10 marketing trends that will make a difference in 2021

1. Community Marketing

Let's be honest, we've had it with all the zoom webinars, teams presentations and other online events. Gradually we are ready for genuine human contact. This is also reflected in the marketing trends. Event-based marketing will decline and community marketing will play a greater role. That makes it important to ensure that your company is visible on community platforms. This may concern third-party platforms, but also your own platform. Also, don't forget the importance of social media, such as facebook groups. If you want to know more about online community platforms, read our blog about it.

2. Commitment

Marketing trend number 2 is in line with the need for human contact. It is becoming increasingly important not only to be present online, but also to interact with your leads here. Think of panels and discussion groups. This way you not only share your knowledge, but you also make it relevant for specific leads.

These developments do not mean that you should no longer organize webinars at all. It is important to think about how you connect with visitors, leads and customers before, during and after the webinar.

3. Automated Personalization

You can meet the need for personal contact not only on platforms and on social, but also in your email marketing, on your website and in advertisements. This way you can ensure that all your marketing activities match the customer journey. The marketing activities of your organizations are so helpful to the lead, instead of disruptive. Read more about automated personalization here.

An important concept here is conversational marketing. This form of marketing is all about connecting your customers and building a relationship through personalized content. A good conversational growth strategy ranges from socials to chatbot and from WhatsApp to Pinterest.

4. Deep data, AI and machine learning

To connect well with marketing trend number 3, knowledge of your visitors, leads and customers is indispensable. Fortunately, Google, Facebook and other advertising channels have spent years gaining insight into what works and what doesn't. Responsive and dynamic ads will therefore be used much more in the near future.

Through tools such as Google Analytics and HubSpot Do you have these insights yourself? 2021 is the time to use this to achieve optimal results. Through machine learning and historical data, we know better and better whether or not a visitor will become a lead on your website. That makes it more important than ever to keep track of your data (because garbage in = garbage out).

5.Personal branding

Why are influencers so successful? Because they are people. The more human your brand, the more successful your business will be. Provide a clearly recognizable face for your company with a consistent house style and tone-of-voice. But being human is also about interacting. Social media is the perfect tool for this. You can do this via your company account, but you can make it even more personal if the social media channels of your employees use it.

6. Authentic content with depth

More and more knowledge sharing takes place via the internet. To be a major player here, it's important to share authentic content with depth. Authentic means more than that you do not commit plagiarism 😉 Make sure that your personal brand and your own tone-of-voice come to the fore here. And you provide depth by making sure you have more to say than other companies writing about the same topics. Saying more does not mean using more words.

When it comes to sharing knowledge, it is important not to lose sight of other trends. Talk not only to your visitors, but also to them. Share your content on platforms and challenge users to interact with your post.

7. Inbound Marketing

You can actually deduce it from many of the aforementioned trends: inbound is here to stay! Sharing authentic knowledge, connecting with your leads via social media and other community platforms, it all fits perfectly within the inbound method of attract, commits en delight† And don't many of the aforementioned trends revolve around satisfied customers, the means to keep the flywheel of inbound marketing turning? Read more about the principles of inbound marketing here.

8. Channel Fusion

Different digital channels are becoming increasingly interconnected. For example, consider social e-commerce. WhatsApp, Instagram and Pinterest, for example, will play an increasingly important role in B2C marketing, partly because of the possibility to make purchases directly from the apps.

Marketplaces such as bol.com and amazon.nl will also play an increasingly important role. Google is also working on this with the Google Action Workplace. It is already available in the US and France and is expected to be available in the Netherlands in 2021. But even without it, Google already plays a major role in the channel merger. Think of the possibility to chat from Google My Business or the possibility to book a restaurant directly from Google Maps.

It is especially important for the marketing of your organization to respond to this and to be present on all relevant channels.

9.Voice search

Siri, Google Home and Alexa are contributing to more and more voice searches. That changes the nature of the searches: instead of a few content words, an entire question is often asked. Compare 'marketing trends 2021' with 'Alexa, what are the marketing trends for 2021'. This change in the way of searching has consequences for your SEO optimization. Websites that clearly answer questions score higher in these searches and the long tail keywords are becoming increasingly important. Read more about trends in SEO here.

10. Cookies

Initiatives such as the cookie law, GDPR/AVG and Apple's ITP are reducing the effectiveness of tracking cookies. So prepare for a world without (third party) cookies. This makes tracking more difficult. Fortunately, this is a gradual process! For now, this means that permission is required for cookies and that the customer expects privacy. Safaris already has a complete ban on third party cookies. Fortunately, there are solutions in the form of first party cookies and fingerprints.

Want to know more?

Want to know more about online marketing? Then you might also be interested in our blog about SEA? Or would you rather know more about A/B testing?

Sparring about the Online marketing of your organization? That too is possible! Our marketers are ready.