen to the body. It is a must-have element not just for the survival of companies in the competitive market but also for a competitive edge over competitors.
Final thoughts
To sum up, these are some of the top digital marketing trends that you shouldn’t ignore in 2021 if you run a business and want it to stay on top of the game. Some of the above methods may not be easy for you to follow. No worries, though; you can consider hiring reliable digital marketers to put them into practice for attaining digital marketing goals.
Author Name:- Harikrishna Kundariya
Biography:- Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.
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