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2020 has been a roller coaster ride for marketers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite various drawbacks, certain marketing trends managed to thrive in the scene with major headwinds until 2021.

E-commerce picked up speed as e-commerce multiplied with the stay-at-home trends and TikTok became the new social media juggernaut on the scene. New trends are just around the corner in 2021. And unlike this year when the market was lonely due to the pandemic, the trends ahead are much more flexible and widespread.

Trends like marketing automation, user-generated content, and social e-commerce are sure to become the norm in 2021. To prepare for a brand new era, we’ve created an insightful analysis of 5 digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2021.

1) Marketing Automation

Marketing automation will continue to grow well into 2021 as marketers wanted to increase the productivity and efficiency of their marketing campaigns. Tasks like email marketing, posting on social media, and even advertising campaigns can now be increasingly automated – not just for efficiency, but also to give your clients and customers a more personalized experience.

Marketing automation offers a multitude of advantages, from time savings and lead generation to shortening sales cycles.

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We can certainly expect further advances in marketing automation in 2021, and this automation software is becoming increasingly affordable and commonplace, from large corporations to takeover by smaller businesses.

An example of this are AI-powered tools such as Headlime, with which you can use the autogenerative GPT-3 language model to automatically generate subtitles and copy them for your blogs, landing pages and ads.

2) SMS Marketing

This may come as a surprise to many, but SMS marketing is likely to be a big marketing trend in 2021 as well.

Although a text message is one of the oldest media, it has always been viewed as a very interactive line of communication with your target audience.

SMS marketing is an integral part of omnichannel marketing, where companies stay in touch with their customers across devices, from their laptops to their mobile devices. For example, Chipotle led the way in cross-promoting its SMS marketing club with social media to drive customers into their marketing funnel.

As it becomes more difficult to reach customers on the Internet using cookies embedded in browsers, companies may increasingly turn to SMS marketing to keep in touch with their customers through their integrated CRMs.

The statistics speak in favor of this traditional medium: more than 81% of adults in the US are actively interacting with text messages sent directly to their smartphones, and SMS marketing is growing 10% in 2020.

3) User Generated Content

User Generated Content (UGC) refers to any content that is user created, appears organically created and helps improve your brand’s authenticity and reach.

UGC often consists of spoken video testimonials in which influencers or pseudo customers speak directly to the camera and explain the product benefits or demonstrate the use of the product. This is commonly used in B2C businesses, especially D2C brands.

UGC has the power to make consumer purchasing decisions. And the best example of this would be the most downloaded application of 2020 – TikTok. This social media app went viral thanks to the addictive UGC content that millions of users around the world have uploaded to it. Despite its young age, TikTok has managed to find its own niche in competition with other social media platforms.

Below are the key things UGC can do to help you succeed on platforms like TikTok:

• Desirable
  It’s simple human nature. We long for the things we see online. And thanks to this, UGC can awaken the desire for your brand in the masses without much effort. To do this, however, you need to share niche-specific content so you can connect directly with your audience.
• Connectivity
  Having a real content library with people using or wearing your product will help create a lasting impact on your customer. And to promote good content, you can use hashtag challenges or work with influencers.
• trust
  With so many alternatives available to consumers, it’s important to stand out from the crowd. When you increase the transparency of your product through UGC, you can connect with your audience and build solid trust in your brand.

The UGC trend is not limited to B2C companies, but video UGC is also increasingly being used in the B2B sector. A survey found that 53% of B2B tech shoppers look to video content in their purchasing decisions. The same study also found an interesting tidbit that tech companies and professional B2B companies actually post the highest volume of video on a monthly basis. We can assume that this trend will continue to grow on B2B platforms such as LinkedIn as a form of socially oriented marketing.

4) Revised search engine optimization due to new Google updates

Most of these algorithm updates are so minimal that they go completely unnoticed. However, on this occasion, the search engine is ready to introduce some major algorithmic updates that will have a significant impact on the SERPs such as:

These algorithms are a complex system that is used to pull data from the search index and immediately provide the best possible results for a query. The search engine uses a combination of algorithms and numerous ranking signals to provide websites that are ranked by relevance on their search engine results pages (SERPs).

Initially, Google only made a handful of updates to its algorithms. Now, Google makes thousands of changes every year. And to be at the top of your marketing game, you need to keep up with these updates.

According to marketers, these changes will be pretty radical. Famous internet marketer Dixon Jones suggested that Google will most likely take a Microsoft-like path with its new SEO changes that may include free UX tools and better clarity.

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While Aleyda Solis, a renowned SEO consultant, recently tweeted that Google is about to embark on a unique path to become more dynamic and sophisticated. According to her, integrating intent analysis into keyword research will be important.

From all of this, we can safely predict that SEO will be an exciting place next year. And if you want to get a detailed look at what other experts think, you can Read them here.

5) Social e-commerce

Social e-commerce refers to the trend towards shopping directly through social media channels. E-commerce was one of the most important platforms that flourished under the influence of the novel coronavirus. And with that, the trend of social e-commerce was nothing but inevitable.

Major social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook have already rolled out some major updates to take full advantage of this trend. Instagram has released the highly anticipated Instagram guides. With this new feature, users can share and use relevant recommendations and tips in a quickly scrollable format.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, took it to Twitter to announce the launch of this new feature.

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And the early feedback shows that this new feature is already a hit! With content creators and influencers using Instagram guides to deliver more personalized content to their audience. On the contrary, Facebook already had a Facebook marketplace that served as its own e-commerce shop.

According to reports, Facebook has some major updates planned for Marketplace to make it even more competitive. All of these movements point to a clear path that the “social e-commerce” trend in 2021 will be enormous.

Summarize something

So, these were the 5 digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2021. If we compare these trends with those of last year, you will find that the coming year will be a step forward in terms of automation and advancement of some older trends in marketing techniques. We hope this article helps you get the most out of 2021.

Author: Saher Shohdan

Follow @sahershodhan

As CEO and co-founder of Traktion, Saher Shodhan is passionate about helping companies scale with the right high-growth talent. Saher started his career as part of the Uber launch team in India and has over 5 years of experience scaling market businesses in three countries. He is also a co-founder of P2P events … Show complete profile >