Throughout the crazy year that was 2020, digital marketing has remained a great way to source, engage, and retain customers. With more reason to invest in digital than ever we’re ready to move into 2021 with new strategies and tactics. These are trends we think will be important for small and mid-sized companies in the next year:
1. Social Commerce
The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a trend accelerator in many ways and ecommerce is no exception. The lockdown this year is predicted to have a permanent impact on consumer behavior, pushing consumers towards more e-commerce purchasing. In conjunction with this disruption to the status quo, social platforms are quickly evolving to allow users to make purchases natively within their own system, making it more streamlined for customers to move from discovery to purchase. These features from the social platforms were already happening before 2020; Facebook and Instagram are already great at social commerce, but going into 2021 newcomers like TikTok are getting involved as well. The advances from major social platforms along with the surge in dollars being spent in e-commerce means that focusing on a social commerce strategy will be vital for retailers in 2021.
2. Local SEO
In general, search engine optimization (SEO) is important, but local SEO can make even more of an impact especially for small businesses. Local SEO focuses on keywords that have to do with user locations like a city name. Consumers are ready to support local businesses in 2021 and local searchers have shown to have a higher buying intent, making it vital to get their eyes on the best local businesses. Signing up for Google My Business is a great way to start. This service allows businesses to enter information they want to share with searchers on the results page. Almost as important is the incorporation of local keywords on the website and as a part of a larger SEO strategy.
3. Interactive Content
The concept of interactive content isn’t new, but it’s going to be a key player in 2021. Everyone wants repeat customers and brand evangelists, but ongoing customer engagement is something that can be easily overlooked. However, this type of content is built for consumer engagement. Formats like quizzes, polls, surveys, contests, giveaways, and calculators hold customers’ attention longer and improve user experience, and can easily be shared on a website or directly within social feeds. As an additional bonus interactive content is a great way to gain valuable insight into customers.
4. Short Form Videos
Consumer’s attention spans are constantly shrinking, and as marketers respond to this new fact, short form videos will continue to become more necessary on all social media platforms. Brands have been successful with video content, as consumers are four times more likely to watch a video about a product than to read about it. TikTok’s entire advertising platform is based on the idea that short video content is a useful selling tool. It’s important for brands to balance brand messaging with the fun, lighthearted tone customers expect to see in video.
5. Segmentation & Personalization
As targeted methods in paid media platforms improve and CRM systems become more robust, segmentation and personalization are becoming more important in the success of a marketing program. Segmenting is identifying strategic subsets of an audience and personalization is selecting the most effective messaging for each segment and executing the campaigns. Messaging in social ads, SEM, and email should always match both the consumer’s stage in the buying process as well as behavioral information. The same logic should be applied to automated emails. As consumers interact with a brand, either through a form fill or a purchase, any emails they receive should match their known interests and buying stage. At the end of the day consumers now expect to be shown relevant information, so it’s critical businesses meet that expectation in order to remain competitive.
Digital marketing is changing quickly and with 2020 acting as a trend accelerator there are so many opportunities for your business to take advantage of new strategies and tactics. Are you interested in revamping your digital marketing for 2021? Get in touch with Well-Oiled Marketing today!
