Digital marketing has never been more important to the success of your business. After all, people spend up to 11 hours a day engaging with digital media nowadays! From smartphones and tablets to TVs and laptops, screens have become our go-to source of entertainment, news, and connection.
As a business, that represents an unparalleled opportunity to market your products and services to your target audience. Their eyes are on-screen, so your ads must be as well.
The tricky part is staying on top of the latest digital marketing trends! Trust us, this industry changes faster than Usain Bolt runs the 100m. It’s in a constant state of flux, with new strategies, platforms, and approaches springing up all the time.
Want some expert advice to help you stay ahead of the curve (and the competition)? You’re in the right place. Check out these 6 crucial online marketing trends for 2021.
1. The Significance of the User Experience (UX)
Your business website sits at the core of your digital marketing endeavors. This is where you send traffic, generate leads, and get prospective customers into your funnel. In 2021, your site’s UX must be firing on all cylinders for it to perform this crucial role!
A great UX serves two main purposes: it keeps visitors to your website happy, which then makes Google happy down the line. A website that’s fast-loading, easy to navigate, and well-structured will convince people to stick around, which improves your conversion rate. The Google gods then read the various signals of their satisfaction (longer dwell times, lower bounce rates, and so on) and rank your site higher as a result.
Oh, and if you have more than one site on the go at once, then services like Pressable make hosting multiple WordPress websites easy and affordable. That should help you invest more time and money into improving their UX.
2. The Need for Speed
Site speed is a key component of the UX. Yet the need for speed in 2021 is so important to digital success that it warrants a special mention! Basically, the quicker your site is, the better it will perform on the internet.
Now, the real issue is that we all have awful attention spans these days! Your users simply aren’t willing to wait for your website to load. They want the answers they were promised in search results, and they want them now.
Make them wait too long (think 3 seconds or more) and they’ll click away. Worse still, Google notices their dissatisfaction and punishes your site in search as a result. Avoid that fate in 2021 by doing everything possible to keep things speedy.
3. The Rise of Voice
Voice search has been around for a while now, but (thanks to the growing popularity of smart speakers and home assistants) it’s just starting to hit maturity. Billions of people around the world now leverage the frictionless experience of this technology to find answers online. As a marketer, it’s imperative that you start addressing this transition in 2021.
Start by thinking about your search engine optimization. Remember, voice searches are very different from text searches. They’re wordier, localized, utilize longer-tail keywords, and tend to include questions, which will impact how you structure content.
Getting in the ‘featured snippet’ on Google SERPs is key. The vast majority of answers derive from here, which means your business loses out when your content isn’t in that spot! Utilizing structured data should better your chances of being featured.
4. The Need for Personalization
Think about Netflix for a moment. One reason you spend so much time binge-watching the latest series is that Netflix suggests things it knows you’ll enjoy! It leverages your viewing history to filter its immense catalog of shows and push those items that make the most sense.
Or, to put it another way, Netflix personalizes the experience. Everything about the platform is customized for the individual end-user. Other behemoths, such as Amazon and YouTube, do the same.
It’s your job to follow suit with your digital marketing. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about your emails, promotions, or social media posts. Make everything personal and your ROI will improve ten times over!
5. The ROI of Influencers
Influencers are nothing new in the marketing world. But their relevance in 2021 most definitely is. Thanks to the astronomical success of new social media platforms like TikTok, they’re becoming well, more influential than ever before.
From micro Instagram influencers to mega YouTube stars, make sure you experiment with influencer marketing this year. It’s true that finding the right person to represent your brand can take time and a degree of hand-to-hand combat. Do it right, though, and your ability to leverage their engaged audience will have impressive business benefits.
6. The Importance of Kindness, Trust, and Connection
2020 was a difficult year. We’ve been stuck indoors, away from loved ones, and unable to do the things that bring us joy. The result?
As ‘meta’ as it sounds, it’s never been more important for businesses to demonstrate kindness and understanding. Your audience is yearning for connection, hope, entertainment, and a sense of positivity! Make it your mission to deliver on all of the above in your digital marketing efforts.
Reach out to your customer base, provide value, respond to their concerns, get involved in important projects, and do something to bring people together. From new levels of trust to an increase in engagement, your brand’s sure to reap an array of rewards.
Remember These Digital Marketing Trends for 2021
Effective digital marketing strategies chop and change at a frightening rate. However, it’s imperative that you stay on top of them! Fail, and it won’t be long before your business begins to lose market share and lag behind the competition.
We hope the digital media marketing trends in this article will help you avoid those kinds of outcomes! If you want to take your digital marketing education to the next level, be sure to search ‘digital marketing’ on the website now.
