Top 7 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

Before the new year, blogs and the media are sure to post a selection of trend forecasts. Last year showed that everyone is not thinking about how to have fun or how to hop over to penny slots online, but is trying to look into the future, to know what the year ahead will bring us. That's why we're writing this article now and not in December. Let's take a look at the current trends that have taken root in digital marketing, the ones that are just gaining momentum or are experiencing a second youth. 

Now let's get acquainted with the current trends of 2021 in digital marketing.

1. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

Mobile shopping has increased in 2021. For all purposes, it's more convenient to have an app at your fingertips than to manually search for a website in your browser. Not every company can afford to develop an app - it's complicated and not cheap. Getting people to the app is a separate task.

PWA is a good and relatively inexpensive alternative. The technology allows you to turn your website into an app that can be downloaded directly from your browser. No adventures with Google Play or AppStore.

PWA can send notifications, detect geolocation, and access your phone's microphone and camera. In general, it behaves like a regular app, but does not take up much memory space (usually a maximum of 1MB) and can work offline. Developing and maintaining a progressive web app costs on average 50% less than a standard mobile app.

By the way, PWA has been trending for a couple of years now. We published a detailed review of PWA technology in late 2019.

PWA isn't just for companies looking to save money. Big brands are also using the technology in addition to regular apps. 

2. Always in Touch With the Customer - Transferring Communication to Messengers and Quick Response

Competition between online services has increased in the pandemic. Large delivery services with an unlimited staff of support agents have raised the bar on responsiveness.

The desire to always be in touch with the service has increased. Users are accustomed to being answered immediately and through a channel that is convenient for them. If earlier this was an additional advantage, now it gradually becomes a necessary minimum.

Services are adding the ability to write to them in messengers. One form on the company website or in the app is no longer enough.

If you do not have as many support staff, then chat-bots will help. They, by the way, have been trending for three years. Chat-bot is the best alternative to FAQ pages, which many users stubbornly ignore, asking trivial questions to the operator.

But chatbots also have the unique ability to drive a frustrated customer to white-knuckle, giving the same generic answers off-topic. Always leave it up to the user to switch to the operator.

Handling negativity in social networks is also part of the quick-response trend. Users are not slow to tell their friends how bad the service is. Often even bypassing communication with support agents, especially if it is intuitively unclear how to contact them.

3. Video Marketing - Brief Storytelling, Useful Clips, and Adapted Ads

Over the long days in self-isolation, users increased the average time spent on YouTube and social media. Remote viewing has left more room for leisure time online - watching clips on TickTock, live streaming on Instagram, Netflix, and dozens of more online cinemas.

The video format reclaimed attention long before the pandemic - video is easier for the brain to absorb than text or photos. Snackable videos (15-60 seconds) are addictive and make you want more.

Users are increasingly using YouTube as a search engine. Videos on YouTube have received embedded timecodes that are indexed in Google search results.

For queries like "how to do," "how to learn," "what to do when..." YouTube gives hundreds of videos, and it's easier to see once than to read five times.

How has this affected marketing? On the content marketing side, many brands that used to run only text blogs or post photos are trying out the video format. This trend goes together with the fashion for naturalness - expensive cameras, decorations, and spotlights are not necessary for a video on social networks. On the contrary, overly staged branded videos alienate the audience.

Video advertising is also responding to this trend. If before the company invested huge budgets in one video with celebrities, and then rolled it on TV, in social networks, and on YouTube, now everything goes in the direction of adaptation. Brands are shifting to the model of "it's better to make a lot of short videos and aim at different segments than to promote one expensive commercial.

Video ads on social media turn on chameleon mode, so as not to contrast with the client's usual content. For example, at TikTok, ads are filmed with guest bloggers and in the format of funny skits and challenges traditional for the social network. Leafing through the recommendations, the user does not immediately realize that he is in front of the ad, and therefore looks longer.

4. Total Personalization - Predict Yourself and Adjust According to the Recommendation

Users are used to living in their information bubble, created by algorithms and recommendation feeds of social networks. The intrusion into this organized world of something foreign is perceived rather acutely.

