Professionals interested in a career in digital marketing should keep up with the industry's most recent digital marketing developments.
Every digital marketer must dedicate time and effort to upskilling and learning as the rate of change increases year after year.
Knowing how algorithms, new adjustments, and features function gives you a leg up on the competition and allows you to create the most effective marketing campaigns for you and your company.
As the New Year begins, digital marketers worldwide have started to plan for the year ahead.
Optimisation supported by AI.
To help businesses understand how customers find their products and services, AI can evaluate consumer behaviour and search patterns and use data from social media platforms and blog postings.
Chatbots are a fantastic example of AI in work. Mastercard designed a Facebook messaging bot that employs natural language processing algorithms to automate payment processing to determine what the consumer wants and answer as if it were a real person.
Many businesses, including content generation, are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence.
Content optimisation is required if you want to rank your content in competitive niches. In SEO, the term "content optimisation" refers to things like:
· Using the proper density of major and secondary keywords
· Having a suitable word count and ensuring excellent readability
· Having the best meta title and description tags possible
· Most importantly, nailing the search intent
Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising refers to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate ad buying to target more particular audiences. Real-time bidding, for example, is a type of programmatic ad buying. This automation is significantly more effective and efficient, resulting in higher conversion rates and lower client acquisition expenses.
It's transforming the face of digital advertising so quickly that 86.2 per cent of digital display ads in the United States will be programmatic by 2020, according to eMarketer.
Chatbots
Chatbots will continue to be an essential part of digital marketing in 2021. This AI-powered service uses real-time messaging to communicate with your customers or website visitors at any time of day or night. According to surveys:
By 2020, chatbots will power 85 per cent of customer support. Chatbots' top perks include 24-hour service (64 per cent), rapid responses to inquiries (55 per cent), and straightforward question answers (55 per cent)
Many customers enjoy engaging with chatbots since they are available 24 hours a day, respond quickly, retain your whole purchase history correctly, and never lose patience. By matching clients' expectations and automating monotonous chores, these virtual assistants provide excellent customer service, allowing you to focus on more important responsibilities.
Conversational Marketing
With all of the chatbot rhetoric, the truth of current marketing emerges: it's more conversational. People like it that way, so brands are catering to them. When customers have a question, 82 per cent want a "prompt" answer.
Conversational marketing allows marketers and customers to have one-on-one conversations in real-time. Unlike traditional marketing, this type of marketing is now available across multiple channels, allowing businesses to contact customers on their terms: on the devices, platforms, and timeframes that are most convenient for them.
Customisation
Personalise your marketing in 2021 if you want to stand out - that means tailored content, products, emails, and more.
Consider the following statistics on personalisation:
· Consumers are enraged by generic advertising campaigns, with 63% expressing their displeasure.
· A whopping 80% of people think they are more likely to conduct business with a firm that provides personalised experiences.
· Personalisation appeals to 90% of respondents.
Netflix and Amazon, with their personalised recommended products or movie titles, are impossible to overlook when looking for instances of the power of personalisation.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is one of the most critical marketing trends today, if not the most essential, and will continue for the next 5-10 years. In 2021, these figures demonstrate the necessity of including video in your digital marketing strategy:
· 70% of customers say they've shared a brand's video on social media.
· Video has enhanced the conversion rate of 72 per cent of firms.
· Consumers admit that watching videos gives them more confidence when making online purchases (52%).
· After watching a video, 65 per cent of executives go to the marketer's website, and 39 per cent call a vendor.
By far, the most common approach for customers to learn about new products is through video.
And don't confine yourself to YouTube. You can produce a video post or start a live broadcast on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to increase interaction with your video marketing.
One of the challenges that marketers have faced in recent years has been the increasing use of mobile devices. Due to their inability to be read on small mobile screens, long-form sales websites and emails soon become outdated. On the other hand, video can convey the same information in a compatible way with any device.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a sort of word-of-mouth marketing that focuses on using influential people to spread your business message to a broader audience. Influencers can be famous personalities, but they're more likely to be Instagram or YouTube influencers with a significant niche following who can help market your company or product on their platforms.
Influencer marketing is more trustworthy than traditional advertising:
· Consumers believe influencers' evaluations of items significantly more than what brands say about themselves, according to 63 per cent of respondents.
· In the last six months, 58 per cent of customers have purchased a new product due to an influencer's recommendation.
Future Opportunities of Digital Marketing
As previously stated, digital marketing has grown tremendously, and evidence suggests that this trend will continue in the future. Simply put, the end of digital marketing appears to be bright and secure.
As new changes emerge, every digital marketer's ability to be creative, unique, and up to date on current trends will become increasingly important.
The Internet's current exponential expansion, notably after Covid, is here to stay. People are adjusting to the new normal and are becoming more comfortable doing business online, whether shopping, ordering food or pharmaceuticals, or even banking!
As a result, digital marketing is critical in meeting these newly developed consumer demands.
Furthermore, the next generation will grow up in a digital world and be accustomed to doing everything online. To appeal to these future clients, businesses must begin digital marketing initiatives today.
A key takeaway from all of this is that professions in digital marketing have a bright future ahead of them, and if you have an interest in digital marketing, now is the time to take this opportunity.