Advertising your products and services online has become crucial in today’s era. Companies and organizations that stay away from internet-based promotions seldom achieve their sale and lead generation targets.
Digital marketing trends keep changing with time. What you see as effective today may not be efficient tomorrow. That’s the reason why it’s necessary to continue learning the latest best practices. Following the latest marketing trends by the top digital marketing agency in Boston can help you get the most of your business endeavours.
The pandemic gave rise to eCommerce stores and pushed businesses to build their online presence. The reason behind this tendency was that people started making purchases online due to limited physical activity caused by the lockdown. As a result, the competition is getting aggressive.
You will have to follow the latest marketing trends to make a difference. Stop following old practices as they are not likely to work anymore. If you don’t have time to write study assignments due to increased marketing work, Case48 can take the burden off your shoulders.
Try new things to keep up with the new advertising standards.
Here are the 7 best digital marketing trends that you can follow this year.
1. Influencer’s Live-Streams
More and more people started using the internet, especially social media after the COVID hit the world back in 2019. They were restricted to homes and not allowed to hang out with friends at clubs and pubs.
Influencer marketing was already getting traction at that time. It further received unexpected momentum when idle people sitting at homes started spending time online. They began watching live streaming on social media.
Big companies took advantage of this shift. They started using influencers as a marketing tool. Auspiciously, this worked well to meet their sales targets.
Renowned social media influencers started making videos of their favourite amazon products. Viewers fell in love with the preferred products of their favourite vloggers and started buying the same.
As per the latest stats, Facebook live suddenly observed a 50% increase in their live feature. Likewise, Instagram also witnessed a whopping 70% spike during lockdowns. Other social channels received a larger viewership. The trend is still going on with the graph going up continuously.
As per psychologists, human-drive live content has the potential to be more effective as compared to the rest of the marketing efforts. You can take the example of Amazon Live where top influencers indirectly promoted products during live streams. Viewers were able to purchase while watching a Livestream.
If you want to boost your sales and leads, consider influencer marketing through live streams.
2. User-Generated Content or UGC
Do you run a business? Have you ever thought as a customer?
Probably not much. Many marketing strategists think about serving their customers the way they want. They try to take care of customer experience, but can’t do so.
No customer prefers buying a product without checking the personal experience of previous buyers. It makes them believe that the product they are going to purchase has already been used by customers.
Customer reviews and feedback is the best way to check the authenticity of a product. Users share their positive experiences with different companies. They are short, entertaining, and real.
Companies take advantage of such USG and use it as a tool to bring in more customers. If you haven’t used the user-generated content so far, start strategizing right away. It can work wonders to uplift your business.
USG helps in building trust and good relationships with customers. Your brand gets the kind of exposure that you must have longed for. The user-generated content helps you provide your customer base with social proof that you are selling and people are enjoying your products.
3. Create Easy-to-use Content
Life is fast. People have become busier due to hectic routines. They don’t have time to sit and read long promotional messages. If you are doing the same thing even right now, don’t expect good results.
It’s time to create easy-to-use content. What does it mean?
Create content that users can read, hear or view on the go. For instance, a newsletter goes straight into the user’s inbox where he opens the email and goes through the entire newsletter within a couple of minutes.
According to research, 55% of people living in the United States prefer listening to podcasts. Because they can listen to discussions while being their way back home. They don’t have to watch anything. Just plug in headphones into your smartphone and start listening to favourite podcasts.
Newsletters have been found less effective as compared to podcasts. That’s the reason why big tech giants and business tycoons have begun investing in podcasts. If you want to give a boost to your company’s economic growth, start thinking about podcasts. They work to highlight your brand and achieve targets.
4. Personalization
Customers feel great when companies address or reach out to them personally. It’s a feeling that cannot be described in words. They feel honoured and carefully pay attention to your message.
Those who send promotional content without personalizing it rarely achieve marketing objectives. If you want to see a difference, start personalizing your marketing messages.
For instance, start sending newsletter emails with the receiver’s name in the subject line. Advanced email platforms such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp makes mass personalization easier.
You must find the following stats pretty interesting in terms of personalization:
- Around 80% of consumers like working with organizations that provide personalized experiences
- Around 90% of consumers find personalization pretty attractive
- 63% of users say that generic promotional messages are highly annoying
Big companies take full advantage of personalization. They show tailored results based on user’s preferences and interests. As a result, they get better conversions and traffic.
If you want to make the most of your business organization, try using personalization features.
5. Video Promotions
Videos are of immense significance when it comes to discussing the latest digital marketing trends. They play a critical role in making digital marketing efforts successful. People like watching videos instead of reading lengthy emails.
This trend is likely to continue for the next decade. If you haven’t included a video promotion strategy yet, consider applying this plan right away.
According to a recent survey, more than 70% of users said that they shared the company’s videos. It means more user engagement through video content.
More than 72% of business organizations say that they have witnessed an improved conversion rate after implementing a video marketing strategy.
Around 52% of customers feel confident to make an online purchase after watching a video advertisement.
The above stats show that video marketing has a strong impact. That’s the reason why businesses and companies investing in video content. Make sure you produce top quality videos that can grab the attention of a larger audience and can get the maximum number of shares.
6. Chatbots
It must be costly for a business to arrange chat support staff to answer customer queries 24/7. The arrival of artificial intelligence has changed the world of digital marketing.
Companies can now rely on chatbots to handle customer queries. The implementation of chatbots helps you ensure instant messaging in real-time.
You might be thinking that they could be inefficient while giving answers to customers. That’s nothing more than apprehension. According to authentic research, more than 85% of customer service will be managed by chatbots by the end of 2021.
This sort of AI technology helps you answer easy questions and don’t put your customers in the queue. All visitors hate waiting for their turn to get an answer. They want straight answers to their queries.
It’s not possible for a real human being to answer questions raised by multiple visitors simultaneously. As a result, many visitors left the site without getting into the discussion. They choose a fast alternative that has a quick solution to their problems. That’s the reason why chatbots are making their place in the market.
Seeing outstanding results with manual staff assisting customers could be challenging. You can use chatbots to make your business look modern, clean, and fast. Furthermore, chances of errors get minimized when chatbots handle queries.
7. Visual Search
Gone are the days when all people used to type a query in the search engine to find relevant results. Now, a large number of users prefer uploading an image in the Google search and look for the relevant information available on the internet.
The trend of visual search is getting traction across the globe. Seeing great demand, Pinterest has launched a dedicated lens to make visual search easy for its users.
For instance, you are walking down the street and see someone wearing a nice pair of shoes. Just take a picture using the Pinterest lens and you will see where it’s available online. That’s how smartly it works to serve consumer’s purposes.
Following the footsteps of Google and Pinterest, many tech companies are launching visual search features to facilitate their users in the right way.
Google has also launched “Google Lens”, the first visual search engine of its kind. It is smart enough to recognize stuff using a camera app on your smartphone. You can take a photo of different items and find them online in no time. See if you can incorporate your brand with a visual search option. If you can, it would be a wonderful thing for the ultimate success of your company
