2020 has been one roller coaster ride, but nothing could curtail the zest within us as we accepted the challenges 2020 put forward with the innovative ideas and enthusiasm being the only weapons on our side. Eventually, at the end of the year, we can proudly confess that 2020 has become a year of transformations- transformations in the lifestyle, business, marketing, technology, education, and probably in every sector.
SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN CONSUMER PERSONA
As consumers worldwide are adapting to the new normal, their sentiments and behaviors have been impacted variedly. There is a sense of caution among them and also a significant change in how people work, how they shop, and how they entertain themselves. There are varied shopping patterns, including cost-cutting where consumers are primarily focussed on purchasing only the essentials. These consumer attitudes and shopping habits will retain even as 2021 progresses.
Hence, when the consumer behavioral patterns have varied considerably, it is necessary to streamline the Marketing strategies that suitably align with the user’s updated shopping trends.
So let’s dig around on what strategies should be included in our Marketing campaigns of 2021 that influence consumers to respond positively to our products and services.
5 MARKETING TRENDS OF 2021 THAT WILL WIN YOU THE COMPETITION
1. AI AND ML WINNING THE GAME OF MARKETING
The primary goal of Marketing is to enhance the brand’s value with enhanced customer experience, and this is done by leveraging AI in the marketing campaigns and boosting the ROI. It is not further that AI will become quintessential for Marketing as 80% of business and tech leaders say AI already boosts productivity according to the reports of Narrative Science. Here is an in-depth overview of how is AI winning the game.
- Automated Data Collection and Analysis: Research from Callcredit shows that 96% of senior marketers waste an average of 5 hours and 36 minutes every week to improve their data analysis process. This time gets saved considerably by using AI that makes automated decisions based on data collection and data analysis.
- Analyze Consumer Persona: Consumer persona is a crucial factor, and it is not only determined from the demographic data but also integrates psychographic and behavior metrics. But 76% of marketers fail to use behavioral metrics for online ad targeting according to the reports of Adweek because they are using older technologies to drive customer segmentation and fail to translate the collected data into more customized user experiences. With AI, these data can be collected and well-analyzed to clearly understand the consumer persona and serve them with personalized messages, relevant services, and products.
- Boost ROI in display advertising: People feel annoyed when they find irrelevant ads popping up during their online activity, and this drops the brand’s ROI. As per PointSource’s reports, when AI is deployed, 49% of consumers are willing to shop more frequently while 34% will spend more money. True to that, we use AI to display the ads to the relevant audience, thereby boosting the ROI.
- Natural Language Processing: Natural Language Processing(NLP) is another asset of AI that is constantly changing the trends in Marketing. AI can generate short sales copy for you based on your previous winning traits after scrutinizing what words were used and which CTAs performed better. A chatbot is also an application of NLP where it understands the user queries by matching the words with the ones in the database and facilitate a human-like conversation with users.
- Chatbot Answering Consumer Queries: Customers have questions pondering their minds before making a purchase, and they expect the seller to answer every question of theirs. Limited human resources cannot answer each customer query, and this could be overcome by using a Chatbot. Chatbots lay the initial ground for the conversation, collect user queries, and a human executive can conveniently come up with a solution. Chatbots also inform them about the latest offers, solve simple queries using the FAQs and update them about their orders.
- AI Retargeting of ads: According to the reports of Marketing Sherpa, around 72% of all online shopping carts are left abandoned. AI is used for retargeting ads to the people who visited your website or landing page but left without bringing a successful conversion. AI can also be used in email marketing to retarget the inbox of people who left the cart abandoned.
So the early adopters of AI in marketing are undoubtedly far ahead of others in the field of marketing.
2. ADDRESSING USER PAIN POINTS WITH INTERACTIVE MARKETING
As per Statista’s reports, 45% of respondents aged below 25 use adblockers, and 42% of people from the age of 26 to 55 also use them. This would deprive the marketers of their primary stream of traffic, including the PPC campaigns. 70%-80% of users ignore sponsored search results as per the reports of Search Engine Land. When your ads fall victim to these, it’s time to switch to alternate potential marketing techniques.
