DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS TO WATCH
As new technology pop up and old technology goes into obsolesence, it can be difficult to keep up with all of the new and different trends in the
digital marketing industry.
Digital marketing has proved itself to be unparalleled in its resilience over the past year:In a field that crowded, you’re going to need to stay on
the bleeding edge if you don’t want to fall behind. Here are some of the top trends in digital marketing you need to know about going into 2021:
- Smart Bidding
Automated bidding on Google Ads has been around for ages, and it’s easy to see why: it is as simple as inputting the parameters such as price and volume and the algorithm does all the work for you. Over the last couple of years, though, a new type of bidding has emerged that many marketers have likely written off: Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding has previously been plagued by a number of problems, such as minimal budgetary control and reduced audience targeting.
Google has improved Smart Bidding and refines the algorithm, it will become an increasingly popular option for digital marketers from this year onward. Instead of needing to carefully curate each and every ad placement, you can simply let Google’s cutting-edge AI do all of the heavy liftings for you.
- Chatbot Takeover
Most of the marketers out there think that the chatbot takeover has already taken place, and they’d be justified in thinking so. According to Hubspot, only 5% of companies were using chatbots in 2016, but a whopping 32% were planning on putting the technology into action by 2017. Chatbot adoption has indeed been massive, but consumers haven’t been as quick to adjust as companies.
It can take a while to get used to communicating with chatbots, especially first and second-generation ones. The conversations can be weird and far less helpful than those with a real human. 2020 and 2021 will be remembered as milestone years in chatbot development, the time when chatbots finally reached a level of conversational capability that will earn them wide acceptance among consumers. If you’ve been wary of using them on your site, put your fears to rest — the revolution is here.
- Video Content
Top-notch content has been the backbone of any great digital marketing strategy for several years now, but the demand for the content format is changing. The blog craze of the 2000s and early 2010s is long gone, and in its stead has arrived a new wave of video content.
Between YouTube, TikTok, and embedded ads, video has definitively emerged as the medium to beat when it comes to content. The great news for marketers is that there’s an appetite for nearly every form of video content out there: short-form, long-form, animated, live-action, humorous, informative, and so much more. All you need to do is create content that accurately reflects your brand, and there’ll be an audience for it.
Let’s face it: every year for the past several years has been the year of the digital marketer. The industry simply cannot stop growing, and it only gets more effective with every new development. Those who rise to the top will be those who stay ahead of the game, and researching for trends like these can help you do so.