Therefore, marketers now have to study the customer's circle of interests and behavior as accurately as possible. The study of CDA can no longer be limited to a modest portrait of income, age, and geo. You need to know what the customer is interested in, to crack his "content code" - to understand what he fills his day with. This will allow you to fit ads more organically and tailor your content marketing style.

A study of the KIBO platform showed that 70% of marketers who used advanced personalization increased ROI by up to 200% or more.

Big data and analytics help predict customer behavior and appear in front of them with advertising messages at the right moment. The ideal goal in this approach is to know what the customer wants before they even realize their desire.

Also relevant are individual offers of discounts and promotions, recommendations of products that fit into the consumption scenario of a particular user. The Zendesk report says that users expect personalized offers from brands. This approach is especially appreciated by generation Z - 70% of respondents would like sites to anticipate their desires, and 40% leave stores that do not make personalized offers.

5. Micro-Influencers vs. Millennials

Influencer marketing was a hot trend a couple of years ago, and at first, marketers were offering partnerships to the biggest bloggers. Makes sense: more audience, more reach, more effective advertising. It is like with commercials on TV - more expensive and more desirable airtime in prime time when there are millions of people in front of the screens. But this logic doesn't work in Influencer marketing.

An Influencer must have a loyal audience that trusts him and is willing to follow advice. It's hard for a millionaire to gather such a community around himself, and more often than not, it's impossible. It is difficult to maintain a warm relationship with 10 million subscribers, to control them, and keep track of what happens in the comments. Part of the audience of big bloggers is the haters of their success.

Oh, and the info blasts we mentioned above are making their presence felt. It's not easy to find a few million people with the same tastes and views. At the same time, millionaires are trying to grow in subscribers, chasing every opportunity to increase their numbers.

Micro-influencers are another matter - they may have 10-100 thousand subscribers, with whom it is easier to keep in touch, to create a warm, loyal community. Micro-influencers communicate with subscribers in comments and posts, make sure their space is clean - they ban haters and toxic publics, clean up spam.

Small blogs usually have themes - books, cooking, beauty, psychology, finance, etc. Whereas millionaires, in pursuit of a wider audience, try to publish "everything about everything," maintain lifestyle accounts, and focus on their personalities.

It is easier for the marketer to understand which advertising proposal makes sense to address the micro-influencer, no need to guess which product is relevant and which is not.

6. Visual Search for eCommerce

Users are inspired by influencers, aesthetic clips, or layouts on Pinterest and really want to order the same thing for themselves. But you can't leave a direct link to the product or find the exact name of the item everywhere. Most online stores play the "describe in words what you need!" game with the customer. You can't? Then scroll through 25 pages of the thematic catalog, maybe it's here". On average only 30% of customers find what they are looking for in a store if they have only text inquiries in their arsenal.

Therefore, visual search is the current and long-awaited trend. Upload any photo and you have all the similar products in front of you.

Sounds like something that would only help stores with tens of thousands of items and brands. But the key point here is that the user is often looking for similar items, not identical items. If you're a small accessory or clothing store, then a visual search will be useful - the customer will be able to find an inexpensive alternative to what he saw online. That is, it's already selling the visual of your product, not its prominence.

7. Mastering TickTock - Content and Influencer Marketing

Taking TickTock into a separate trend because it continues to grow and summarizes several relevant elements:

• Short video content that's easy to follow;

• naturalness and ease of creation - videos are shot with a phone camera, edited in simple mobile editors, there are no expensive props in the frame, etc.;

personalization, information bubble, and novelty - TickTock's recommendation feed changes the scenario of social media use. Whereas on other platforms most of the content a user gets from acquaintances or bloggers they subscribe to, TikTok gives them the opportunity to discover something new all the time. And the new content is clearly embedded in the user's information field. Different stylistic content "worlds" are unlikely to ever intersect in the same recommendation feed.

TicToc became a real trend when it began to actively lure audiences of all ages from other platforms. As of March 2021, according to Mediascope, there were more Russian TicToc users aged 55+ than teenagers.

THANK YOU SO MUCH