2020 is about to end and it’s time to find out what awaits us in the near future regarding the 2021 trends of the digital world, from web marketing to social media.
Premise: we will not offer you futuristic stuff or technological developments exclusively within the reach of large companies with monstrous budgets, nor important trends, but not very usable on the direct marketing side. In this article, therefore, forget about things like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, etc. What we suggest are marketing trends and tips that you can concretely put into practice, even if you have an SME with limited investment capacity. In short, as usual, from Agent Host you receive zero super cool and a lot of concreteness!
Ready? Let’s begin:
Customer Journey, CRM and Marketing Data Driven
68% of marketers claim that the marketing performance has improved since they are focused on the customer experience (source: Adweek). After many years of focusing exclusively on individual marketing tools and single-channel measurement, it is now understood that we need to work and measure the performance of a marketing funnel in a cross-media key.
It is well known, in fact, that the main problem of marketers and companies that invest in digital concerns the attribution of conversions with respect to the various sources / means that make up the market mix model. Mapping user behavior, interactions with the various touch points and defining the entire purchasing process with precision, using web analytics tools is almost impossible, since the customer journey is not linear, but cross device and cross platform.
The same person can discover and get in touch with a brand / company / product through search engines, through advertising campaigns, or perhaps through social media and influencer marketing, perhaps establishing a relationship that is nurtured on channels such as email, chat, SMS, retargeting ads. All these sources and tools push the user to visit squeeze pages, landing pages, websites, eCommerce, which are navigated by users at different times, using various devices such as desktop computers and mobile devices. For the retail sector we also add the fact that users can physically go to the company’s / brand’s stores, a factor that further complicates the traceability of the entire customer behavior.
In this fragmented and articulated scenario, it is normal that Google Analytics and similar tools cannot map the entire purchase cycle and are far from a precise and reliable measurement of user and customer interactions. The web marketing tools are gearing up to reduce the limits regarding attribution and tracking models, it is no coincidence that Google Analytics has recently implemented new features such as Lifetime Value and User-Id. But the final resolution seems far away .
Companies therefore have only one way to solve this problem of tracking and acquiring information on the behavior of people / customers, to equip themselves with an advanced CRM that allows real-time marketing based on precise and complete data! However, CRM must also be managed correctly and integrated with all the marketing & automation tools that are used. CRM is the essential tool to be able to understand, measure and make the marketing and sales performance of each company more efficient.
Agent Host in this area in 2020 made great strides, managing to integrate automation and smart loyalty procedures into various CRMs and sales processes of some of our customers, through one-to-one customization of offers, up-sell, cross sell and loyalty programs.
Artificial intelligence
We have entered the age of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This technology will have a great impact not only on the world of work (Fourth Industrial Revolution) but, applied to marketing and above all to the various tools, it will be a prevalent trend in 2021. According to Salesforce, it is already used by 57% of marketers (who use AI-enabled tools) and is expected to grow by 53% over the next two years.
From data collection, to the transformation of data into information, to the final action: in each of these phases, artificial intelligence will change, improve and revolutionize the way we approach online marketing. To take advantage of the advantages of artificial intelligence, you don’t have to do anything special, except to choose tools that are natively equipped with them, see AdWords and Facebook Ads just to name a couple.
Each of the following points, in some way, is connected to new AI technologies.
Chat Bot and Marketing Automation
The chatbot revolution has already begun, but it is still in the initial stages of settling down. If 2020 was the year of email marketing automation, 2021 will be the year in which bots will become one of the most important cogs in a sales funnel, especially for maintaining a connection with users and driving sales over time. Several eCommerce is already successfully using bots to make lead nurturing, nurturing the relationship with customers through personalized suggestions regarding new products, offers, exclusive discounts.
However, bots are not only used to sell, but also to do customer care.
According to Gartner, at least 30% of our conversations in 2021 will be assisted by machines and artificial intelligence (the fact that we don’t notice it doesn’t mean at all it’s not already happening). Chat bots and marketing automation improve the customer experience, create personalized one-to-one relationships and speed up the response time of a brand, increasing its efficiency and reliability.
The ultimate goal will be what is called “conversational commerce”, where automation and AI intersect with the human element to provide users with the best possible experience.
Vocal Searches – Vocal Assistant
Now we can use the voice everywhere to do research: smartphones, laptops, tablets, computers, cars, smart speakers (Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, etc.). And, according to Entrepreneur, by 2020 half of all research done worldwide will be done by voice. What you need to keep in mind is that this new way of searching for information (or products) online will have a significant impact on SEO , modifying its techniques and strategies.
The optimization for voice searches, in fact, will have to focus on long-tail keywords and on much more conversational searches (“suggest the best cacao e pepe in the center of Rome” rather than “restaurant in the center of Rome”), using the most common language. possible common.
Video and Live Video
Finally, the videos. It has been talked about for a long time now and it is widely believed that the present and future of online content and advertising will be the video format. The news for 2021, however, lies in the live broadcast. 2020 was the year in which live videos exploded: from Facebook, to YouTube, to Instagram, the number of live videos is constantly growing.
There is no doubt that people love to watch live video: 80% of users say they prefer a live video to a blog post (source: Livestream) and according to official Facebook data, live videos record on average the + 300% views and comments compared to other video content.
In short, it is worth investing time and money to produce videos and direct streaming, if we want to achieve better online advertising and social performance.
Brand Positioning and Content Marketing
Agent Host is a web agency active since 2018, which has managed over 320 Digital Marketing projects in various sectors. In this period of time, our team has been lucky enough to see and experience the evolution of web marketing up to now. Believe it, things have changed, and quite a lot!
If yesterday to intercept new leads and generate customers was enough to give our client companies a good dose of visibility on search engines and social networks, today the rules of the game are completely different.
Competition and market saturation (including the most unthinkable niches), the consequent increase in advertising costs, the arrival in Italy and the sudden growth of large marketplaces and vertical platforms in all sectors (Amazon, Zalando, Yoox, just eat, Booking, ePrice, Getyourguide, etc.), have made online competition much more difficult and, in some cases, even impossible.
Today, being able to spend a decent budget on advertising, having a nice and well-made website or eCommerce, to which some social profiles are updated regularly, is no longer enough!
To make your company stand out from the competition, to attract the interest and attention of users, but above all to generate trust and persuade people to choose your product / service (which in many cases is identical if not worse than the competition), something else is needed … But what?
There are 2 fundamental ingredients that today and, in the future, will increasingly make the difference between a successful company and a mediocre one:
1) Brand Positioning = authority and uniqueness of your brand, to stand out from the competition and be perceived as a leader in your category / sector.
2) Content Marketing = you need content and marketing materials able to attract your target, generate interest, trust and to nourish the relationship over time with your customers.
Without these two ingredients it is useless to do marketing and creative communication strategies; it is useless to elaborate complex sales funnels; it is useless to invest even just 1 Euro in advertising; there is no point in building expensive websites; It’s all useless.
In 2021, trying to launch a business thanks to digital marketing without having a strong brand and valid content, is tantamount to entrepreneurial suicide!
Some of you could say that the latter are not trends for 2021 and, if we want, it is true, because they are two MUSTS for 2021!
That’s all! All that remains is to wish you, in our way, a good 2021!
Resources: https://getposttop.com/what-prevents-a-site-from-moving-top-of-search-results
https://360degrees.mailchimpsites.com/seo-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2021
https://hub.docker.com/r/betharmon/10-ppc-advertising-mistakes-that-will-waste-your-budget
