Marketing Trends To Watch in 2021

The current COVID-19 pandemic has changed how businesses work. 

Let us look forward to ongoing marketing progress, emerging technological developments for marketers, and new ways of identifying and engaging with customers.    

We have seen more online transactions, and for most of next year, many workers will continue to operate remotely or in a hybrid environment. 

In order to engage and attract your customers and generate more traffic, leads, and sales, what are the latest marketing trends for 2021 that your brand definitely needs to consider?

We have defined aspects where next year’s savvy executives can spend their time and money. Start with these trends if you don’t know where to begin with because these industry trends could prove the best bang for the marketing buck of your brand.

Here are the top marketing trends around the industry to watch out for in 2021.

Increase in Social Commerce

It’s no secret that the largest and most beneficial medium for online marketing is now social media. Social commerce is going to become one of the biggest marketing and eCommerce trends of the coming year with the Facebook stores, Instagram shops, and Pinterest shopping ads and catalogs!

People use instant messaging services such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Telegram every day. This is why these are excellent tools for retailers to engage with their audience.

Repurposing Content On Different Platforms

With an emphasis to create engaging content with fewer resources, it makes sense that next year will give a stronger focus on repurposing content across platforms. You want to share it with as many individuals as possible when you spend time and money creating high-quality, engaging content. Repurposing is the easiest way to do so!

Content teams will continue to work out how to use content from webinars, round tables, podcasts, and conferences to make an efficient pool of content efficiently in 2021. 

Which brands are winning at repurposing content? 

It’s inevitable that if Marvel, owned by Disney, is good at repurposing content, then its parent company will also do that. 

And they show us some great ways to use ‘old content’ with Disney, then to repurpose it, as well as to do it with brand new content.

If we take a classic character like ‘Winnie the Pooh’ as an example, the content of the original films (first released in 1966) is being repurposed to help promote the release of the new film for fans of all generations.

Power of Community Building 

Building communities has been a drive for marketing teams this year, especially with the emergence of Slack communities across tech and the emphasis on personalization in marketing during the pandemic. 

But creating communities specifically around the sharing and development of content will allow marketing teams to continue to extend their scope.

Event-based marketing will be replaced by community marketing!

Adam Masur, VP of Marketing at Credly, said: “The era of anchoring marketing around a big, industry event is coming to a close. We’ve all seen the annual conference go virtual due to the impact of COVID-19. But I expect hosts to find that their audience’s appetite for the singular virtual gathering will wane, as well.”

Trend of Voice Search

Today, voice search is not only a part of Google’s algorithm, but it also determines current search results. Voice search queries often show different results than a text-based search typed in by the user. 

It’s a good idea for companies to maintain their SEO with voice search components and to engage their customers who turn to that medium.

Live Videos

We’ve already seen the rise of video as an interaction tool, and now the trend is to stream live video content across several established platforms – Instagram Stories, Facebook Live. 

Watching a live video is favored over reading a blog or social post, and shoppable video content is starting to have a greater effect on the actions of buyers.

Interactive 360 videos and improved one-on-one camera experiences are some developments that can improve each of these viewers’ experiences. 

“Did you know that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in the text? This is one of the primary reasons why 85% of consumers want to see more video content from brands,” mentioned by Jeff Bullas in his Video marketing guide.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is seeing massive growth right now. The notion of workflow automation is being adopted by more and more organizations to streamline their marketing processes that would otherwise take too much time to do manually. 

Are you moving beyond just automating your operation in email marketing? Or are you able to handle every lead, and client perfectly if you are increasing your company?

Customers come to your business through a variety of channels. In any of these platforms, monitoring individual behaviors and interaction poses an enormous challenge, which is why most businesses turn to market automation software to capture, analyze and respond to consumer data in a way that facilitates continuous movement through the sales funnel.

More of Brand Activism

With the rise of political activism across many social and environmental issues across the globe, it is no wonder that we are seeing a major increase in brand advocacy and socially conscious businesses. 

In 2020, with many campaigns gaining tremendous traction, brands and corporations have begun to be more outspoken about their ideas and beliefs. Big brands like Reebok, Nike, Netflix, and many more took a stand in 2020 to support the Black Lives Matter campaign, endorsing their social media stance. And by funneling their advocacy into branding, and even goods, some companies have taken it even further.

Time To Implement These Trends

Digital marketers are also struggling just to keep up with continuous updates, new strategies, new marketing trends, and improvements to algorithms. It is a crucial part to be mindful of new marketing trends to stay on top of the game.

So, as you can see, in the marketing world, things are moving quickly. In 2020, among the most influential trends will be AI technology, video, voice search, and interactive content. There is no time for a company to stand still because of today’s demographics and more tech-savvy customers want brands to interact with them in new and exciting ways that make it easier for customers as well.