Influencer Marketing

Digital Marketing Trends of 2021 – Part III

By Indrani Pati
December 19, 2020

In 2021, businesses will have to move past their losses in the year 2020, and come up with robust digital marketing strategies for long-term benefits. They will have to ensure that their approach is all-encompassing and functions smoothly across all platforms and channels. Several industries have already started taking the required steps to ensure that the evolving needs of their customers are well looked after. Last week in Digital, we discussed digital marketing trends that will pick up the pace in 2021. This week, in the third and final part of ‘Digital Marketing Trends of 2021,’ we will talk about the radical innovations that will change how digital marketing functions. Related Article : Digital Marketing Trends of 2021 - Part 1

The rise of Virtual Influencers

The audience connects with influencers authentically and organically which encourages the trust factor. Businesses will definitely use this as a key advertising strategy to communicate their messages to the target customers effectively. Brands will leverage technology to showcase their products and services by giving lives and personalities to the said influencers. In fact, influencer marketing campaigns are going to be a big thing in 2021. Micro-influencers and nano-influencers will be pulled in to reach out to the smaller and unreachable segments of the audience. It is being said that with influencer marketing, the engagement rates will go three times higher in the coming year. However, brands will have to be vigilant and take proper measures to ensure that their audience is not being misled with false information.

The upcoming era of blockchain marketing

Blockchain marketing will lead to certain kinds of small scale contracts that ensure transaction settlement only when the conditions of the agreement are fulfilled. This will help maintain transparency with work and also create a drive to fulfil tasks and achieve results. Google’s monopolisation in the ad world will decrease because brands will now be able to advertise independently on online platforms. It will also get easier to analyse the metrics of advertisement, which will help reduce cases of ad frauds and increase the return on investment. Further, fake accounts and spambots will be traceable, and consumers will be in proper charge of their data.

Instagram lite to take over regional marketing

To offer a core and legitimate experience to people, Instagram is testing the launch of Instagram lite for all those people who miss out on it due to poor network issues or just low phone memory. To make things more exciting and to bring in the sense of involvement, they are rolling it out in some major Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. The main motive of launching Instagram lite is to integrate a clean, responsive, and fast experience for its users. This will also give direct competition to other apps like Chingari, MX Takatak, Trell, and so on.

The makeover of branded content ads

Branded content ads will receive some interesting makeovers and tweaks, as Instagram will enable advertisers to create branded content ads without the need for creators to post it on their own. The creators too, will have higher control and hold over giving approval or withdrawing it with respect to any ad that is published from their handle. Brands will have more flexibility and will face lesser bottlenecks while making and running branded ad campaigns. The promotion process will become much more smoother with the options of adding product tags. Also, brands will be able to extract higher value from the content as it will allow people to shop directly from the creators. Additionally, ads will also have tappable elements like hashtags, mentions and locations - both on IG reels and stories.

Multi-touch attribution model with data

Artificial intelligence will enable marketers to keep a close tab on all touchpoints of a consumer’s digital journey. This will be achieved via increased data accumulation and higher behavioural (online behaviour that the consumer exhibits) tracking - from jumping websites to comparing price points, to viewing competitor’s sites - everything will be taken note of for later analysis. The consumer’s journey will not just be analysed at the first and last touchpoint but will be captured at every step of the way. The information thus collected will be used to optimise websites for a more enhanced user experience and create content that will receive better engagement. Change and innovation are two things that are ever-constant in the digital marketing field. To be in sync with these changing trends is critical because they will help with that competitive edge over others in the market. Right now, online is where the customers are, and therefore, that is precisely where businesses should be reaching out to them. Download the PDF version Related Article : Digital Marketing Trends of 2021 - Part 2