Digital Marketing is a dynamic online marketing industry with constant updates and changing algorithms. This industry has grown drastically over the years and it continues to do so.
Digital Marketing has become a primary mode of marketing today outstripping traditional marketing techniques. As New Year is approaching closer, the latest Digital Marketing trends and updates are bound to fall out for an upcoming year as usual.
The preceding year was quite a radical for Digital Marketing owing to the heaps of trends or updates being introduced. Digital Marketing has a lot in store for the forthcoming year too.
To keep up the pace to enforce effective marketing efforts, we need to be well-acquainted with these latest trends. Here I am going to discuss the Digital Marketing trends which are going to hold the utmost importance in the year 2021 and cannot be ignored.
Here is the Infographic telling about the
Digital Marketing Trends in 2021
Let’s have a detailed discussion about “Digital Marketing Trends in 2021”
Mobile-First Indexing
‘Mobile-First Indexing’ is making a lot of buzzes these days. This Google update states that it takes the mobile version into account for the indexing and ranking purpose. In March 2018, Google announced to migrate the sites for mobile-first indexing to enhance the mobile user experience.
This update does not mean that your desktop version will not be indexed, both mobile and desktop versions will be included for indexing.
It simply means that, for mobile-friendly websites, Google will use the mobile versions for indexing and ranking. This will boost the ranking of your site for both mobile and desktop searchers.
Nowadays Google is focusing more on mobile devices due to the increasing number of its users. Therefore, in 2021, Mobile-friendliness is going to be more crucial than ever. John Muller, Google Trends analyst states that it is better to make your website responsive before the mobile-first launch.
Loading Speed
In the above-mentioned point, we talked about Mobile-first Indexing and how mobile-friendliness can boost the ranking. One of the major factors that affect the mobile-friendliness of your website is its loading speed. The speed of your website is directly proportional to its ranking.
The better the loading speed, the better will be the user experience which in turn, will bring more traffic and boost the ranking. Also, faster loading websites decrease the bounce rate. The loading speed matters for both mobile and desktop users. Identify the factors impacting your website speed.
Around 60% of searches are performed through mobile devices, hence it is important to provide better services to mobile users. Use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to create compelling and fast loading web pages for mobile users.
Moreover, to check the speed of your website you can use online tools like GTmterix, Page Speed Insights, WebPage Test, Pingdom, etc. Make your website faster before the year ends as in 2021, it is expected to induce a larger impact in the Digital Marketing arena.
Voice Search
Voice Search has seen considerable growth among mobile device users since its inception. As we know, Voice search is a digital assistant that facilitates the searching process. It uses the voice command to search on the internet.
A report presented by Google says, 20% of the mobile queries are generated via voice searches. This means that 1/5th of people like to search through giving voice commands instead of typing. Some of the known virtual assistants who are successfully operating in the market are Siri, Google Voice search, Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Bixby, etc.
According to the reports, by 2020, 50% of searchers will comprise voice searches. Undoubtedly, it can be easily predicted that it is going to play a major role in Digital Marketing in the coming years.
Quality Content
The content was the king, is the king and will always be the king. Some things are so vital that their value never fades, no matter how many new trends sweep in.
Contents are bricks and mortar of the Internet world. Everything you find on the internet is based on content. For search engines like Google, content tops the priority list.
While creating content, you should always keep in mind that you create content first for readers and then for crawlers. Quality and value-providing content are always given preference over the other factors by the search engines.
A study done in 2017 shows that 85% of marketers consider good content to be the driving force behind their success. Your aim should be to keep providing valuable and compelling content to attract traffic and grow your ranking.
Try to provide visually strong content like infographics as visual contents are going to prevail in the approaching years. It is expected to soon overshadow the textual contents.
Chatbots
This AI or marketing automation technology is anticipated to grow in 2021. Many companies will implement this strategy to layout effective marketing efforts.
It helps the customers to solve their queries and provide them with the information they want on spot. Therefore, it means that customers won’t have to wait for the response to fulfil their requirements.
Hence, it increases the user experience and provides them with satisfactory services which are important factors to build brand reputation. This technology enhances the conversational interactions with the customers.
According to IBM, by the end of 2020, 85% of customer interaction will be facilitated by automated customer services like chatbots. Advancement in this technology is predicted to happen in the year 2021.
Video Marketing
Many marketing professionals believe that video marketing is the future of Digital Marketing and a few statistics prove that it is true indeed.
One of them states that Video Marketing has improved the conversion rate of 72% of businesses. According to another one, 51% of marketers found Video contents are visually stronger than the textual contents and attract more viewers. AI has made the Video content somewhat more searchable today.
Live video is the recent feature that has garnered immense popularity on social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, etc. It has improved customer interaction.
Moreover, it succeeds in increasing the engagement and retaining the viewers for a longer period. The biggest advantage of live video feature is that it can be easily done anywhere at any time. All you need is your high-quality smartphone and then you have to choose the right platform for live streaming.
Many businesses are using it as a marketing strategy to promote their services or products. It is estimated that, on Facebook, live videos have generated an engagement rate of 4.3% as compared to 2.2% of non-live videos. The accelerated growth of video marketing shows that it holds prosperous opportunities for digital marketers in 2021 as well.
Quality Backlinks
Link building is already a significant Off-page SEO activity to increase the traffic and ranking on SERP. But in 2021, it is going to be more primal than ever. A low-quality backlink is of no use, thus generating high-quality backlinks are very necessary.
Make sure to build your link on the websites having high domain authority. There are many techniques to generate backlinks like guest posting, article submission, image or video submission, etc.
Furthermore, there is the number of online tools that you can use to check the quality of your website. Some of them are SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Monitor Backlinks, Ahref, Linkody, Kerboo, Majestic SEO, etc. So, if you have not checked it yet, do it now and climb upwards on the ranking ladder.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a sort of word-of-mouth marketing. In this marketing strategy, brands communicate or reach the audience through key personalities like celebrities, YouTubers, bloggers, etc.
These influencers speak or spill about your business on their social channels to influence audiences to buy your services. It is a very effective marketing method to attract hoards of customers as it makes the brand more appealing and trustworthy.
Besides, it gives larger exposure to your products or services as these well-established influencers already possess a good follower base. The followers of these influencers already trust what they say. Thus, it makes them trust your brand too.
A report says that since the last year 86% of the marketers have used influencer marketing. Also, 49% of consumers are found to be dependent on the influencer’s recommendations. Influencer Marketing is going to make a big name in the Digital Marketing industry in the years ahead. So, boost your ROI with this marketing tactic in the year 2021.
Stories
No need to talk about the popularity of social media stories as everybody already knows about it. Its approbation by social media users proves that this feature will play a pivotal role in the Digital Marketing field.
Snapchat introduced this concept first and then later it was followed by the other social media networks. Almost every social platform today like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc renders the story feature. Though it stays only for 24 hours, it can be very useful to reach your customers and increase your engagement.
Sometimes, when you post your content on social media, it fails to reach your audience. There could be many reasons behind this as your content may get downcast by other posts.
Social media stories can help you to tackle this problem and increases your visibility. Thus, it is advisable to include this social media tool for your Digital Marketing strategy for 2021.
CONCLUSION
2020 is coming to its closure and 2021 is about to begin. New Year brings new opportunities, so make the most of it. Adopt the above mentioned Digital Marketing trends as soon as possible to be ahead in the game and outdo your competitors.
These Digital Marketing trends are going to hold very crucial spots in the Digital Marketing sphere and hence simply cannot be ignored. They are the deciding factors for the success of your digital marketing campaign in 2021.