5 Marketing Trends to Watch Out For In 2021
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” said no marketer ever. The world of marketing is always presenting us with new tricks and ingenious ways to connect with audiences, create and disseminate content, and increase sales. Here are five trends to help you keep up with the dynamic world of marketing in 2021.
Content Is Still King
Content is still on the throne, reigning supreme, fighting crime, encouraging users to engage with your brand, and helping marketers generate leads and increase sales. Content marketing is an effective strategy because great content can educate and entertain your prospects, gain their interest, and even leverage emotions. Content is what attracts the attention of an audience and in many ways, moves interested parties from the top of the funnel down into the final conversion of buying a product, booking a demo, downloading a white paper, etc. From videos and blog posts to webinars, surveys, infographics, white-papers, and podcasts, there are endless possibilities to the kind of content you can create to join the marketing kingdom.
Bonus: Here are some tools to help you get started.
Chatbots Mean Business
There are few things as frustrating as being kept on hold, waiting for a customer service representative, and dying a slow and painful death to the tune of on-hold music. Chatbots can revive your customers and your business, and ameliorate the customer experience. Chatbots can sift through huge amounts of data to provide your customers with immediate and apt answers to their queries via a messenger app. An added bonus is that chatbots exist on your website or app so customers don’t have to Google 10 different variations of your business name to find your Instagram account to send you a direct message, call you out on Twitter, spend half an hour on hold, or fill out a “contact us” form that has a million form fields. Chatbots allow your customers to step to you in your homebase.
Bonus: Here are some tools to help you get started.
Video Is On The Rise
If the million dollar salaries of YouTubers have taught us anything, it is that people love watching videos, sharing videos, and talking about how great videos are. But don’t quit your day job to become an MUA on YouTube just yet, because baby steps. Try adding video to your content marketing strategy first. Not only is video content entertaining and engaging, it can elevate your SEO (search engine optimization), and ranking higher on a SERP (search engine results page) is always a plus. Videos evoke powerful emotions and as such, can guarantee increased engagement. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “audiences are about 10 times more likely to engage, embed, share, and comment on video content than blogs or related social posts.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Here To Stay
A world where computers are increasingly being programmed to think like humans may seem a tad bit Orwellian or “apocalypse-y” but it is our reality. AI can help marketers with campaign automation, segmentation, sending consumers targeted messages, content creation, and much more. Now this may seem like robots are about to steal your jobs and take over your lives (and didn’t Isaac Asmiov warn us all in I, Robot?!). But regardless of your stance on AI and Machine Learning, many companies are using it in creative ways. Pinterest uses machine learning for content discovery, Yelp for image curation and classification, Instagram to filter hate speech and spam, Google to handle search queries, and Facebook to rank fields and filter spam. Here at 3 tier logic, we use AI and Machine Learning to help brands use consumers’ purchase behaviours to automate their email and SMS messaging with product recommendations, special offers, and coupon distribution. Fingers crossed that this does not turn into a real life version of Skynet from The Terminator franchise.
Bonus: Here are some resources from LinkedIn, CMI, Econsultancy, and Curata, to help you better understand AI’s place in marketing.
Distribution Is Key
Creating great content is important, but so is sharing it. Great content can do many things: attract and engage an audience, generate and nurture leads, build credibility, and position you as a thought leader in your field. But only if people actually see your content. In order to achieve increased reach and website visits, develop a content distribution strategy that transcends tweeting or sending out an email with a link to a blog post. Think about reaching out to influencers in your industry to work with you on creating content, and after it has been published, they too can share it with their networks. Think about that article you wrote months ago, that is still relevant, why not repurpose it? Turn it into an infographic or a short video. Do some more research on the topic and turn it into a white paper. Or turn it into a presentation and upload it on SlideShare. And don’t forget that you can always share your content in content communities: in LinkedIn groups, on Inbound, or on Triberr.
Bonus: Here are some tools to help you get started.
Leverage marketing trends in short-term promotions and full-scale loyalty programs
Marketing trends and technologies are constantly developing and changing, often making it difficult for brands to keep up. However, if they capture their users’ first-party data via marketing promotions and loyalty solutions, then turn them into actionable insights, they can stay ahead of their competitors and form stronger relationships with their consumers.
3 tier logic’s PLATFORM³ helps brands design and execute data-driven marketing campaigns, from sweepstakes and contests to gift with purchase promotions and loyalty programs. Modules like Contests and Promotions, Dynamic Messaging, Social Content Sharing, and Data Capture & Analytics provide marketers with the knowledge and capabilities they need to stay on top of their marketing game. To learn more, book a demo with our team today.
