The era of digital marketing was born when the internet was created. Since then there have been waves of change that have washed out inflexible businesses and amplified the forward thinking ones instead.
Let’s take a bird’s eye view at some of the recent, or approaching, changes:
Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI can be used to increase sophistication in many areas of a business, but when it comes to marketing in particular, AI can analyse customer behaviour, identify patterns and use data from social media platforms and blogs to help businesses understand their customers. It is commonly being used across many marketing mediums to forge better results.
5G
In a world gone mad for mobile, one of the most momentous digital marketing trends of 2020 is the emergence of 5G technology. This update creates a new era of communications and its impact will be felt across almost every sector.
Visual search
This has elevated user experience. You can now upload an image to carry out a search and get more specific results, effectively turning your phone’s camera into a search bar.
Google Lens is a visual search engine, which recognises objects and landmarks through a camera app. This also poses a new direction for visual search engine optimisation (SEO).
In addition Pinterest has launched a beta version named Pinterest’s Lens which now recognises 2.5+ billion objects.
Personalisation
To stand out in 2021, businesses need to personalise their marketing – including content, products, emails and much more. Consumers are becoming more and more annoyed with generic advertising and are more likely to engage with a company if it offers personalised experiences.
Firms are realising that personalised, triggered emails based on behaviour are 3x more effective than generic emails.
Privacy laws
The CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) had many marketers running for the hills. In certain parts of the world, businesses are forced to pull their socks up and take action. As technology advances so will legislation governing privacy.
Marketers have no choice but to play by the new rules or miss out. Marketers will have to earn the contact information of their targets rather than participate in mass marketing.
Video
Numerous businesses state that video has improved their conversation rate, confirming the importance of incorporating video into your digital marketing strategy for 2021.
It has the power to increase confidence in your businesses products or services in a short period of time. It is also by far the most popular way in which customers want to learn about new products.
There are different options for driving higher engagement with video marketing – from a simple video post, to doing a live broadcast on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
It is very easy to reformat video content. E.g.: If you have a video for your YouTube channel, you could:
- Transcribe it to create a text version
- Publish the transcription as a blog under an embedded YouTube video for better rankings
- Turn the transcription into a standalone blog with a short rewrite
- Tear off the audio – use it as a podcast episode
- Use video thumbnails in your email marketing campaigns and the word ‘video’ in subject lines to increase open rates
- Use live videos for interviews, product demonstrations and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the brand such as ‘life in the office’ or ‘company events’
- Create personalised video messages rather than make phone calls or send emails. With high-quality phone cameras, this has never been easier
Predictive and augmented analytics
This method utilises predictive analytics by using data, predictive modelling and machine learning to detect patterns and attempt to predict the future.
In terms of digital marketing trends, we will see a lot more of this, as it is being used in progressive lead scoring and branching logic, as well as targeting, segmentation and positioning. It can also shape individual personalisation, which helps marketers improve a customer’s life time value.
Push notifications
Almost twice as many people sign up for web push notifications compared to a newsletter. It is much harder to achieve a newsletter sign-up rate that matches the performance of push notifications.
Six hours is the average time that passes before a recipient opens a newsletter. With web push, the recipient will see the message immediately.
Position ‘zero’ in search engine result pages (SERP)
Voice search has been rising, thus rocking the search engine optimisation boat. A noteworthy example is the escalation of the featured snippet, which appears in the highly sought-after “position zero” in Google’s search engine results pages. This is yet another avenue to explore through SEO spectacles.
Whilst these are just some of the latest digital marketing trends, they only scratch the surface – but with them come an abundance of opportunities for those willing to jump onto the digital bandwagon.
If you are interested in learning more about how Bubble Agency can assist you with a stand-out digital marketing strategy to drive successful results for your business, please email: hello@bubbleagency.com
