10 digital marketing trends for 2021
2020 was the year of big challenges for all companies. The health crisis pushed all entrepreneurs to reinvent themselves in a short space of time: we all had to be creative to overcome this unique and unexpected challenge for most of us. For a big part of companies, it was the only chance they had to maintain their activities and survive. But a new year is now upon us and along with it, the hope for better days. To kick it off, let’s take a look at the 10 digital marketing trends for 2021.
Thanks to recent progresses and the development of new technologies, companies have access to ever more innovative and effective tools to reach their potential customers and better meet consumer’s expectations. Some of these trends can easily be implemented in your current strategy and allow you to achieve greater results. From optimizing your SEO to improving your social media strategy, here is an overview of the top 10 trends in digital marketing in 2021. Are you ready to discover them?
Table of Contents
1. The optimization of your website for voice search
2021 is definitely the rise of voice search. Not only more and more Internet users are using this tool to find information online, but it can also be an important lever for companies who will have to adapt their websites to this new way of searching. Voice search therefore allows the user to use voice recognition to make a query on a search engine.
As a real multi-tasking tool, it removes an obstacle that some people may encounter in terms of accessibility in writing (especially for blind people) and delivers results even faster. If you want to increase the traffic on your website and attract potential customers close to your company: optimizing your site for voice search is a must in 2021.
“58% of users have already used Voice Search to do a research on a local company “ (source: rewiew42.com)
However, everything has a limit. The lack of text can change the results of the information collected: an oral request is not formulated in the same way as a written one. This intelligent tool thus demonstrates the importance of SEO and local SEO work as well as the use of successful keywords to appear in the first search results. Optimizing one’s site for voice search is therefore one of the best ways to increase local visibility.
2. Boost your local referencing
Nowadays, before making a purchase, the majority of consumers look on the web to get additional information. Search engines take into account their different expectations and deliver a targeted result. In fact, a customer’s purchase intention can be influenced by many factors such as: quality, price or geographical location.
Optimizing one’s site for voice search is one of the indispensable levers for SMEs in 2021. Then an efficient Local Search Engine Optimization is just as necessary. Local SEO is a sub-category of general SEO that allows you to optimize your website in order to increase your local presence. Underlining your digital marketing strategy via this lever will bring you multiple advantages.
“72% of users who did a Google search visited a store within 8km of where they were searching.” (source: safaridigital.com)
An effective local SEO will help your company to stand out. It will encourage the user to have a look at your activities and to physically visit your location. This tool is designed to attract prospects and build customer loyalty by responding to a request at a specific time. For your SME, the real challenge here is to offer a local SEO capable of meeting the user’s expectations through attractive content with striking visuals and a rich vocabulary.
3. The inclusion of photos and videos in your SEO campaigns
The use of photos and videos in your SEO campaigns has a real impact on your customers’ experience. If you are looking to increase the number of visits to your website, focus on your visual content. Visual search aims to change the way a product is viewed on the web. This digital marketing tool is therefore designed to encourage users to buy and to place you in the first search results.
“62% of Millennials prefer visual searches over any other technologies.” (Source: businesswire.com)
With new technologies, we can search using a multitude of web tools. Until now, voice search or local SEO required the use of successful keywords. Visual search requires an attractive visual impact. For your company, the challenge is to provide good quality content so that it captures the user’s attention and encourages them to visit your site. However, the description of these photos and videos should not be neglected as this will also influence their appearance in search engines.
This marketing technique has already seduced generation Y, who prefer it to others. It is therefore important for you to use this strategy to boost your traffic. The opportunity to reach a wider target through visual search is great. Not only does it promote the optimisation of your site, but it will also improve your visibility on other media. Such as social networks where visual search is essential to make a query.
4. The creation of interactive content
Never forget social networks are your best friends. At the heart of your communication strategies, these media allow you to interact with your community and offer more accessible contents. Today, all companies are present on at least two social networks, but few know how to engage their communities. One of the biggest challenges of these levers is to offer interactive content. That is to say, content that invites users to take action. These actions are aimed at providing a real experience, building community loyalty and attracting prospects.
“Conversion rates up to 130% just by turning an article into interactive content.” (source: redacteur.com)
In addition to the digital and memorable experience that your SME has to offer, the creation of interactive content will bring you other benefits. Your conversion rate will improve through the engagement you will create.
Your company’s visibility will increase and will push the algorithm to show you to a wider target audience. So, this optimization technique is a safe bet. On the one hand, it will allow you to improve your results and on the other hand, it will bring various emotions to your community such as fun, excitement, envy or intrigue through the content you offer.
5. More and more personalized chatbots
In 2021, if your goal is to guarantee your customers’ satisfaction on the internet, a chatbot will be your best ally. This intelligent robot virtually interacts with a user who arrives on your website or application. It ensures and improves your customer’s experience by allowing a personalized dialogue and answering their questions. It is therefore an efficient, fast and available support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
“By 2022, chatbots will help businesses to save more than $8 billion a year.“ (source: singlegrain.com)
Ensuring a quality customer experience is the chatbot’s first mission. Previously formatted, the bot must know and understand its future Internet users. Thanks to a database of customer profiles, it will be able to provide precise and personalized answers to each request. Automation will allow a real time saving, it will also enrich this database with all the information it will have collected in order to better understand the users’ behaviour. In this sense, the chatbot responds to the needs of consumers and the challenges of customer service.
Automating part of your customer relations department will also allow your company to reduce its costs. The chatbot is also able to meet other needs such as a transactional need (to make an online payment), an acquisition need (to attract new customers) or as an internal support (to answer employees’ questions). So, chatbot is the tool to adopt in 2021 to improve the productivity of your company.
