5 of the Top Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2021

There has never been a more challenging, or more exciting time to be in Digital Marketing. This industry is going through a transformation at breakneck speed driven mostly by technological advancement, innovation and disruption. This transformation is creating copious opportunities for those who are able to keep up.

However, coping up with this transformation while still paying attention to the current business can be a struggle for the digital marketers. It’s a new reality we must adapt to. We have to accept that in the world of digital advertising, change is the only true constant. And only way to get ahead of the curve and stay on top of the changes is to understand the digital marketing trends.

Let’s explore 5 Digital Marketing trends to watch in 2021.

#1 – Voice Assistant

Amazon Echo, an Alexa-enabled speaker, kicked off the smart speaker trend a few years ago. Today, not only Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, other tech giants and startups are developing, testing, and implementing voice assistants. The global market for these devices grew 187% in the second quarter of 2018. But what does it mean for you, the Digital Marketer? Voice-enabled apps are going to be a prevalent part of consumers’ lives, changing the way brands and consumers interact.

That’s why your brand needs a voice strategy now. As more and more people invite assistive technology into their lives and integrate it into their homes, it’s high time Digital Marketers embraced the opportunity to capitalize the trends. If you are still not convinced, brands like Domino’s Pizza, Patron Tequila, Ocado, Whirlpool, Paypal, Burger King, Johnnie Walker and Uber have already started leveraging the voice assistant technology.

#2 – Shorter Video Ads

Social media’s focus has been slowly morphing from images to video. With digital video viewing on the rise, consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices due to ease of access and a rise in internet speeds. However, attention is changing in the digital age.

According to a study by Microsoft, the average human being now has an attention span of eight seconds. And a recent research done by Nielsen reveals that 23% of brand awareness, 38% of brand recall, and 25% of purchase intent is driven by video impressions shorter than 2 seconds. That’s why Facebook now recently said “mobile video works best when it’s 15 seconds or less.” Facebook has already been telling its video advertisers to hit people with faster messages.

On the other hand, YouTube has become a commercial advertising powerhouse in recent years. In 2016, YouTube unveiled a new ad format to brands: the unskippable, six second “bumper” ad. The ad format, which gained in popularity in the latter half of 2017, now accounts for 2.8% of all video ads, up from only 0.4% in Q1 of 2017.

The beauty of the six-second pre-roll ad is that it engages viewers without testing their patience. And the popularity of shorter video ads is expected to continue in 2019 as well. But the challenge is that you have to ensure that your campaign meet Estimated Ad Recall Rate. So, you must understand how does human brain process and preserve information.

For an example, if you ask any Marvel fan to list marvel characters and their powers, most of them can do it within a few minutes. But if you ask them who the Marvel Comics’ primary creative leader is, they might get lost.

Interestingly, this is only true before 12 November, 2018. When Stan Lee died on 12th November, 2018 at the age of 95, according to deadorkicking.com, almost every marvel fan mourned the loss of this man known for creating superheroes such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and X-Men. Fans have emerged on social media to share tributes about how his characters helped to shape their childhood. Now they know the name! As a digital marketer you have to deal with this Mystery of Memory.

#3 – Programmatic Marketing

The last few years was all about the technology, programmatic, and automation. Digital Marketers are constantly looking for mechanism that enables them to run more sophisticated and targeted campaigns. Here comes Programmatic buying, the next big thing in Digital Media.

Programmatic advertising optimizes demand and supply by targeting specific audiences and demographics. To reach consumers, digital marketers increasingly rely on programmatic marketing to deliver highly contextual, effective, and measurable ads. The programmatic revolution has focused on combining data, machine learning, and automation to boost customer engagement by delivering more relevant ad experiences.

Google suggests a 5-step process to strategize and execute any programmatic marketing campaign: organizing audience insights, designing compelling creative, executing with integrated technology, reaching audiences across screens and measuring the impact.

Organizing audience insights

Organizing audience insights and using customer data effectively is the key to success in digital marketing. Without data-driven, well organized audience insights, brands are in the dark. That’s why customer centric marketers use all kinds of tools to get a better understanding of their customers.

