As you begin planning for the year ahead, we created the magic-8 digital marketing trends for 2021 that you need to be aware of to successfully grow your marketing campaigns!
Google this. Google that. When it comes to SEO trends, all anyone cares about is Google...as they should. The go-to search engine for web search may finally face a real competitor.
Apple and Google have had a deal for Google to be the default search engine on Apple products, however, that deal has come to an end. That same deal is one of the reasons Google is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department of the United States.
Apple, meanwhile, has been rumored over the last few years to be working on their own search engine. Lately, they haven’t been so quiet about it. As Google faces legal troubles, now would be the time for Apple to step in and release their new search engine as their default browser on all 1.5 billion devices. When Apple releases their search engine in 2021, or later, be ready to accept them as a legitimate search engine for your SEO marketing.
A digital world once dominated by aesthetically pleasing images is now being added to history books because the hottest trend for 2021 is video marketing! In 2020, 54% of consumers stated they preferred video over any other kind of content, and it’s predicted that 82% of all internet traffic will be from videos by 2022.
We shouldn’t act surprised as Youtube is the 2nd most popular website in the world and when it comes to social media, a new rivalry between Tiktok & Instagram has begun with the sole focus to be crowned ruler of video content.
If you’re still not sold on the need to include video content into your 2021 marketing plans, viewers retain 95% of a message when watching it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
From social media, online ads, websites and more, there are plenty of places you should need to have video content to grow your digital success in 2021.
This should be a no-brainer at this point: if you want people to engage with your content in 2021, you need to make the content interactive. This is the type of content that gets shared across social media such as bracket challenges and contests.
These ideas shouldn’t be restricted to social media- interactive content should be included throughout your entire 2021 digital marketing plan. If 81% of marketers state interactive content on your website is what grabs web visitors’ attention, you need to find ways to incorporate them into your web design.
The interactive content you put on your site can range from blogs and quizzes to videos, all of which can be recycled content you can put on social media.
It’s no secret that email marketing has the highest ROI so it should be a vital part of your 2021 marketing plan. Over the last few years, the focus has been to personalize emails to engage customers from the subject or preview line.
We’d also like to note that, over the years, businesses that send a series of welcome emails see 13% more revenue than those who just send one.
These two email facts hold the key to the 2021 email marketing trend you need to incorporate: personalized automation journeys!
Not only should you be including personalization in the subject line and preview text, there should be personalization in the actual email...oh, and the journey itself should be personalized. Make sure you’re segmenting your email audience so the email journey you take your consumer on matches what they’re interested in.
If you need an example of what a personalized email journey is, checkout our email story to learn about Vibe.
The foundation of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is keywords and phrases. These are what get your ad in front of the right consumers. However, people search differently than they talk. Which is why you need to add voice-search campaigns to your PPC plans in 2021.
Of the 40 million Americans who currently own a smart speaker, 43% of them use the speaker to shop. There’s a lot of potential revenue in voice-search optimization and it’s growing. It’s expected that 55% of all households in the US will have a smart speaker in 2022. And, as we mentioned above, when Apple rolls out their new search engine, it most certainly will be created to maximize Siri.
As you take on voice-searching in 2021, keep in mind people often speak in lengthy keywords, conversational language, and questions.
One of the great debates in the digital world is preference between light mode or dark mode.
In the last five years, there have been several studies pointing to the health benefits of having dark mode on our screens to help us sleep and give our eyes a break.
Social media and phone companies have already begun offering a dark mode in all of their software. Web design in 2021 will follow suit. As some companies have already begun to offer a light and dark version of their site, it’ll become an additional asset for your website to offer as it’ll improve your customer’s experience.
This also means a web design trend to look out for is a shift in style toward a basic black & white design for its sleek look, simplicity, and ease to implement a light and dark mode.
Over the last several months, sharing Instagram posts to Stories has become all the rage. From posts involving informational content with simple text overlay, or a post with a funny, relatable meme, Instagram post sharing is a huge social media marketing trend that will continue into 2021.
Not only does creating shareable content help increase your reach, as Instagram constantly changes its algorithm, sharing your own posts to your story is another way your current followers can see your content who may have otherwise missed it in their feeds.
Something else to consider: as Instagram has been toying with the idea of publicly hiding post like totals, the importance of the share statistic will increase.
Since the public “like” is out, the private “save” is in! While you need to include shareable content in your social media marketing playbook in 2021, your go-to posts should involve saveable content.
While a save is a private, personal action, it will result in more people seeing the post. Instagram believes if a user saves a post, the post must be quality content and Instagram wants to show only the best. The more people who save your posts, the more people Instagram will show it to.
One idea for saveable content is to create a clean, helpful infographic. Users will refer back to it every time they face the dilemma your post helps to solve. Another Idea is a long, memorable caption such as a recipe or something inspirational that can lead to a user wanting to go back to it.
These eight trends are important to watch out for as we kick off 2021, but the future of digital changes quickly. Make sure you keep up with the latest digital marketing trends throughout the year.
