As this year is coming to an end we thought it would be nice to reflect on the top 10 digital marketing trends of 2021.

1. Virtual Reality

The use of Virtual Reality has massively increased in 2021. Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create stimulating environments. VR allows you to experience and interact with a D world. To do this, you put on a head-mounted device, this device creates a 3D immersive, virtual world through a computer. Virtual Reality is transforming digital marketing. If you are a business owner, it may be worth your while to consider using VR as part of an experiential or event marketing strategy. Using VR is a great way to attract potential customers’ attention. You can develop a VR experience, which you can share across your digital channels and potentially go viral.

2. Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is becoming the future. This enables your brand to engage more with your customers. These days brands are not just talking about themselves, but they want to be able to solve their customer’s pain points and solve their problems individually. This helps brands interact better with their customers and help customers feel heard, and makes the brand more humanised. A lot of brands are now using chatbots on their websites. This enables you to help multiple customers at once at a low cost. Doing this also speeds up the process of resolving customers’ issues and will help you to create relationships with as many customers as possible. We have noticed on websites with chatbots at the end of the conversation, customers are asked to rate their experience and provide feedback on the online assistant. The customer goes through a journey of knowing and understanding what it is they need and what it is they are planning on purchasing and knowing when and how to take this action. The chat assistant would need to know when the right time is to be able to influence the customers to make the purchase.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing continues to grow every year. Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing customer acquisition channel. Research has shown that 51% of businesses have received a higher quality of customers due to their influencer marketing tactics. Influencer marketing can be pricey depending on the influencers you want to use. The higher quality of influencer you use, the more expensive this will be. Always do your influencer research and see who is the best fit for your brand.

4. Short videos

TikTok and Instagram Reels have taken off in 2021. People are now more in favour of short video posts that range from 30secs to 1-minute videos. Short videos highlight how fast we now consume content and highlights how brands need to be posting short, engaging content to keep their audience interested. You do not need to be an expert to put these videos together, anyone can put together a TikTok or a reel, it is incredibly easy once you get the hang of it. Consumers tend to love DIY videos and behind-the-scenes content.

5. Personalisation

Brand personalisation has increased in 2021. Creating more targeted, personalised content on your website or social media pages helps your brand to generate more effective results. It is not only the content that needs to be right, you need to ensure that your audience receives your adverts at the right time and place. This is crucial for audience engagement. When you take the time to figure out what your audience likes, what their pain points are, why they follow your brand, this allows you to create a more personalised message. This helps to ensure that your messages get through to the right audience. As all of your customers are different and are from different places etc, you will want your consumers to be able to view your campaign at different touchpoints and be intrigued and be drawn in by different content at different times in different ways.

6. Nostalgia Marketing

Good marketing means that you know how to use emotion within your campaigns. You want to be able to fire up consumers’ emotions whether that is happiness, sadness, anger, joy, the list is endless. Evoking emotion can be effective at persuading and swaying potential customers. What can be even more powerful is through the marketing tactics you bring up feelings of nostalgia. What is nostalgia marketing? Nostalgia marketing uses references from pop culture, images, videos, or music from the past to try and stir up sentimental feelings. Research has shown that potential customers are more likely to spend their money on products that make them feel nostalgic.

7. Social Media Listening

Businesses fail because they do not know what their customers want or want their frustrations are. If you realise that your digital marketing strategy is not working, it is time to revise it and find out why it isn’t working. Listen to your customers and find out what they are saying. Social media listening analyses your brand mentions to see what is behind the positive or negative sentiments. Social media listening is a great way to replace market research. Completing social media listening is great for you to see where the market is heading and allows you to learn from your competitors’ successes or failures. You can go on to use these insights to motivate your marketing strategy and serve your customers better. Using your social media listening skills means that you can professionally respond to negativity, complaints, criticism immediately. The quicker you respond the less chance your brand reputation will be affected.

8. Shopping Feature On Social Media

This Instagram feature become huge in 2021. Research conducted by SproutSocial showed that 46% of Instagram users bought one or more products that were shown to them in their Instagram feed. It is expected for more social media platforms to adopt this strategy as this is making it easier for users to online shop without having to leave the app they are browsing on.

9. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another trend that has taken over 2021. AI can collect data, analyse it, apply it, and then react to it. The reason why AI is growing is because as the amount of information on potential consumers grows, AI will become more important. After all, it can make data-based decisions extremely quickly and accurately.

10. Voice Search Optimisation

Voice search has become extremely popular in 2021. Have you noticed that a lot more households have voice-activated speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home, because of this kind of technology people are now becoming more consumed by this voice activation behaviour.  Voice search has shown higher precision, the use of voice search has increased now that it has better accuracy to match what you have asked for. With the rise of voice search, it will eventually become essential to make your website ready for voice search. SEMrush has a great guide on how to optimise your website for voice search if this is something you want to do.

There you have it, our top 10 digital marketing trends of 2021. It is exciting to see these trends develop more and we look forward to seeing what new trends develop in 2022. Go to our website to view our other blogs on digital marketing, social media marketing, SEO and more.