Designing compelling creative

Creative elements form the foundation of your digital marketing efforts. Today’s users move frequently between devices and platforms and expect a seamless, engaging and entertaining experience. Compelling yet relevant creative is the key to capture their attention.

Executing with integrated technology

Integrated technology platforms enable companies to deliver brand messages through programmatic buying in an efficient way. One of the most important benefits of using Integrated technology platform is that it helps brands evaluate, purchase, activate, and measure media efficiently

This is also one of the most talked about digital marketing trends of 2021.

Reaching audiences across screens

Cross-screen engagement is consumer engagement across a variety of screens, often simultaneously. Certainly multi-screen targeting is easier said than done. There are more screens to compete with today than ever before and it can be difficult to optimize content. They beauty of programmatic marketing is that it creates real opportunity to develop unified digital creative experiences across all screens.

Measuring the impact

You can’t manage what you can’t measure and digital media have been called ‘the most measurable ever’. Knowing how to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns will save you from a lot of stress down the road. Digital Marketers have been using various tools and platforms to evaluate their campaign success and optimize existing ones when needed. Programmatic buying and integrated platforms have brought new levels of speed and more efficient way to measure your campaign results.

#4 – Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is not new and niche anymore. However, the landscape has evolved quite a bit over the past few years. Use of Influencer marketing in digital arena is recently getting the momentum. In 2017, brands spent over $1 billion dollars on influencer marketing on Instagram alone. It continued to grow this year and 2018 has been a huge year for influencer marketing. Predictions for are 2019 will be no different.

With self-educating buyers increasingly relying on friends, family and other trusted sources as they weigh their purchase options, more and more digital marketers are harnessing the power of influencer marketing. Now let’s explore the most effective digital marketing platforms for Influencer Marketing.

Instagram is predominantly the most used marketing channel for Influencer Marketing. This will continue in 2019 as well. You may wonder – why Instagram? It’s attention span again! Even though the platform has a much smaller audience than its parent Facebook, Instagram users are much more engaged.

That’s why Digital Marketers around the globe find it the most effective as a platform for Influential Marketing. And don’t forget that Instagram is currently the second most popular social media network in the world, next to Facebook, and digital marketers are falling more in love with the platform. Another reason Digital Marketers prefer Instagram over any other social media is that celebrities themselves prefer using Instagram than other media.

Another great platform for Influencer Marketing is Facebook. Influencer marketing on Facebook is becoming increasingly popular with brands as organic reach on the platform declines. In July, 2018 Facebook acknowledged the importance of influencer marketing on the future sustainability of the platform itself. Facebook let’s Digital Marketers find Influencers who can reach their target audience in an authentic way, while offering these influencers a path to monetizing their Facebook content and fan base.

According to a Bloglovin study, Facebook is the second most preferred platform among influencers themselves. So the time to engage with Facebook influencers is now, and don’t delay. In 2019, “connect” with your influencers and get to creating “meaningful interactions” pronto.

#5 – Immersive content

In recent years, increased competition and clutter on digital media have caused the entire landscape to change drastically for anyone using it to promote their products or services. That’s why providing an experience is not enough to stand out.

Now is the time to get one step further and provide your target audience with an immersive experience. That’s why Digital Marketers have been exploring the technologies they can add to their creative armory and examine what value these technology can add to the immersive contents they create.

A new research done by Kaizen indicates that immersive contents developed using augmented and virtual reality will make up a large proportion of content marketing in 2019. Let’s demystify them.

Augmented Reality

AR allows digital marketers to transform a static object, such as a newspaper advertisement or hard-copy magazine cover into an immersive 3 dimensional experience and make it more engaging for their target audiences. However, not only is AR advertising more engaging, it comes with increased capability of meeting the specific needs of today’s consumer.

Virtual Reality

On the other hand, almost 75% of the biggest brands in the world have integrated VR, an immersive form of digital entertainment, into their marketing strategy to date.

Though the gaming industry has been completely revolutionized with the emergence of virtual reality, the future of virtual reality as a tool for digital marketing seems a bit uncertain. One of the main reasons is that it requires a head-mounted display which makes it much harder to reach potential customers.

The move into 2021 also comes with a shift in digital marketing. The New Year is full of new opportunities to tap into trends, find what your audience is looking for, and explore unexpected ways to reach new people.