Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends To Look Out For

Since India is still an emerging market, it is only the 11th country in the world in terms of digital ad spending. All the reports point to the digital expansion among the common people of our country. We should make renewed efforts to study consumer patterns and strategize according to their expectations from businesses. Today, we are going to look at the top digital marketing trends for the coming years.

The progress in the world of technology has ensured that we have better and finer means of connecting with people from all over the world. As we have made immense advancements in the world of the internet, the forms of marketing have also gone for a complete makeover.

Digital marketing trends are patterns in the digital arena that is gaining prominence over other means of online communication. Various factors come into play while determining the trend that digital marketing follows. The most important factor is consumer satisfaction.

Every Step Is Taken After Prioritizing The Consumers And Taking Their Wants And Preferences Into Account.

Today, digital marketing has made it possible to promote a business, a brand, and its features to the world at large. What was once only a distant possibility has today become a reality in the marketing scenario.

Digital marketing is one of the main components that make up the marketing initiatives of a business organization. Add to it, the abundant social media channels, and we have a huge market to position and promulgate a product or a service.

Some Insights

The digital marketing space constitutes SEO, SEM, Social Media, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and social media along with other modes.

Every aspect of digital marketing holds great significance in the entire marketing effort. Therefore, we are constantly evolving in the digital world, bringing in new methods and processes to further add value to consumers and increase brand awareness.

Digital Marketing is an extremely cost-effective means to promote your brand. The ROI is huge compared to different forms of traditional marketing. Moreover, the intrinsic nature of digital marketing enables a business to reach a far greater number of consumers in a short period.

Take a look at the extent of the internet in our everyday lives. We are constantly connected globally through the internet. This realization gave rise to the increased efforts of producing more targeted content for consumption.

Today businesses invest millions of dollars in digital marketing. According to Statista, the US spends the most on digital advertising than any other country. It is more than 195 billion dollars and is only expected to invest even larger amounts.

India is a rapidly evolving digital market. The growth in the number of mobile users over the last few years has been unprecedented in India. It has further cemented the belief that digital marketing will play a vital role in the Indian market in the coming years.

Here Are Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends For 2022.

1) Digital Marketing Trends – Social and Private Messaging apps

Messaging applications whether private like WhatsApp, Hike, Viber, or social media messaging apps like FB or Wechat have tremendous potential as means of marketing in 2021. Companies are now tapping into these less used resources to target consumers with relevant messages to optimize marketing initiatives. According to various data and research study provided by Statista

Some statistics

More than 1.2 billion monthly users are active on FB messenger.

10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses in Fb messenger. WhatsApp is the most popular mobile messenger app with 1600 million users closely followed by Facebook messenger with 1300 and Wechat with 1133 million users respectively as of October 2019.

A lot of companies nowadays ask permission to send important information relating to a product or service through your WhatsApp. A lot of brands give you the option of receiving new updates on products you’ve purchased or viewed on WhatsApp. Godaddy,  This is going to increase to a great extent in 2021.

These messages give you the benefit of being able to modify messages according to consumer preference before sending them. Also, they are direct means of communication that builds trust and customer loyalty. Providing customer support also becomes easier this way. Businesses can successfully address grievances and answer inquiries boosting the reputation of the brand as well.

Not just noted brands, even new businesses that are just in their nascent stage can leverage the benefits of these messaging apps to gain exposure and reach.

Business organizations have realized the excellent business opportunities provided by these apps and 2021 will see a surge in marketing efforts using these applications.

2) Digital Marketing Trends – Chatbots

Chatbots are virtual assistants that facilitate smooth communication between your business and your consumer. It is what we describe as Artificial Intelligence (AI) software that is employed to save time, money, and manual efforts to maximize digital marketing initiatives.

Generally, they come in two forms, either as verbal communications or as chat windows. They solve queries in real-time and are active 24*7. They provide excellent customer support and perform repetitive work with ease. This helps people to focus on more pertinence areas. They analyze user requests, identifies user intent provides relevant information.

ACCORDING TO A STUDY BY  BOT CORE,

80% of businesses want Chatbots by 2021, The reason is that Chatbots sound more intelligent in comparison to humans.

90% of modern BI platforms will have BOTS as a prominent feature by 2021.

63% of people prefer to interact with chatbots than humans because they are an amazing temperament and never lose patience. Also, they provide accurate information quickly and have your whole history at their fingertips.

Companies that use Chatbots successfully today are Spotify, MasterCard, The Wall Street Journal, Uber, Sephora are some companies. They integrate Chatbot applications in their consumer interaction process quite seamlessly.

Mary Beth Laughton, digital senior vice president of Sephora thinks Chatbots are a great way to connect with customers more efficiently. According to her,

“This allows us to provide richer, more varied conversations that ensure clients get exactly what they want out of the experience.”

