Digital Marketing Trends For 2021

In 2020, the marketing landscape experienced drastic changes, and not all of them were good. COVID-19 and the lockdowns that followed resulted in a massive rise in online shopping and consequently all sorts of industries going online. And the ones that were too slow to react, lost business.

So to help you stay ahead of the game, here’s what we expect to happen in 2021.

The Explosive Rise Of E-Commerce

The year 2020 saw a monumental rise in companies moving their services online. Even long-term visit-only restaurants started using the internet to deliver food. According to eMarketer, e-commerce accounted for 16.4 % of global retail sales in 2020.

In a post-COVID world, online is the way to go. Plus, it’s one of the most effective ways for small businesses to grow.

Zero-Click Searches

Google is constantly updating its features. One popular SERP (search engine results page) is their featured snippets. These “snippets” show immediate results of search queries on the search page itself. This negates the need to click on the link as all the relevant information is shown. Google uses this feature to improve user experience and keep users on their page, instead of following links.

Featured snippets often end up resulting in zero-click searches. Good news for users and bad news for marketers. Low traffic to your website means low conversions for your business.

So, what can marketers do about it?

Well, at the moment, you’re limited to switching your strategies to keywords that have a different user intent. You can also focus on creating content on your website that offers more value to users than simple results offered by these snippets.

It’s not all negative, being featured on a snippet can show users that you are an authority on their search queries.

The Rise Of Data Privacy

What most people don’t know is the scale and size of the data collected online. Marketers use this data to improve the advertising experience by showing only relevant ads to their customers. In the world of digital marketing, data is everything. Data is used to optimize spending, target the appropriate audience, and maximize conversions.

But privacy laws are changing. With the rollout of the new IOS update by Apple, and Google’s future retirement of third-party cookies, access to consumer data is becoming extremely limited.

Marketers will no longer have access to detailed consumer data like in the past. The digital marketing landscape is undergoing a massive shift. And while various solutions are being developed, the future of online marketing is uncertain. So make sure to stay on top of it.

It’s All Zoom Meetings From Now

Well, not exactly. But virtual meetings are becoming the norm and Zoom has become synonymous with it. Digital marketing hasn’t had much of an impact on Zoom yet, but it is worth keeping an eye on. At its peak, Zoom had 300 million daily users and 45 billion minutes of webinars in 2021(https://investors.zoom.us/news-events/events). That’s a lot of people and a lot of minutes. Now, marketers have to figure out how to capitalize on it.

Video Marketing Is The Name Of The Game

Here are some numbers for you. According to a study by WyzOwl conducted in 2020:

• 86% of businesses say that they use video marketing
• 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
• 78% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales.
• 84% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
• 18 hours of video are watched per week by the average person
• 2 times as likely for video content to be shared over other forms of content

As you can see, video marketing has become more important than ever and is a crucial component of your marketing strategy.

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