4 Trends All Digital Marketers Need to Know for 2021
Like all things, the marketing industry will always have trends that come and go. If one thing is for sure it’s like a revolving door — it never stops moving, you just have to know when to push through and get on the inside with everyone else. Sometimes this means taking a leap of faith and trusting a marketing expert, or even better doing the old-fashioned due-diligence research on your own!
Ever wonder about the changes happenin’ with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even our pals at Google are up to in 2021? Or how about where the current marketing trends are heading? Let’s also bring light to the marketing trends of mental health movements and how industries are impacted during the pandemic. So we did some diggin’ and came up with some nifty trends that we are excited to tell you about. Let’s dive right in!
1. “Let me solve that problem for you…”
It goes without saying artificial intelligence continues to grow to make big strides with the assistance of problem-solving while using the fundamentals of machining learning through automation at its core. Here are a few examples of how this trend is already affecting the marketing world:
- Responsive search ads are designed to help combine your creativity with the use of Google’s machine learning to help deliver relevant, valuable ads.
- Product recommendation systems have hit internet marketing in a big way. which we will continue to see grow and evolve. Have you ever wondered when you go on social media or to an e-commerce site you have an option to “Like”, “Comment”, “Share”, or “Follow”? Companies are using whats’ called “predictive user behavior” based on how many likes a product or a service gets. There are many algorithms for this and companies are tapping into behavior trends through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google.
- Compared to the time it takes to write this blog post, AI can help alleviate this by using content automation to curate and distribute content, saving you time and money! One of these apps which allows the user to create scheduled posts for their social media is called OneUp.
- Chatbots have been around for a few years and have been evolving as we are seeing more and more companies utilize this application.
We are starting to see this trend really take off with our clients, and it’s no wonder when companies such as RBC have rolled out their version known as “NOMI”. NOMI breaks down into 4 distinctive types of engagement:
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- NOMI Insights — near real-time personalized financial data.
- NOMI Find & Save — an automated saving function.
- NOMI Budget — a budgeting tool driven by Insights.
- Ask NOMI — a text- and voice-based chatbot.
Just like NOMI, marketers are finding ways to use chatbots for advertisers’ websites, which help the advertiser with different types of communication. This leads to customer support, as well as product knowledge for the consumer interested in the advertisements business.
Dive Deeper: learn more about AI and its influence on content marketing.
2. Working from home – the new era
When the pandemic was at its core just over a year ago – Canadian businesses, as well as many businesses around the world entered into an economic shutdown forcing companies to adapt and accept a new work era amongst their organization. While many companies struggled to adapt, other organizations such as marketing firms already had an option for their staff to WFH – or as the world knows it, work from home. This set up marketing agencies on the map for digital success to be at the forefront for their staff as well as providing services to new and existing clients.
The order from the Government of Alberta to work remotely forced companies’ to innovate, and to do so at an accelerated pace finding ways to serve their business needs. With companies prioritizing tech investments to benefit staff, as well as find ways to enhance customer support, this kick-started digital transformation efforts into full throttle. This concept has changed the way businesses operate now and in the foreseeable future.
Dive Deeper: learn more about 3 digital transformation marketing perspectives in 2021 and how your company can benefit from them.
3. Facebook and Instagram introduce options for managing social media pressures
To help users manage their mental health and well-being, Facebook and Instagram introduced an option for folks to opt-out of seeing likes on their public social media posts.
The rollout was announced on May 26th, 2021. This isn’t new to Facebook and Instagram, as they’ve been testing it for some time – had you noticed on your own account? You used to be able to see how many likes were on a post….then one day that all changed and now only the user who posted the post can see how many likes are there. Hiding like counts was a test they set up to see if this might depressurize a user’s experience on Instagram.
Dive Deeper: learn more about how Facebook and Instagram’s new opt-out will give people more control over their experience.
4. “I believe you’ll have to ASK for my permission to track my data privacy”
Apple announced via their iOS 14 that any app wanting to use IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) will have an automatic function asking users to opt into tracking when the app is first launched. Alternatively, if a user opts out, it stands to make ads a lot less effective. This is a big problem for companies like Facebook’s view-through conversions, the conversion type that measures how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on the ad, but later went through a purchase related to that ad. If Facebook cannot track that path any longer, advertisers won’t know if their ads are being effective and might choose another platform altogether.
Google thinks entirely differently about this and has pledged to stop tracking individual users entirely. At Google, they understand people want assurance that their identity and information are safe as they surf the web. Google continues to lead the advertising world and has come up with a few initiatives to keep their integrity for this new rollout.
Dive Deeper: learn more about the future of privacy on the web through Google’s new Privacy Sandbox.
Want to learn more about how you can keep up with this year’s marketing trends? Contact the team at Adster Creative today!