The 2013-2015 period caused a frenzy in the digital marketing ranks when Google demoted non-mobile-friendly sites. It also saw a drop in rankings for websites that did not facilitate easy navigation or had issues with poor configuration. The trend hasn’t changed in 2021, if anything, Google analytics have become more refined; and are now only ranking pages with great content and seamless user experience.

With every digital advertising agency competing for the 4.48 billion users on various social platforms, it has become crucial for online marketers to establish an edge. This edge will be maintained by a marketer’s ability to trigger successful engagement, develop consumer-centric content,  and simultaneously maintain a top-tier user experience (UX). This strategy can be achieved through a two-pronged approach. 

  • Monitor Google updates as a digital marketing strategy starting point
  • Monitor User-intent to develop content that answers fundamental questions and established your brand as a key resource. 

Two things have stayed constant throughout the evolution of digital content. The first is the crucial nature of quality content and the second is user experience. If you want to maintain your company at the top of Google rankings, then these are the two main criteria. 

Digital Marketing Trends To Look out for in 2021

Extremely great content is a good place to start, but there are a dozen more trends that shape the digital marketing space. Some, like keyword stuffing, spoof sites, doorway pages, and page swapping may appear to be a cheat sheet, black hat tactics, but any expert will tell you, they don’t work. In fact, all they do is hurt your image and decrease the quality of your content. There are, however, some basic techniques that you can use to maintain favorable rankings. 

Multi-Channel Customer Support (Consolidated CRM)

The first paragraph mentioned a little something referred to as customer relations. What this means, in principle, is that customers want real-time solutions to their problems and responses to concerns. Multi-channel capabilities allow your company to have a 24-hour service desk on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of the dozen social platforms they frequent. The ability to provide customer support increases your customer retention to almost 90%. 

This support system used to be complex and required an increase in online personnel as businesses grew. Fortunately, there is now IT ticketing support software that helps you consolidate customer relations management (CRM) and effectively manage problem resolution. 

Visual Search Capability 

Did you know that the demand for video content is going up by 19% every year since 2015? For 92% of online marketers, video content isn’t just a priority; it also provides a higher return on investment compared to other strategies. The Global Online Video Viewing and Spending Forecast indicate that in 2021; the average person spends 100 minutes a day on online videos. To put this in perspective, any person with internet access spends half as much time on TV as they do watching online videos. This growth is rapid, and every digital advertising agency ought to jump at this opportunity. 

While conversational marketing and voice searches are still viable options, video marketing is the fastest-growing trend this year and beyond. 

Interactive Content 

Engagement is the single most neglected trend in digital marketing today. Your content may be top-notch, but does your audience feel included, or are they simply consumers with no reactive capacity? Marketing has become more about customer satisfaction than it is about making the quota. What most people are not aware of is that buyers are willing to pay up to 90% more for a better consumer experience. Also, note that 80% of customer engagement is sparked by the quality of your product. 

In principle, fostering engagement makes people trust your brand and creates a relationship. This is important because you have a 70% better chance of conversion when dealing with a repeat customer. The idea here is to structure your content into giveaways, polls, surveys, and contests to allow customers to interact with your company. This strategy not only gives you valuable customer intel but also improves user experience. 

Bottom Line

Digital trends change very often, so you will have to be on your toes to ensure you leave nothing to chance. Although these tips withstood the test of time, they still need perfecting.