As the marketing landscape continues to be transformed by technological innovation, marketing, and communications teams must keep up with industry trends to stay competitive. Of course, with new technologies and ways of leveraging them always emerging, professionals may not be sure where to focus their energies.
As a business owner and marketer, it is essential to be up-to-date on leading trends in 2021 and what you should focus your marketing efforts on. While marketing principles possibly remain the same each year, the tools to achieve success in marketing vary. Newspaper advertising used to be prevalent; now, digital advertising and artificial intelligence play crucial roles in the marketing tactics of businesses.
To make a tremendous impact this year, monitor these developments for the rest of 2021.
- High authentic content marketing
- Greater focus on data analytics
- Increase in use of chatbots and conversational marketing
- Maximizing social media marketing
- Videos for marketing and sales
- High authentic content marketing: In today’s marketing authentic content is in high demand. Providing quality content is a powerful marketing tool, especially for businesses that are tight on money. You can create interest in your products and services by adding a blog on your website, with content that establishes you as a thought leader in your industry. Write about topics that interest your customers, building brand awareness, customer trust, and loyalty. By showing you care about more than a sale to your audience, you can build trust.
- Greater focus on data analytics: Data analytics can help marketers learn about their customers with accuracy. From their favorite TV shows to the plans they have for summer. Access to data for businesses transcends basic demographics. Now brands can access consumers’ online and offline media behaviors and preferences, locations throughout the day, purchase history, promotion sensitivity, etc. That can allow you to customize messages, images, and offers across channels, even at the household level.
- Increase in use of chatbots and conversational marketing: Did you know that 69% of US consumers prefer using chatbots when engaging with online brands. That is because of the quick response. Adding AI-powered chatbots on your websites, and social media will increase customer engagement and trust.
- Maximizing social media marketing: The importance of Social media, and how it affects a company’s success, will continue to grow. It is vital to every marketing strategy. Customers value the ability to communicate one-on-one with brands via social media, so offer that as an option with your social media accounts.
- Videos for marketing and sales: One of the best things that happened last year, during the pandemic lockdown, was the acceptance of video calls. Rather than taking a trip to pitch to your potential prospects, you can now easily reach your potential prospects via video calls. Because of this, we have seen a high usage of video content by marketing and sales professionals. In 2021, there has been a surge in this trend and its acceptance.
These trends have influenced marketing in 2021 and would do so beyond 2021. That does not mean you need to drop what you’re doing immediately and switch to using different and more advanced technology to market your business effectively. The pandemic altered business strategies but brought into the light technologies to make marketing more effective for your business. When deciding which technology to implement in your operation, consider your business needs and the desires of your customers. Do your research on how the technology works and how you can leverage it.