Humanistic Marketing Approach: Your workload is reduced with the introduction of AI, but to bring a realistic H2H approach to your brand and retain the customers you must brainstorm strategies to attract the audience with more humanistic approaches and interactivity, try to drive organic traffic, build a long-lasting relationship with the customers and establish a unique identity.
Staying ahead with Top-Notch Graphics: One of the best marketing techniques that is on a rise is Moment Marketing. As EntitledArts has an established prowess in designing best in class graphics, we grab the audience’s attention rapidly by creating appealing topical content supported with top-notch graphics and designs.
Interaction with the Audience: While the primary aim of Moment Marketing is to engage the audience, the next step is to retain them by facilitating Interactive Marketing. Ask them open-ended questions, present clear CTAs, conduct quizzes, giveaways, reciprocate to their pain points, and establish a bond of trust with the audience. This is an evergreen trend that will give you better ROI forever.
3. TAPPING ON THE POTENTIAL OF BURGEONING VISUAL CONTENT
People buy what they see. Millennials and Gen Z audiences have a quicker response to visual content rather than text, and that’s the reason for the rise of visual searches.
In the current times, the shopping trends have transformed majorly to boost online sales as offline shopping poses safety concerns owing to the pandemic. This also paved a way for visual searches as visual content appeals swiftly to the audience.
SEO for Visual Content: Now it is essential to perform top-grade SEO for your visual content such as the images and videos. To serve this purpose, add alt texts to the images, add images to the sitemap, and use top quality visual content which has been our forte ever since we began. With the exponential increase of social media influence, visual content will change the branding trends considerably.
4. VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION – NEW NECESSITY IN DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
Studies of ComScore reveal that in the upcoming days, more than half of smartphone users will engage with voice technology on their devices. Voice searches are quick but it requires a new SEO strategy to be at the top in the game. People usually perform voice searches in terms of questions and the queries are longer hence long-tail keywords must be targeted well.
Featured Snippets Increase Organic Traffic: Another aspect of voice search is the featured snippets. Google assistant reads aloud the featured snippets on SERP and hence we at Entitled Arts ensure that your brand ranks on the featured snippets of Google to outperform your competitors’ SEO strategies. This will drive increased organic traffic to your business, increase the CTR, increase sessions, and better visibility ahead of the competition.
Contrastingly if you lack voice strategy in your skills of Marketing, the intended traffic might go to your competitor who has included voice skills in their belt.
5. BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION IN MARKETING
Blockchain is becoming a familiar concept and has been on the rise in recent times. Its beneficial attributes like transparency, decentralization, and immutability, proclaim its use in Marketing.
Which of the marketing pain points are addressed by the blockchain?
- Smart Contracts Save Time and are Reliable: Smart Contracts are the application of Blockchain that has the potential of revolutionizing the business. These contracts are self-executable, trackable, and most importantly irreversible eliminating the need for a middleman. When your business hires a consultant, the smart contracts will release the payment automatically after the deliverables are done. No wasting of time in invoicing as the contract is available to both the buyer and the seller.
- Simplifies Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing is one of the best advertising techniques where you invest so much by paying hefty commissions to affiliate networks and still do not get better results because of the dubious affiliates. But with the smart contracts, you can reduce the ad frauds and also profit the affiliate users by paying out at any time without waiting to reach the payment threshold.
- Best ROI for Digital Ads Investment: It is expected that the worldwide digital ad spending would reach over $375 billion by 2021 as per the reports of eMarketer. So when companies are pouring truckloads of money on online advertising and if they are not able to target the appropriate audience groups, the investment goes in vain. Blockchain helps you get the best bang out of your buck by displaying your ads to the audience who are genuinely interested in your offerings.
- Highly Secure Network: There are also various ad frauds encountered like fraudulent traffic, domain spoofing that shatters the ROI. There is a hacker attack every 39 seconds and 43% of the target small businesses as per the reports of Small Business Trends. These frauds can be combated by the use of blockchain that removes the middlemen bringing transparency.
These trends will significantly influence marketing strategies in the upcoming days and boost the ROI bringing benefits to the businesses and end-users as well. We at Entitled Arts embrace the ever-changing trends of the market and produce efficient results for our clients with our adaptive marketing strategies that are a mixture of innovation and creativity.