Over the past year, digital marketing has become even more popular – if not crucial – to businesses around the world. As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of much of society, people increasingly turned to the internet to shop, browse, and find entertainment. Many of the trends that sprang up during the pandemic seem to be sticking around, however. In fact, many sources suggest that digital marketing trends are changing in ways that could make former strategies outdated.
As a business, the last thing you need is for your marketing trends to be outdated. Fortunately, there are forecasts and ways to avoid falling behind. Take a look at the trends we are watching here at EraBright, one of the leading Black-owned marketing agencies in Atlanta.
5 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2021 and Beyond
1. Changes in Consumer Behavior
The COVID-19 pandemic sped up the adoption of ecommerce by 10 years in a three-month period. That is an insane amount of ecommerce growth. Sixty percent of companies report changes in buying behavior over the last year. What was once considered “normal” may no longer apply. And there may be no returning to that former state.
Now that much of the initial online flurry has passed, businesses are looking to the future. A report from the Institute for Business Value suggests that more than 50% of retailers are transitioning to more resilient infrastructure. Forty-seven percent are transitioning to contactless mobile payments, and 45% are updating their digital platforms.
Without returning to “normal” businesses now have the task of reprioritizing their digital marketing strategies and platforms. For many, that means bringing it all back to the drawing board and deciding which strategies to keep, which to throw out, and what new strategies may be necessary.
2. Real-Time Insight
When a consumer enters text in a search engine, they are telling the search engine what they want. Their browsing habits and onsite behavior tells analytics about what they want, need, and engage with. For businesses, now is the time to utilize this information to its full capacity. Search information is about as close as you can get to real-time insight into the consumer.
Having this information means nothing, however, if you don’t have the tools necessary to listen, analyze, and act on what you’ve learned. Customer data from search insights can help you narrow down your market and optimize your website, content, offers, blog, etc. to meet the needs of the most customers possible.
3. E-A-T Your Content
Google now focuses heavily on E-A-T – Expertise, Authority, and Trust. If your content doesn’t provide expertise and authority, and build trust among consumers, then it could be considered by Google to be low quality. Low quality content hurts your ranking and domain authority/rank, which means you aren’t as visible as you need to be to thrive.
Digital marketers now are tasked with improving their content in order to get better quality ratings and rank higher in search engine results. This could mean reviewing content for accuracy and timeliness, removing old links, adding more content to really “flesh out” a topic, and getting rid of content that doesn’t make sense for your site.
4. Customers Want Connectedness
Around 80% of consumers value their experience with a company as highly as they do the product or service purchased. More than 60% of consumers say that the experience they have with one company influences their expectations of other companies in the same industry.
With more ecommerce and digital business than ever, consumer expectations have changed. Consumers want connectedness when doing business. They want features like chat, access to a representative, or access to a support bot. They also want their information and interactions to continue and flow – rather than starting over every interaction.
5. Supply Issues are a Real Threat
During the pandemic, the world became exceedingly aware of supply chain issues. Consumers struggled to find basic necessities, and manufacturers became overwhelmed. Many consumers turned to small local businesses, and that trend is continuing. Increasingly, consumers want to support businesses that have a positive impact on the world. Eighty-three percent of consumers want to buy from companies whose values align with theirs. That means that businesses must evaluate their values and how well they are expressed.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot about how businesses market their products and services. Now more than ever, businesses must assess their digital marketing strategies and look to the future. Many of the trends we are seeing now will certainly last into 2022, and may carry on far beyond that.
