Innovkraft Inc

Top Digital Marketing Trends of 2021

Digital Marketing Trends

As we have entered the era of digital advances, hope, and growth, i.e., 2022, it’s time to revisit our digital marketing strategy. Here are the top trends that are going to make your 2022 better and help you or your business reach a new audience.

1. SEO | Visual Searches

Visual searches are nothing but searching on a search engine using visuals instead of text. It is gaining popularity and it is going to be all over the internet in 2021. It has shown rapid growth since 2019 and by 2021 early adopter brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%. (G, 2019). 62% of Millennials desire the ability to visually search over any other new technology, and the likes of Google, Amazon, Pinterest, and Bing have already developed significant capabilities in this area.

It’s high time to make your videos and images optimized for visual search and rank higher in SERP. Visual information is preferred over text by at least 50% in all categories of goods except for electronics, household goods, and wine and spirits.

Handy tips for a better Visual search result on SERP:

  • Use high quality or HD images and videos. The better the quality of the photo or video the easy it is for google to select the photo for relevant searches.
  • Have alt text for all your image descriptions. Alt text not only helps in general SEO but improves ranking in visual searches.
  • Create a dedicated image sitemap. Through Google Image Sitemaps, Google receives metadata regarding the images contained on a website. Visitors can do an image search on Google. This process enables site owners to identify which images on each page are most important.
  • Use SEO keywords in the Image/video file name. Using SEO keywords increases the visibility of the Image itself

2. Snippets | No-click searches

The ranking has shifted from #1 to #0 and everyone is running after it in 2021. the end-goal is continuing to shift to more SEO visibility in position zero that is “feature snippet”. Feature snippets are the results shown on google even before the paid advertisements. Hence, it got its ranking as #0 rank. It looks something like the figure given below in the google search engine result page (SERP).

What the fuss is all about?

  • It’s different and helps the webpage to stand out. It is the newest ranking featured added by Google for a long time.
  • It appears separated by a small box and located at the top. This makes it extra special and drives most of the organic traffic on the page.
  • It also displays extra, relevant information. If someone is looking for something specific, there is a high chance that it will be displayed in the snippet
  • It answers the question the user is looking for without users clicking on it as most of the part is displayed in the box itself. And if the reader wants to read further, they can click on the page link.

It’s read aloud with Google Assistant voice searches. When someone used google voice search, chances are, the google assistant will read out from the snippet itself making it even more desirable rand on SERP.

The above graph shows the google mobile click-through rate for organic, Pay per Click PPC, and featured snippet in Europe plus the UK and USA. It is clear from the graph that the click-through rate of feature snippet has increased from 51% to 54.4 % in two years in Europe and the UK. There has been an increase of CTR for feature snippets from 56.1% to 61.4% in the USA from 2016 to 2018.

How to use it?

  • Use long-tail keyword phrases like questions
  • Work on step-by-step lists or definitions
  • Workaround relevant videos to match your content
  • Answer the keyword question clearly and succinctly

3. Content | Interactive

It’s high time to focus on user enjoyment more than ever and gain useful engagements and insights as a reward. The more the user enjoys the content the more is the chances of him/her to share the content. This will lead to eWOM and it will drive more and more organic traffic to the webpage or blog or the social media page.

Optimize your stories and posts by intensifying the use of Interactive content like quizzes, ask a question, surveys, contests, giveaways, polls, calculators, and more. 15%–25% of people swipe up on a link in branded Stories. (content, n.d.) due to this increase in engagement through stories, many businesses are already opting for more and more stories for their brand and product promotion. Instagram Stories accounts for 34% of Instagram’s sponsored content, and the numbers are going to go up in the coming years. So, it is better to use more and more engaging content in the form of posts and stories.

How does it help?

  • It Increases the user’s engagement time. As the user spends more time with the brand it helps them in building trust and this, in turn, increases the conversion rate.
  • It also improves the user experience. If the audience finds it easy to interact with the brand, they build a good experience attached to the brand in their mind. So, it is important to respond to the comments, messages, etc. of the users on a regular basis
  • It gives real-time feedback. If a brand needs feedback on a new product or product idea it can ask its existing customers through posts and stories and get their valuable feedback. If a brand knows what the customer is actually looking for it will become a plus point for them.
  • It also helps in better ranking on searches and feeds. As the content is shared more frequently it tends to be seen by more and more people organically. This can help in getting a post-viral organically

With this, we can conclude that interactive content is the key. The content should be new, original and it should have the element of interest that people will be willing to share with other people.

4. SEO| Local

With the current COVID situation and economic layback, a pattern is getting popular day by day. It is nothing but producing and consuming locally. More and more indigenous startups are spreading wings and this trend is here to stay. Also because of the environmental crisis people have become more sensitive and responsible towards the planet and its resources. People around the globe are opting for a more sustainable way of living. Decreasing carbon footprint is one of the ways of doing it, which is fueling further the go local trend. The same is reflected in digital platforms also. It’s time to go local be it any business and Google updates their SEO algorithm yet again, so it’s time to update your business’ appearance in local results.

Local SEO is even more powerful than broad SEO as people searching for a specific type of business with their geographic location have more intent to purchase. So, more and more businesses are optimizing their website for the local population.

How to get started?

  • Get verified by Google by signing up for Google My Business
  • Offer useful information about your company to online searchers.
  • Incorporate local keywords into your SEO strategy.
  • Ensure you have a geographically-defined service area within your local listings.

5. Customer| Segmentation

Focus on a large number of small marketing campaigns targeting specific audiences instead of a small number of large marketing campaigns targeting general audiences is one of the trends that going on already but will be more prominent in the years to come.

Targeting small segments not only brings refined traffic to the website but also improves the conversion rate. This increased conversion rate leads to better ROI. It also helps in knowing the requirements of a group or segment of the customer and helps a brand in delivering more personalized and tailored products and services to the target customer.

HOW?

  • Start with grouping your target audience by certain traits or behaviors. The traits can be anything from age to gender to interests and more.
  • The next step is to tailor your content to suit their preferences. One thing to keep in mind here is a business needs to select the right platform to target the audience, for example, An Edu tech company tends to promote their services to more video-based platforms like YouTube and Instagram rather than tweeter or LinkedIn.
  • The final step is delivering that valuable content, which is hand-picked for your target audience, to the target audience.

WHY?

  • It helps to build a more loyal customer base. Since the target customer feels more connected to the brand due to the personalization, they tend to associate themselves with it and become a loyal customer in the end
  • As suggested earlier it is cost-effective as there is more focused targeting, so the promotion reaches more and more relevant customers and this finally leads to a higher ROI.
  • It also helps in getting positive feedback and a good WOM for the brand. In some cases, the existing customer might help in getting new customers through referrals.
  • It helps a business get more honest and direct feedback on issues that the clients are facing.

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