The Coronavirus pandemic has furthered digital marketing by a considerable margin in the past few months. Not like it wasn’t popular before, but now, it is possibly one of the go-to methods that people are using to get their brands across to people. The new normal has definitely changed the way businesses function, and with employees working remotely, everybody is putting in constant efforts to adopt new ways and techniques, so that their organisations function as smoothly as they would, prior to the pandemic. Since work from home is expected to be a key takeaway from the year 2020, businesses are gearing up to target, engage, and retain their customers apart from also generating new leads - all this in the light of the fact that almost everybody has had to do away with the traditional methods of marketing. Even digital marketing for that matter has changed and continues to evolve. People today are buying all sorts of things online - medicines, clothes, sanitisers, food, etc. With the changing consumer behaviour, digital marketing is also changing to adapt. Therefore, to continue making those bucks, here are some interesting digital marketing trends that will take over in the year, 2021:

Power of voice-search

Using the voice-search based method, people can talk to their devices, ask questions, seek information, and do a variety of other things that does not require the traditional text-based or typing-based search. Google, Alexa, and Siri are famous and common examples of voice assistants that people know of today. They are rather fascinating and convenient to use as well.  Conversational interfaces are expected to take over and this might make CaaP (Conversations as a Platform) an actual thing. NLP or Natural processing Language will start trending soon, owing to its intuitiveness and personal touch. Further, it is quicker, and it replaces typing and keyboards.

Learn more - How Voice Search Will Change The Future Of SEO

Tell a story with a video

The attention span of people in general has become quite small. They want content that holds their chin in place but also does not drag on for too long. Videos are a good way to achieve both. They are very commonly used  for marketing and advertising purposes as well, but the main challenge is to make it full of content and information, yet condense it. Due to the pandemic, the trend that has set in is that, videos and ads have left the television space, and are moving on to computers, tablets, smartphones, Youtube, Social media handles, etc. - so we can expect to see a lot more of virtual reality, animation, live videos, 360-degree videos, and so on, in 2021.  As the world advances, people are becoming more and more tech-savvy, and they are on some device or the other, trying to catch up. These new methods will keep them further hooked.

Checkout 15 Smart Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos

Influencer Marketing Revamped

The switch from offline to online will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Though brands and businesses continue to find and apply new digital marketing strategies, adapt to new trends, and get their message across, loud and clear, they still want to organically connect to their audience. This is possible through influencer marketing, and brands will start giving that importance to this concept and use the influencer community to get their products  and brand message across to the unreachable segments. A healthy relationship between brand marketing, product marketing, and influencer marketing is expected to take over.

People believe more when they see and hear someone speak - visual and vocal reassurance is very personal and impactful, therefore, much more engaging.

Pocket your local audience with SEO

Increasing the search visibility for local businesses is definitely the in-thing these days, and it will start booming in no time. Hypertargeting allows for bringing in customers from communities or areas that are geographically restricted. By ranking higher on local searches, visibility is improved, plus credibility also increases. People are always looking for quick fixes. If something is not available at the nearest store, it is preferable to walk down to the next nearest. Hypertargeting allows people to do exactly that. It is time-saving from the customer’s perspective, and from the business’s perspective, it is beneficial because the online presence fetches them the required attention and audience.

Growth of in-game advertising

With people staying in, e-watching of sports has become even more common, and consequently, this has led to a spike in in-game advertising. Apparently, Gen Z indulges in a lot of esports, and because of the lockdown, others too are doing the same. The lockdown has contributed heavily to a rise in smartphone gaming. Mobile gamers ( around 57 percent) are okay with in-game advertising as long as they are allowed to play the games free of cost. Television is going down and online streaming is becoming more popular than ever. This exponential increase in the number of viewers has led to a healthy bond between gaming and advertising, and this is allowing brands to interact with the audience successfully.

It is interesting to note that all these trends have been fairly around for sometime now, dilly-dallying between becoming ‘generally known’ or ‘popularly used.’ The pandemic has helped with that super-nudge, thereby making these more popular than before, and also putting them on the path to becoming extremely popular. Had this been a choice, maybe the growth would have been a little slower; but with social distancing and lockdown, digitalisation is the need of the hour. Everything is happening online and therefore, people must know how to navigate through this world of digitalisation. The sooner, the better.

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