Online Marketing Trends in 2021
Want to grow your web traffic and increase sales in 2021? Follow marketing trends dutifully. If businesses shift their focus from Google to Facebook advertising, invest some of your money on social media marketing.
If trends show your audience spends a lot of time on Tiktok, learn a few tactic dance moves. Well, maybe you don’t need dancing lessons. But stay ahead of the curve with these marketing trends for 2021.
Optimizing for Voice Searches
Siri, Alexa, and Google voice assistants are on the rise. And that means it’s now important to optimize content for voice searches. If you need more convincing—50% of searches on Google in 2020 were voice searches.
That’s the entire half of people browsing the Internet. They no longer hurtle around for their keyboards to find something on Google. Instead, they ask Siri or Alexa for help, and these tools find the answers on search engines.
How do you optimize content for voice searches? Use conversational words. Picture how you make conversations with people and translate it to web content. For clarity, it’s brief, relevant, and answers questions precisely.
More Interactive, Contextual Content
Content marketing will continue to be essential for online success in 2021. But there will be a bigger focus on context and interactivity. That’s because Google’s new updates are pretty sensitive to context and overall content quality.
If Google thinks your content answers people’s questions effectively, it will rank your website. If it thinks your information is ambiguous, you can expect a hit on your rank. On the flip side, the interactive quality will continue to help businesses dominate SERPs.
Quizzes, games, videos, surveys, and polls will become game-changers in 2021. According to Outgrow, interactive content will become trendy because it has an incredibly high success rate in creating awareness, educating, and persuading buyers.
Targeting Featured Snippets
When Google introduced the featured snippet a couple of years ago, there was some backlash founded on genuine fears. For starters, people feared it would stop people from visiting their websites.
And sure enough, you don’t need to click through a link if you can get all the information you need on Google’s result pages. All the same, businesses are in peace with the featured snippet and are constantly fighting to get ranked there.
Ranking your website for the featured snippet is no easy feat unless you have the help of a top-ranking SEO agency like GeeksMix. But once you get there, you could get establish your brand as an authority for a specific keyword.
AI for PPC Advertising
Some marketers are calling it programmatic advertising. But basically, it means using AI tools to automate the advertising process. The benefit: you save time you would have spent segmenting your audience and bidding for ad space.
Programmatic advertising is also more effective because it streamlines the entire process. Picture this. You set a budget and then tell Google the type of audience you want: smartphone users, demographics, location, interests, and behaviors.
Google then advertises to these people so that you get high-quality traffic on your website. In 2020, nearly 90% of online adverts in the US were the result of programmatic advertising according to eMarketer.
Globally, the percentage is significantly lower at 65% but it will continue to rise. For marketers, that means you need to get onboard with programmatic advertising now. Test various features and use AI to increase your ROI.
Personalization will become more Vital
If you ask many business owners, only a small percentage of their monthly website traffic leads to sales. Over 97% of visitors don’t convert. According to Neil Patel, it has something to do with personalization.
You see, your content can’t appeal to everyone. But if you can make it appeal to as many people as possible, you will increase your sales. Think of how Amazon works. It shows you things you’re most interested in buying.
That’s what you should do with your content. Segment your audience and provide different content according to people’s needs. If you run an eCommerce store, target sneaker fans with articles focused on them alone.
When you identify parents with young babies, show them your discounts for baby products. Or share helpful tips they can relate to. They will get fond of your business, feel personally appreciated, and probably make a purchase too.
Involving Employees in Marketing
This trend became popular in 2020 due to COVID-19. People were working at home most of the time and the experience felt different. Of course, there was also the issue of budgetary constraints, which limited many businesses’ advertising power.
As a solution, some companies invested in converting employees into brand ambassadors. Take CISCO as an example. The software company has had sessions where it asked its employees to share their experiences working at CISCO on social media.
CISCO believes employees can have a bigger impact on marketing your brand than advertising or Facebook followers. That’s because 84% of people trust recommendations from regular people like employees and only 15% of buyers trust messages from brands.
Video Marketing and Advertising
Video marketing is no longer an option. You need it for growth on nearly every platform: Facebook, Instagram, blogs, and YouTube. Statistically speaking, video marketing can increase conversions by up to 80% and increase ROI by 83%.
People like video content because it’s the closest thing to real-life they can get online. They also find video content to be more engaging, informative, and persuasive. Against that backdrop, you need to direct more investments on video SEO and advertising.
YouTube is the biggest video-based website in the world. And it’s the second most popular website, just behind Google. So, if you’re looking for a place to advertise video content, nothing beats YouTube.
In case you’re wondering, video marketing isn’t expensive. A smartphone and video editing tools are all you need to get started. But if you want to be professional, a web camera and professional editing tools are necessary.
After that, focus on the quality of your content. People don’t care that your video is in 4K quality. They want to be entertained, informed, or inspired by your stories.