6. Automation and artificial intelligence at your service
As we have just seen, chatbots allow automation of a part of the customer relationship. Automation and artificial intelligence are thus an optimization tool for your company’s activities. It is a great opportunity for your SME when you integrate them. They will contribute to the improvement of your productivity and services while providing you with qualitative data on your customers and your company.
« AI increases sales numbers by 50% based on the number of leads.” (source: leftronic.com)
With the desire to always better understand the consumer, artificial intelligence will enable your SME to gather a wealth of important information on the behaviour of your customers. Once collected, this information will enable you to implement even more effective strategies to transform your prospects into customers. On your different media, it will be able to report your various performances and broaden your target audience. Automation and artificial intelligence are therefore one of the best ways to make your business grow by allowing you to gather a maximum of information on the behaviour of your prospects and customers.
7. Virtual events
Nowadays, the world of events has gone through a considerable upheaval. The economic models of certain players in the sector and their strategies have had to be reconsidered in order to offer a new way to entertain their community while creating value. The crisis period saw the emergence of a new type of event: virtual events. Even though this type of event already existed in a very limited number of cases, these online experiences were incredibly successful and allowed some companies to gain visibility and notoriety on the web. The aim of these digital experiences is to arouse emotion among participants while engaging them.
“80.2% of event organizers were able to reach a wider audience with virtual events.” (source: blog.bizzabo.com)
Virtual events have opened different doors for companies. Firstly, localization is no longer a restriction.
By offering an online event, accessibility is wider and so is your potential audience. A real opportunity is offered to your SME: that of building loyalty in your community and attracting more prospects.
Produced on the web and thanks to possible replay, your events will become a lasting part of your business and leave a lasting impression. In terms of cost, this is a real return on investment because costs and labour are very low. However, the real challenge for your company is to offer a real experience where creativity is at work: in order to offer a virtual performance where the participants live the same experience and leave with a unforgettable memory.
8. Selling on social networks
Selling your products or services on social networks has become in 2021 a major issue for your company. Social selling will not only allow you to acquire new customers but also to reach a new target group that will be more easily influenced when making a purchase decision. This commercial technique aims to reduce the risk that the customer abandons the shopping cart when he changes application or website.
“Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers“ (source: optinmonster.com)
The main challenge is to choose the right social network for your company. You need to be reactive where your target is. This way, you will be sure to get good buying results. Using this lever will enable you to strengthen the relationship and the trust-based bond with your customers. Because through visual impact, reactions such as comments, likes and shares will intensify the authenticity of your brand. For your SME, social selling is therefore the best way to identify and contact prospects in order to convert them into customers.
9. The peak of social networks stories
The use of stories on social networks offers an important opportunity for companies. First launched by Snapchat and then by other networks such as Instagram, the stories are short full screen contents available for 24 hours. This temporary content can be personalised with emojis, gifs or stickers. For your company, this method of communication is an excellent lever to increase your reputation.
“39% of users are interested in a brand/product after hearing about it in Instagram stories.” (source: business.instagram.com)
What’s interesting about this content is that you can create interactive and exclusive content in a couple of minutes. Actually, in a story you don’t publish the same content that you publish in your feed. For your SME, the challenge is thus to propose unique stories that will stimulate the interest of your community and prospects.
For example, you can show your news or the behind-the-scenes of your company. Unveiling and proposing something new will automatically attract a user’s attention and accentuate the originality of your content.
Furthermore, using stories on social networks generates a positive statistical report. This will bring you a continuous engagement with your subscribers, an opportunity to reach a wider audience and an increase in the traffic to your website.
10. Micro-influencers: your new partners
A company that wants to grow will often have to enter into partnerships (with suppliers, with other companies, with some institutions, etc.). But nowadays, in 2021, the partnerships that mostly interest us in terms of communication are those with influencers. But how do we choose them? There are so many of them. There are even several types of influencers: nano, micro, macro and star influencers. For your SME, it is more interesting to collaborate with a micro-influencer (a micro-influencer is considered to be a person who has between 15k and 100k subscribers).
“58% of people have bought a new product in the past six months because of an influencer’s recommendation.” (source: business2community.com)
Using a micro-influencer in a communication strategy is very effective. These influencers often have a more engaged and a better targeted community. By working with them, your company will be sure to address the right target audience. This existing community will not only allow you to gain visibility and notoriety, but there is also a strong chance that they will buy your products.
Marketing influencers do not lie about the products they advertise. Working with them is therefore a sure value in terms of the quest for authenticity. Furthermore, this type of partnership does not necessarily require a large expense, because a micro-influencer is not always managed by an agency and a simple invitation or a post about him/her in exchange is enough. However, your challenge will be to find the right influencer, which means someone who shares the same values as you and who is credible for your target audience.
As you’ve already seen, the application of these 10 digital marketing trends in your strategies is more than recommended. To ensure the success of your SME, you will see that in 2021, the quality of search results will play an important role in your campaigns. It has never been more important to be visible on the web. And for this, voice or visual search and local referencing will improve your visibility.
2021 is also a year full of opportunities, but first you will need to identify your client’s needs and expectations in order to seize them. Optimizing the customer’s journey, improving your social media strategy and data management will have a significant impact on your business results. A new 100% digital year is beginning and will bring great changes. Your SME will have to adapt to an environment where innovation and creativity are required. If you need a boost in this direction, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are committed to produce quality contents that meet your expectations, thanks to the skills of our young talents. So, were you already aware of these trends? If so, which one(s) have you already applied in your strategy? Which one will you apply first? Feel free to put your comments below the article.
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