Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

Listing the Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021 is a tough job. Digital marketing has taken a leap jump in 2020. Predominant reason for this is the pandemic. The lockdown was imposed almost everywhere in the world. Most of the businesses were closed down. People are forced to stay indoors. According to the World Bank, advanced economies are projected to shrink by 7% compared to developing economies by 2.5%. In fact, the International Advertising Association is running a campaign and convincing organisations to spend on advertising. This is a much needed step. Despite this, it was a blessing in disguise for digital marketing in 2020. We think the following would be the top 5 digital marketing trends for 2021.

• Voice based search
• Local SEO
• Video advertising
• Artificial intelligence
• Data-driven insights

Voice based search:

More and more people will rely on communicating with their devices by voice inputs. This is for sure as we see growth in smart devices. Smart home market was valued at USD 64 billion in 2019 which is expected to reach USD 246 billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 25% according to Mordor Intelligence.

Local SEO:

From 2014 onwards, Google is giving importance to location in the search. This will be explored more in 2021. Google will ask and verify listings periodically using Google My Business. This will ensure accuracy and recency in the data. It will also give a boost to several small businesses who got affected during the pandemic. You may watch this video to get more information on this from Sapna Chadha (Marketing Head, Google India and Southeast Asia)

Video advertising:

People are spending more time watching videos than browsing websites on the internet. This will definitely increase in the coming days with more internet penetration and faster connection. Average person uses the internet for 6 hours and 42 minutes in a day according to We Are Social: Digital 2020 – Global Statshot Report. Out of this, 2 hours and 22 minutes are spent on social media. Most part of social media is in the visual form where videos play a vital role. Advertisers will shift their focus to video advertising in 2021.

Artificial intelligence:

Element of AI is used in many places on the internet. It could be as easy as to suggest the next YouTube video to a complex targeting used by organisations to reach to customers with higher conversion probability. OTT platforms use AI to suggest content which you may be more interested in so that you find more value out of them. Social media uses AI to show interesting content catered for you and to add target ads in between. In 2021, AI will go deeper into targeting precisely with the help of various statistical modelling.

Data-driven insights:

Organisations will try to collect more and more data from their users. It will help them to analyse how customers interact with their products, what are the problem areas, where is the scope of improvement etc. This will help businesses to design better products and services to its users. It will also apply machine learning to find out patterns in the data collected.

These will be the trends in digital marketing for 2021. There will be various other factors playing their role in upcoming years. For example, mobile everywhere for any business, enhanced search features, visual messaging etc. All these will certainly make year 2021 more lucrative for marketing in general and digital marketing in particular.

You may read more about digital marketing in our blogs.