Top 8 most important digital marketing trends You can't ignore in 2021

Digital marketing trends evolving day by day, we live in this era when digital marketing moves at the speed of light and consumer interests and behaviors are arduous to predict. Trends will help you to reshape your businesses in the future. It doesn’t matter what your domain of business is, what services and products you offer – digital marketing trends can’t be ignored.

This time for marketers, starters, or businessmen to scrutinize their goals, performance metrics, and KPIs. To survive and thrive again, Marketers must be astute and adapt to new strategies rapidly.

Below, we’ll cover 8 of the crucial digital marketing trends of 2021, to give you a head-start over your competition. Take these marketing trends to heart and consider them when outlining your digital marketing strategy for this New Year.

1. Inclusivity

Take a glance at the front-page headline that shows the importance of inclusivity in our current time-and-place in history. In this era, especially younger audiences (Gen Z) and marginalized groups, want to see a more optimistic illustration of equality in the content they consume and the brands they purchase from. Or more accurately, they don’t want to see the same proportionate content we’re habituated to from previous decades.

In 2021, digital marketing includes media and materiality that covers a diversity of race, sexual orientation, gender, religions, etc., as well as representation for people with physical or mental disabilities. It comprises the content for your imagery and videos, also the topics you discuss in social media and blogs. By offering products that address shoppers’ diverse needs, retailers are becoming more inclusive and enchain new customers at the same time.

According to Accenture, this cultural shift is also affecting purchasing behavior with 41% of shoppers have shifted their business away from a retailer that does not reflect how important inclusion and diversity are to them. And 29% of consumers are willing to switch brands completely if they don’t showcase enough diversity.

Brands that openly show their involvement in inclusive causes, will reap the benefits and drive deeper connections with their consumers. On the flip side, those brand who does not appear to be a part of the inclusivity conversation will see the impacts.

2. Featured snippets & no-click searches

Generally, when people search for something and search results will take Google properties such as YouTube, snippets, graphs – Google can serve up in search result without requiring a click from the user. It is all about what the end-user wants, and the user wants information, answer, or things that they are looking for immediately.

A “Zero-Click” search result provides information or answers that the end-user need, so you don’t need to click on an article without wasting time clicking through a website. According to a study, zero-click searches account for more than 50 percent of all Google searches. Google is getting good results for its users on a single SERP page through information, featured snippets, knowledge graphs, images, video carousels, etc.

Position zero refers to Google’s “featured snippet”, and 2021 SEO marketing trends are prioritizing it. The featured snippet works differently from other search results entries, it’s separated by a box and located at the top. More importantly, it also displays extra and relevant information in the attempt at answering the user’s question without them needed to click on it, prompting the nickname “no-click search.”

Every business wants to attract visitors to its website. But it can be frustrating to see lower traffic because Google is hold up your potential customer through the answer. When search-engine uses to show your website’s information to searchers, it shows you’re providing valuable content.

 The trick is to make sure you add something to these snippets that will draw the searcher’s attention and entice them to click on your website for more information and away from the search engine results that have provided them with a quick answer. Now, going into 2021, and the goal is continuing to shift to more SEO visibility in “position zero.”

If you’re going to target a featured snippet, there are a few things to know. For starters, featured snippets are mostly long-tail keyword phrases like questions (such as “how to design a website?”), step-by-step lists to straight-up definitions to even videos and more, so match your content with the appropriate format.

In the content itself, make sure you answer the keyword question clearly and summarily, ideally with bulleted lists or a table structure.

3. Sustainability

People are aware and passionate about environmentalism, just like another digital marketing trend of inclusivity. They want to make sure that the brands are also concerned for the planet as they are.

According to a study, 81% of consumers strongly feel that companies should help improve the environment. Today we’re seeing is that companies start inclined toward the clean environment, green environment, sustainable and eco-friendly products, organic products, etc. Sustainable and eco-friendly brands start gaining popularity among consumers. It goes beyond the market for green products- every brand can benefit by adopting sustainable practices.

The hunt for a greener planet continues, and consumers are actively scrutinizing brands that are intended, and conscious about the environment, as the world remains a fragile place. This will be key for brands to reiterate their sustainability in 2021.

If you want to connect with your consumers, you will communicate your sustainability through your branding, and environmentalism should be a part of your brand.  There are plenty of different ways depending on your branding style, such as you can launch a campaign on your site, discussing it on social media, and blogs.

