Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends Of 2020 : A Comprehensive Lowdown

Digital Marketing Trends in 2021 has presented us with its own unique set of challenges – both on the personal and professional front. And marketers were most affected by the hits and misses caused due to the sudden shift in audience behavior.

In 2020 the total amount of expenditure in digital marketing is anticipated to reach $1.3 trillion worldwide. It does not matter what your industry is or what products and services you offer. You cannot afford to ignore the blazing trends in digital marketing if you intend to thrive in your industry.

Your audience is spending almost 1/4th of their day on the internet and social media platforms. Thus, if you market your product through radio, television, or print media and expect it to be a huge success, we hate to burst your bubble, but the buzz won’t stay for long and won’t spread far and wide as you would like.

You may choose to ignore marketing and advertising trends, but your customers are most likely to catch up and stay updated. That is why it becomes paramount to stay informed about what worked and what didn’t in 2020 regarding online marketing.

Let’s start with the top 10 digital marketing trends which were rampant as the year progressed, putting marketing and sales to the test like never before –

1. Chatbots Are Here to Stay And Dominate The Digital Realm

Chatbots are a perfect example of humanizing the digital experience when the visitor first lands on your website. It makes it remarkably personalized and helpful to have someone talk to right off the bat, even if its a robot with algorithms. Over 80% of businesses want to include chatbots on their website, given that it is online 24/7 and ensures that leads are captured even if no real human is present to attend to your visitors during wee hours.

The forecast also indicates that by 2022, chatbots’ involvement in the business will help organizations save more than $8 billion annually.

Not only businesses but visitors and seekers also prefer having a chatbot on the websites they visit. Data suggests 63% of customers are likely to communicate with chatbots first when they land on a website.

These virtual helpers offer extraordinary customer assistance by living up to their desires and mechanizing tedious undertakings – which implies that you can focus on more significant work.

With organizations and clients interested in getting onboard with chatbots, this makes it one of the rapidly rising digital marketing trends of 2021.

2: Voice Search is Getting Louder and Louder

 

Voice search has a lot more to offer than just song requests. Our smartphone speakers are becoming receptive and intelligent than ever, necessitating companies to rethink their digital marketing strategy to include voice search.
Voice search is making more noise than the year before, and the numbers agree with us –

Voice search is capable of providing all the content and information that individuals are searching for through audio. Artificial intelligence is brilliant, and the number of mistakes made by voice collaborators like Alexa, Siri, and Google has decreased significantly than last year.

Voice search enables more conversational search queries, and updating your content to serve these questions directly can help in improving your online presence in the years to come.

3: Video Marketing Is The Holy Grail of Online Success

Creating and posting a video is not just about being on Youtube. There are several other platforms available such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, where you can start live streaming and post engaging video content for users and viewers.

Even google pushes the pages that include a video for the searchers because people find watching videos more compelling than reading textual content. So, if you add a video on your site or page, it is 50 times more likely to drive traffic to the business.

Live streaming is also another fantastic video marketing strategy for showcasing your brand and products.

Consider these stats and figures about video marketing –

These stats should be enough to show that video is the best way a consumer can learn about your brand and service.

Start making videos yesterday. If your marketing lacks video, you need to start investing in videos without wasting any more time.

4. Influencer Marketing

After 2020, influencer marketing has made it to the list of top digital marketing trends of 2021.

Micro-influencer is a term that is rising in popularity at an exponential rate. It alludes to the medium-sized influencers with specific niches — sufficiently famous for being persuasive, engaged with their followers, and not over-burdened with sponsorship offers.

An analysis precisely revealed how successful these micro-influencers are, and the findings are fascinating –

Micro-influencers, those who have less than 30,000 followers, had a 60% higher engagement rate and, at the same time, 6.7x savvier than influencers with more followers.

5. Google Snippets Get Savvier and Sassier In Search Results

The reason why digital marketing trends are ever-changing is that the platforms they rely upon keeps changing at an even faster pace. For instance, Google refreshes its search algorithms several times each year.

For digital marketers in 2021, it’s a high-priority job to create top-notch content that covers topics thoroughly and is well organized and easy to understand. ‘Position zero’ in the search snippets is low-hanging fruit, making it even more exciting than the first spot in search engine rankings.

Brands are still unsure how to accomplish “position zero” as it requires diverse SEO methods than those utilized for a regular appearance in the SERPs. Thus if you can make it work for your business, it’s an excellent chance to shine.

6. Shoppable Posts

The shoppable post looks like a regular post with images and texts but is linked with an e-commerce website that allows users to buy the product without leaving the page or app.

Shoppable posts are the best way to take advantage of social media platforms. Brands were trying to figure out how to bring people to their channel for engagement and purchasing, which now is made possible with shoppable posts.

Social commerce has entirely transformed shopping. With the Instagram Checkout and Facebook Buy Button, 55% of shoppers have reported that they have bought things directly from social media posts, and this trend is expected to grow shortly.

After the launch of Instagram Checkout in 2019, this method has enabled social media users and page followers to buy the product without leaving the social media app or website.

7. Interactive Content Is The Real MVP

Quality content has always been part of a brilliant marketing strategy, but now it’s time to shift from creating authoritative content to interactive plus traditional content.

There are several formats of interactive content that can be used by brands to get started with interactive content marketing such as –

Interactive content is highly captivating, more significant, and bound to create the results and experience your visitors crave and appreciate.

8. Dedicated Customer Service

At this point, it’s not about attempting to persuade individuals to purchase from or collaborate with your organization. Instead, the need has moved towards giving fabulous customer experiences to keeping them coming back for more.

From providing customized information that helps them tackle issues to settle on a purchasing choice to a customer-centered culture all through their journey, an experience that conveys quality over all channels is bound to win their trust.

Try exploring new approaches to tune in and react to their inquiries. Arrange your digital marketing team with your customer service groups to provide quality at all the touchpoints through their experience.

Online content has empowered customers like never before. Proactive buyers know everything about their next buy months or weeks before they make the actual purchase. Research has become more accessible, and buyers are more than happy to get full value for money. Hence they don’t shy away from doing their homework before buying anything and everything.

 So brands need to bring something more than just plain old information to the table.
73% of customers
have stated that customer experience is a significant factor in their purchasing choices. Yet, at present, just 49% of US shoppers say that the present organizations provide a decent experience.

Effectiveness, satisfaction, proficiency, well-disposed service, and simple payment options are what people value most in their customer experience.

9. Artificial Intelligence

The world has observed enormous progress in AI in the recent couple of years, and is an incredible addition to the number of organizations utilizing AI-controlled technology and automation to help with their advertising campaigns.

AI is the engine behind voice search and smart assistance. It has made chatbots conceivable, currently available on more websites than any other point in recent history.

AI can help businesses to analyze consumer behavior and search patterns from social media platforms and blog posts and use this data to understand how buyers look for their products and services.

10. Interacting with Gen-Z Is Good For Your Business

Generation Z is the population of people born after 1996 and before 2010.

This group has different tastes when it comes to content choices, and if you are targeting this audience, you need to keep certain things in mind.

These youngsters have experienced childhood in a computerized world and have different perspectives than the ages that preceded them. They’re likewise more diverse than the generations that came before Generation Z.

According to recent studies, about 40% of online content consumers are Generation Z. This fact alone stands powerful enough to make brands think about this generation when marketing their products and services.

Ready to make the most of digital marketing? Quit the delay and take action.
Digital marketing trends are becoming more personalized and humanized than ever. But still, in 2021, the intentions have remained the same – attracting relevant audiences and maximizing conversions by helping and providing impeccable experiences for each stage of the buyer’s journey.