Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

When we talk about 2021, it is impossible to ignore the effect of the most defining event of 2020 that continues to linger on – the COVID-19 pandemic. With a new, more dangerous strain of the virus identified in UK, we may be staring at extended lockdowns in several countries, or at least travel restrictions to some extent. So then, the trends that held true due to the pandemic would only intensify in 2021, and that holds true even for digital marketing. The pandemic resulted in a far greater number of people turning to online channels for their shopping, and as a result, contrary to most other aspects, digital marketing spends grew as a result of the pandemic. So, what could be the top trends for digital marketing in 2021? The article briefly points out five such key trends which brand managers should be aware about.

Top 5 Trends that will be in focus

1. Involving Voice Search

The growing popularity of voice search is indicated by the fact that by 2020, Statista has estimated that there would be as many as 4.2 billion digital voice assistants in devices, more than half of the total world’s population. Therefore, future digital marketing will heavily involve voice search optimization as it is proven to have a considerable impact on digital marketing, given the fact that 75% of voice search results  rank in the top 3 positions on search engine results.

2. Chat Bots

Nearly every business website today has a chatbot which instantly pops up a welcome message after few seconds of you visiting the website. Chatbots serve two purposes – they can be used to initiate conversation about possible products that the customer would be interested in, or to handle customer grievances (after-sales service) – both very critical for marketing. Chatbots reduce the need for human intervention in catering to basic customer queries, and are tirelessly available 24/7 to provide instant responses. 

3. Growth of E-commerce

Thanks to the lockdown, the already growing e-commerce sector got a major boost, as people had to rely on online orders for even basic necessities. As a growing number of people begin to use e-commerce platforms, there are interesting prospects for marketers. The customer journey on the online platforms allow companies to understand the products that individual customers are searching for. Such inputs are vital in intelligent product recommendations and personalized marketing campaigns, both of which have been proven to have a higher conversion rate.

4. Interactive Content

By definition, interactive content is any such content which is delivered over a user interface that allows the user to interact with it. The reason why interactive content is so powerful is because it actively engages the consumer, as opposed to passive engagement generated by a textual blog post or video. By requiring the user to be alert so as to be able to interact with it, interactive content ensures a much higher attentiveness of the consumer, thus ensuring greater effectiveness of brand communication.

5. Robotic Process Automation

RPA refers to the use of AI-powered MarTech to automate the delivery of your advertisement. It helps brands substitute humans when it comes to executing large-scale ad campaigns. Thus, marketers can devote more time towards devising creative engagement campaigns, the execution of which can be devolved to technology. In recent years, the marketing activity on digital media has grown leaps and bounds; more and more people are being sought to be targeted through online marketing. Given the fact that delivering personalized marketing communication is more effective, it is essential for brands to rely on technology to implement their promotional campaigns. RPA in marketing ensures that an advertisement is delivered with personalized content to all target audiences at the same time. There are also several other RPA use cases in marketing, such as automated storing of customer information, extracting sales and marketing data, processing of sales orders and invoices, nurturing leads, tracking competitors’ product prices, and tracking brand performance on social media.

It is worth knowing the above-mentioned points as these 5 trends will shape the future of digital marketing, beyond 2021. If there is one common thread that connects the five trends, it is the growing involvement of technology within marketing. And it is in this aspect that we at PennyWise Solutions have been delivering great value to our clients over the years. Be it for programmatic advertising, chatbots, or voice search, analytics holds the key. And our statisticians have a great deal of experience running search, web, and mobile analytics, from AB testing to multi-arm bandit algorithms. Moreover, our expertise in delivering personalizable web and mobile app solutions using latest technologies such as Sitecore, Acquia, .NET, Java, and Ruby on Rails ensures that brand managers are able to execute the best marketing practices across omni-channel platforms. We are confident that should you partner with us, we would be able to help you take your digital marketing efforts to a whole new level.