3) Digital Marketing Trends – Personalization

The year 2021 and beyond expects that the business organizations are going to be more sincere with the efforts of personalizing digital marketing initiatives. Even in 2021, companies are not leveraging the benefits of personalization to the maximum.

Personalization is to mold a certain element like an email or your content to meet individual preferences and wants. Today, as online users purchase products and services their purchase history is recorded on those sites.

Personalization enables companies to send targeted recommendations and ideas based on the user’s purchasing decisions. Taking into account the behavioral pattern of a consumer, a business or a brand can go so far as to even recommend focused products even among the various products their brand has.

For example: if a cosmetic brand sees that a consumer prefers a certain fragrance in the shampoos they sell, these businesses can recommend similar products that have the same fragrances.

Personalization is an effective tactic to advertise relevant content to your consumer. According to statistics from Instapage,  63% of consumers are highly irritated with generic advertising.

These are irrelevant and meaningless to the consumer and serve no purpose. Even today, a lot of business enterprises make the mistake of generally advertising products that hold no meaning to consumers. Also, a very big percentage, that is 90%,  find personalization appealing.

44% of users who have personalized shopping experience likely turn into repeated buyers (Eco Consultancy)

Looking at the various reports and percentages it is clear that personalization is a trend that holds the key to successful digital marketing in 2021 and beyond.

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4) Digital Marketing Trends – Video Marketing

The impact of videos is known to all. Today, the digital entertainment industry has completely altered the viewing pattern of the Millenials with focussed high-quality content. They cater to the preferences of the youth.  Television has become a redundant medium for them now.

Video marketing will remain one of the hot trends not just in 2021 but also in the coming decade. The statistics are also very positive where video marketing is concerned. Business enterprises know the relevance and influence of video as a strategy for their marketing. But this element still has a lot of scopes to explore.

Insights

According to wyzowl, more than 70%  of consumers say that they share a brand’s video if it appeals to them. More than 50% say that videos instill faith in the product, and more than 70% of businesses record higher conversions with video marketing.

One of the best examples of video marketing is YouTube, but today this component is not just limited to YouTube videos. Instagram live videos, stories, FB videos, are some prime examples of video marketing. Bloggers, content marketers, content writers post videos delineating important points on various topics.

With people using mobile devices more, the features of a particular product are better explained in a video format than with text. Also, retention is way more in pictorial and video depiction always. More with videos, since they appeal to the senses. Also, 2021 will see new immersive video content. They are far more encouraging and have 3x the conversion rate as per studies.

Also, video is pretty flexible and can embed metadata, text, pictures for more details. Live videos for businesses enable better product viewing. Videos also have the trait of ingenuity and originality. That lends the touch of transparency and honesty in digital marketing campaigns.

When your video content is good it will rank in SEOs. With no persuasion tactic that goes into SEO rankings, you know the quality of content is good.

Business houses will leverage these characteristics and new trends emerging in video marketing to promulgate their product.

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5) Digital Marketing trends – Visual Search

Visual Search is one of the most popular trends in digital marketing. It is fast gathering momentum as one of the favorite elements of Millenials. Visual search is a machine learning software. It is slated to be one of the top trends in 2021 and will remain prominent in the coming years.

Visual Search entails the scanning of the surroundings and environment of a particular image. You show relevant information aligning to the scanned area in the pic.

This is done by analyzing consumer demand. Google and Pinterest use visual search tools to search to provide a user with useful data.

Let’s take an example

Suppose you see an image of apparel. You can see a lens icon on the image. When you use that lens icon, applications would search for similar products and display them to you. In a visual search you can zoom in on a particular element in the picture and the visual search tool would automatically display some images related to the zoomed element in the picture.

This is very much a part of Pinterest’s promotional tactics. For instance, you zoom in on a pair of glasses, Pinterest will show similar glasses with the same design, shape, and material to fit your needs. Bing allows you to focus on a particular product and then give you details as to where you can find such items.

Visual search is most popular in niches like fashion, home decor, food, beauty products, travel, dresses, etc. Since it is applicable for most goods marketers should start realizing the enormous benefits arising out of this technology.

They will not only be able to improve their online reputation but will also have an edge over peers who are still contemplating leveraging visual search for marketing campaigns.

We have discussed that visual search is one of the top trends that will get even more relevance in 2021. Let’s back up our claims with some reports and stats.

According to Social Media Today, there are 600 million visual searches on Pinterest each month. Image-based Pinterest ads have a conversion rate of 8.5%. 62% of Millenials desire the ability to visually search for products.

6) Digital Marketing trends – Micro-Moments

This is also touted as one of the popular innovations that are currently trending in the digital marketing space. What do we understand by micro-moments? They are those little moments where we make quick decisions regarding various activities. For example, we make purchasing decisions in an instant, the same goes for food, sometimes clothing.