4. Ad-blocker blockers

Trends aren’t all about positivity and progress – it’s about overcoming obstacles like ad blockers. According to a study, 27% of internet users are using ad blockers in 2021. Many marketers are using their primary stream of traffic automatically cut off at the source, including PPC campaigns.

Firstly, you should check a problem how big it is – scrutinizes your ad data, and analytics gives you relevant information about what you need to know. You post ads where damage might be negligible or depending on your target audiences.

If your ads to be a part of a bluff of ad blockers, your best strategy is to adopt – not to waste time on convince potential customers to change their preferences. Reorganize your advertising budget to suit others, like influencer marketing or sponsored content. Younger audiences aren’t responding well to display ads anyway, but they are responding to influencer marketing, so making the switch is advisable in any situation.

5. Image and video SEO

We can expect the creative search method to rise to the top-Visual Searches. Yeah, you heard it right. Visual will become increasingly important on the landscape of SEO. Tools like Google Lens allow users can search for whatever they can see. Marketers will need to focus on visuals alt-text, sitemaps, etc.

You already know you can search for images and videos by using keywords, but did you know you can also submit images for a search, or even take original photos and search for context? As more users discover these visual search techniques, it changes the overall game of SEO.

With an increasing number of user searches through visuals, you want to make sure your image and video SEO campaigns are in a shape. For starters, apply the basics:

• include alt text in your image descriptions
• add images to your sitemap
• include your target SEO keywords in the file name of your image or video
• use top-quality images and videos

According to Retail Customer Experience estimates that it’s going to be profitable too by 2021:

“Early adopters that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase their e-commerce revenue by 30%.”

6. Interactive content

People are leaning towards interactive content or easy to use content-things like podcasts, newsletters that can be consumed. Interactive content is anything that people can click, swipe or interact with.

According to Outgrow, 93% of marketers believe that interactive content is highly effective in educating the consumers.

At the very least, they increase the engaging time users want to engage with you, which helps your standing on algorithm-based searches and feeds. But more importantly, people want to be engaged, so interactive content always improves your user experience.

Convenient and readily available content will help brands connect more deeply with consumers and provides a more intimate way to stay in touch. By allowing the consumers to answer for themselves or have their opinion heard, they feel a bit more personal connection to the brand. It can also be used to collect data of user preferences, such as for product or site improvements.

7. Customer segmentation

All trends aren’t necessarily new but overcome the existing issues and gives a new solution. Here is customer segmentation, this is not a new tactic. Already marketers are using them but they face issues like launching large marketing campaigns targeting general audiences or we can say normal audiences. Instead of using these campaigns, it’s better to have a large number of small marketing campaigns targeting a specific audience.

Customer segmentation means grouping your target audience by certain traits or consuming behaviors, such as demographics or shopping habits. This allows you to tailor your content to suit their preferences; for example, having two separate email lists for more spenders and fewer spenders, and sending different newsletters to each that feature different products. This strategy works best for personalization and customer engagement, as your consumers receive content hand-picked for them. You can even opt-out another method like you can apply customer segmentation to specialized ads on different sites, categories of blog content, and social media content for multiple communities.

8. Local SEO

Google frequently updates their local SEO algorithm, so if your businesses on a local level, your Google My Business listing provides valuable information and helps establish your geographical location. You should continuously update your business’ appearance in local results. In a way, local SEO is even more powerful on a landscape of SEO-people searching for a specific type of business with their geographic location (like near me) have more intent to purchase, so it’s easier to convert them.

For starters, you have to get verified by Google My Business. You can do this by signing up for Google My Business and either claiming your business or creating a new one. It also helps customers to know more about your business with Google search results, and also gives you the chance to offer additional information about your company to users.

Additionally, you must be embodied local keywords prominently into your SEO strategy. Prioritize the name of your city or town as a top keyword, if your location has a famous landmark, mention it once or twice.

Bottom Line

So, there you have it – our definitive guide to the 8 hottest digital marketing trends you can’t ignore in 2021.

As John F. Kennedy once said: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are definite to omit the future.”

Digital marketing is a dynamic field, so change is an integral part of the job. You must keep looking ahead and endeavor to embrace new technologies, tools and, strategies in order to gain an edge over your competitors.