Please rephrase the text below while maintaining the same meaning, thinking step by step. Do not add new information and do not remove information. Text: “The company conducted extensive market research to gather data on consumer preferences and purchasing behaviors. This information was used to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy focused on targeting the company’s key demographic and increasing sales.”
Technology advances rapidly, bringing with it new social media apps, improved smartphones, and other technological breakthroughs that claim to redefine your digital marketing. In order to assist you in navigating through the excessive promotion, we have curated a collection of digital marketing trends that should capture your attention in the upcoming year.
The top digital marketing trends
In the new year, there are several emerging digital marketing trends that can assist you in enhancing customer engagement.
1. Privacy and cookies
Google is dedicated to enhancing internet privacy by eliminating third-party cookies from its websites, and both Firefox and Safari have stopped supporting them. As a result of this modification, there will likely be an effect on the presentation of your onsite ads and banner ads. Tracking cookies will no longer be utilized by websites to showcase ads.
Luckily, replacements algorithms are being developed by Google and other platforms to enhance privacy while displaying onsite ads. It should be noted that cookies will remain until 2023. To adjust your digital ads accordingly, you can employ keywords and advertise on platforms that align with the logical context of your ads.
2. Voice SEO
Digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s digital assistant are currently popular among customers, who rely on them to simplify their lives. These features enable individuals to search the internet without the need to physically handle their phones. It is worth noting that in 2021, voice-based internet searches accounted for 20% of overall searches.
Consider focusing your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts on voice search this year. Consider the conversational phrases individuals may use to locate you using their virtual assistant. For example, instead of typing “Italian restaurants in Chicago” on the internet, they might ask, “Could you suggest a good Italian restaurant in Chicago?”
3. In-feed shopping
If you are operating an ecommerce business, you might already know about shoppable posts on social media. It is now possible to connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts to your digital catalog, allowing individuals to directly click on posts in their feeds and make purchases of products.
Google Ads provides an additional shopping tool for shopping campaigns, which involves displaying shoppable photos that are connected to your product catalog. You can create your ad and determine the search terms that individuals can use to discover it. Furthermore, you can set various parameters such as the geographical location and inventory quantity. If your product becomes unavailable, Google can automatically remove the ad.
4. Push notifications
Use this tool to send reminders to customers about their upcoming appointments, quickly send digital receipts, and advertise upcoming sales.
In 2021, approximately 7.1 billion individuals utilized mobile devices, indicating that the majority of your customers are likely carrying a smartphone. By employing push notifications, you can effectively engage with your customers via their mobile phones.
Push notifications allow for the creation of personalized messages that appear on a user’s mobile device, either as a message bubble on their home screen or as an SMS message in their text feed.
Discover the process of implementing push notifications to effectively interact with your clients and direct them towards your website.
5. SMS marketing
Text messages are a part of digital marketing trends that involve directly connecting with your clients. Along with push notifications and email marketing, utilizing SMS messages is a way to engage with your customers by sending them text messages, but only after they have opted-in.
When utilizing SMS marketing, it is common to use it for promotions, coupons, and personalized messages while ensuring that these messages are concise and offering customers the option to unsubscribe.
6. Video marketing
On average, individuals spend roughly 100 minutes daily watching online videos. One of the most favored activities on Facebook is watching videos. To access this market, one option is to develop video ads. There are several approaches to consider. Educating and engaging with your audience can be accomplished by forming a YouTube or Vimeo channel and utilizing videos for this purpose.
You can engage with your audience by creating TikTok business videos and other social media content. Sharing your videos with popular hashtags can help users discover them. If you’re not keen on consistently producing your own video content, you have the option of utilizing over-the-top (OTT) advertising. Design advertisements that are 10 to 15 seconds in duration and can be overlayed on top of other videos.
OTT ads, which are used to connect with viewers, appear at the beginning of other streaming videos.
7. Multi-channel marketing is a must
Customers desire convenience and accessibility; thus, they expect to engage with a brand regardless of their location or device. Correspondingly, your marketing efforts must target the platforms they frequently use, and your customer support services must be available across multiple channels.
Businesses that do not offer multi-channel customer service only retain approximately 33% of their customers, whereas those that do retain up to 89%. The three most popular channels for customer communication are phone, email, and online self-service.
It doesn’t have to be complicated to manage customer queries from multiple channels. Many help desk software options have multi-channel ticketing systems available, which makes it simple. Regardless of the channels customers use to contact you, everything is consolidated into one ticketing system and agents can respond using the same channel.
8. Conversational marketing
Conversational marketing has become a popular term in the field of marketing, although its concept is not entirely new. Businesses have been interacting with customers through conversations for quite some time, utilizing platforms like social media and live chat. The exceptional performance of live chat, in particular, has played a significant role in drawing attention to conversational marketing. It is worth noting that a substantial 73% of customers express satisfaction with their experiences using live chat.