Micro-moments in digital parlance are those specific moments when we turn to a mobile device like a phone or tablet for solutions. That is the solution for our requirements at that moment.

Micro-moments are instant. Therefore, you have to be prompt and useful to make a mark with this trend. The dependence on mobile devices has given structure to this thought process.

This process is increasing by leaps and bounds with the growth of mobile users in India. A small, convenient-to-handle device that swims with information gives us results as quickly as possible.

Therefore. the sales funnel doesn’t hold here since it is a time-bound process. Rather micro-moments give the users the cause to make a decision and the impetus to act on that immediately.

For instance, you feel like having pizza. The micro-moment is when you decide you are going to have pizza and check on the various restaurants available in your vicinity. The whole processing happens in the shortest time possible, expedited by the use of mobile phones. That is a micro-moment. Maps and GPS play a vital role in micro-moments.

To leverage the benefits of this trend you have to study consumer behavior, identify their needs, and how long they take to act upon it. When they want to go to a nearby store, display relevant targeted results. Analyze the data available and measure the moments that matter.

7) Digital marketing trends- Voice search

This is a very popular trend all over the world and will only grow in popularity and usage in 2021. Voice search is the practice of inquiring about products and services through voice search software. It is an advanced artificial intelligence technology that aims to connect various devices and sync our behavioral patterns for a more targeted dissemination of content.

According to a study from BrightLocal, 58% of consumers used voice search to find local businesses in 2017, and 46% of people use voice search daily for their needs.

Comscore says that by 2021, half of the online searches (50 % ) will be facilitated by voice search. Voice search is so popular because it saves time, energy, and effort. It allows you to multitask. You can always search for something via the voice software while doing something important to you.

From the marketer’s point of view, it is a relatively economical way of disseminating information if one considers the huge ROI arising from it. Voice search Optimisation will gain prominence in 2021 with marketers making more effort to further perfect the voice search system.

We are quite familiar with voice search programs today like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri. A voice search should foster greater camaraderie between business and clients and provide relevant information to build trust.

Domino’s, Paypal, Nestle are some companies that use voice search to augment customer experience for better connect with the existing as well as potential consumers.

8) Digital Marketing trends – Social Influencer

It is the kind of marketing that is bound to yield results for any business enterprise for a long time to come. The key traits of social influencer marketing are trust and accountability. Social influencers have a fan base that believes in them.

These personalities, therefore, can help businesses build brand awareness around their products and services through different social media marketing channels.

YouTube,  Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest are some of the social media marketing channels that can help you get message exposure. The positive reviews from influencers about your product can get you that initial reach and visibility among your target audience.

The key to successful social media influencing is by recruiting relevant people who have genuine goodwill among the followers. They should be enterprising and communicate the message. Transparency is vital for social media influencers. According to studies, 92% of people trust recommendations coming from customers who have used the product or service.

9) Digital marketing Trends – Push Notifications

Push notifications are a great innovation in digital marketing that is quite popular with the youth today. This trend will follow in 2021 and marketers need to leverage the benefits of push notifications to disseminate better and focused content. If there is important news to be shared push notifications can send out the information to the online users independent of whether they are on the website or not.

Push notification ensures that we communicate with our target group in a more precise powerful way. They also help to retain customers through information that is inspiring and educational. Push notifications of a higher open rate than email and can help retain customer loyalty better.

After studies, they have an astounding opening rate of 90% which is 50% higher than that of emails. 70% of people feel push notifications are relevant and important. The figures are proof of how very effective push notifications are for the overall digital marketing endeavor.  It will continue to remain one of the main trends for businesses to send information to their users.

10) Digital marketing Trends – Study Of Consumer Behaviour, Patterns And Customer Retention

Acquiring new customers is mandatory for a business to succeed. But so is retaining the existing consumers. According to the various reports and analysis business houses will emphasize more on retaining the consumers in the next 5 to 10 years. It is important to keep your conversions happy for greater digital marketing success. If customer retention drops, the goodwill of your business enterprise is jeopardized. As a result, there is a sharp decline in revenue. business houses have realized the importance of being able to live up to the expectations of the customers who are loyal to the brand. In 2021 and beyond consumers will expect marketers to disseminate honest high-value content to them to improve the online reputation of the brand.

Conclusion

These are some of the most notable digital marketing trends that have become popular in 2021 in the digital marketing space. distance will continue to grow and cultivate new clients and leaves for business enterprises in 2022 and for more years to come.

Some more digital marketing trends that are very important are single Marketing software providers which are an all-in-one marketing platform like HubSpot. It gets all your marketing efforts under one platform for more convenient campaigning.

The others are interactive content split testing pages, Omni-channel Marketing, Geofencing, progressive web apps, hyper-targeted advertisements, etc. The mushrooming of technology has enabled greater accessibility and focus for a digital marketer. The incisive business houses will leverage all the advantages of these trends to be at the top of the game.