When it comes to conversational marketing, the focus is on engaging with your customers at the most suitable time and location for them. This could involve utilizing a live chat feature or alternatively utilizing platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or other channels for communication.
Being able to think step by step, rephrase the given text without changing its meaning or adding/removing information. “It also implies the ability to resume a conversation later. For instance, if a customer reaches out to you at 8 a.m. but becomes busy during the day, they might come back to the conversation later in the evening. Are you accessible both at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.?”
Chatbots provide a great means of starting a conversation with visitors to your website. In various situations, such as when customers are seeking information, wanting to schedule an appointment, or requiring assistance with a problem, a chatbot can offer support.
Chatbots can be used as both a smart lead generation tool and a means of making customers aware of promotions or recommending problem-solving products on your website or in messaging apps.
9. Data-driven marketing
Successful marketers carefully analyze their data in order to improve their customer service. Nowadays, businesses are gathering a greater amount of data than ever. This provides an extensive range of consumer insights that can be utilized to guide business strategies. If you have the appropriate systems and skilled marketers to interpret the data, this valuable resource is readily available to you.
In Altimeter’s 2020 State of Digital Marketing report, it is stated that data analysis is the most desired skill by digital marketers in new recruits, making analyzing marketing metrics a highly sought-after skill in digital marketing.
Your marketing data has the ability to inform you about:
- How much traffic your website gets, how long they stay on your website, and how many pages they visit.
- What products or services sell better than others.
- How effective your marketing campaigns are at attracting new customers.
- How many customers you are retaining and how many are lost over a certain period of time.
- What your email open and click-through rates are.
- What social media content attracts higher engagement rates.
- Your customer satisfaction levels and the areas they are happy or unhappy with.
- How engaged people are with your brand.
10. Nostalgia marketing
Marketers are aware of the significant impact that emotions have in marketing. Provoking emotions such as happiness, liberation, satisfaction, or even fury can greatly influence customers’ decisions. Additionally, we are discovering that nostalgic advertising holds an even greater potency.
For example, take a look at Coca-Cola’s successful Christmas advertising campaigns as evidence of how nostalgia marketing employs images, pop culture references, or music from the past to evoke sentimental emotions. It focuses on specific aspects such as time periods, fashion, dance, music, food, festivals, or seasonal events.
A research study revealed that individuals are inclined to spend or contribute money towards something that evokes nostalgia, and they are even willing to spend a higher amount. It is noteworthy that individuals may experience nostalgic feelings for a specific era, even if they were too young to recall it or did notexist during that time.
11. Trustworthy media monitoring
Media monitoring has been a common practice, yet it can be challenging to navigate through the abundance of fake news in order to identify false reports about your brand or your competitors. If customers believe the fake news about your brand, it can severely harm your business.
The issue of fake news has become a component of media surveillance. What is the magnitude of the fake news predicament? Data indicates that Facebook alone witnessed 1.8 billion engagements with fake news during Q3 of 2020. Moreover, this problem extends beyond Facebook and encompasses all social media platforms, as well as traditional mainstream media.
In order for a company to be successful, it is essential for them to stay well-informed about their brand and the industry they are a part of. This is crucial for effective business intelligence, and it is important to rely on accurate and reliable reports for gathering information.
If you decide to hire a media monitoring agency, it is important to conduct proper research to determine the measures they have in place to ensure the credibility of the news they provide. If you choose to monitor the media on your own, you should distinguish between truth and fiction by examining the reputation of the website, the author’s biography, the sources cited, the individuals interviewed, whether it is a factual or opinion-based article, and whether other reliable news sources have also reported on it.
12. Influencer marketing
By collaborating with an influencer within your field, you can expand your reach to a diverse array of prospective customers. In 2021, the industry has accumulated a revenue exceeding $13 billion. This promotional tactic entails presenting complimentary items to a social media figure or compensating them for endorsing your merchandise. In return, they compose a post informing their followers about your brand.
Instead of investing a large sum of money to collaborate with a high-profile influencer who has a substantial following, you can explore the option of partnering with a micro-influencer, who typically possesses a follower count ranging from 1,000 to 10,000, on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram.
Forbes states that a micro-influencer caters to specific audiences, making them valuable to a brand due to their ability to reach a small portion of a focused demographic with an interest in the brand. Additionally, they have a higher level of trustworthiness among their followers.
As a result of the GDPR law, numerous companies have started informing website visitors about the utilization of tracking software such as cookies. Additionally, marketing requires customers to grant further permissions in order to opt-in for email subscription lists or receive promotional communication.
