– Emma
Digital marketing is an industry where the trends are changing on a daily basis, meaning those in the sector really need to stay on top of what’s new and what’s going on.
More and more companies are investing in digital marketing; a service that becomes more and more popular every year. However, this year, especially, brands and businesses have needed digital marketing more than ever, with many shops and businesses being forced to close in person, and being forced to offer their services and products online.
Here are three of the fastest rising digital marketing trends that we expect to go in 2021:
- Specialised Marketing Agencies
Due to the current situation, many businesses will have sadly made members of their team redundant. During the 2008 recession, sadly a lot of those that had job cuts were in the marketing department and these were one of the first teams to be cut, as businesses decided that marketing just wasn’t important.
If that is anything to compare this situation to, then there will be less in-house markers, and therefore more businesses will want to be using their budgets to outsource to specialists instead.
Rather than going to big digital marketing agencies, they will perhaps want more agencies that are specialist in their industry, such as beauty, sport or food so that they can be guaranteed the knowledge and expertise in their niche.
Foundation Agency is an example of an agency launched in the middle of the pandemic. They formed after Google data in May 2020 showed a huge shift in online user behaviour , with trends showing a surge in beauty and skincare, and 70% of consumers now saying they buy beauty products online more than before.
- Less PR Campaigns
The past few months have proven that an event or a situation can take up every newspaper front page, every online article and every single social media mention, and there can be some days (or months in this case) where every day is quite a news heavy day. In this case, journalists won’t be looking for as many campaigns from PR professionals as they’ll already have a list of stories they’d want to cover.
Spending too much time and money on a campaign might backfire, and PR professionals and marketing professionals may use their time to find more reactive opportunities.
Kyle Sowden, Digital PR Executive at Liberty Marketing, says:
“I’ve been keeping a close eye on the amount of surveys that have been getting picked up in the media over the last two or three months and noticed that they’re hugely decreasing. Surveys can cost a few grand, depending on the niche of the respondents you want, what results you want and how many questions you want too. If you don’t get the results that you hoped for, then this could be a huge loss in terms of money and time.
PR professionals are better off spending their money on services like Response Source and HARO, as well as emailing journalists that they know will be writing about topics that they, or their clients, are able to supply comment to rather than producing one big content campaign. Maybe not forever, but certainly for the time being while the world is a bit weird.”
- More Social Media Advertising
Most of us have more time to spend, meaning more time to sit around on our phones or laptops. There have been a lot of furloughs and redundancies this year, as well as more slackers that are working from home, spending time scrolling through social media platforms.
Social media is one of the best places to advertise and market your brand or product, especially as we know many people have switched to online shopping now rather than going into the local town centres.
Ryan Walton, Founder of Aura Ads, says:
“With more time spare to scroll through social media and online shop, brands are well aware that one of the best ways that they can spend their marketing budgets is on social media marketing, specifically video as they know that’s what gets the highest engagement rates.”
Of course, these trends aren’t certain, but they’ve definitely been on the rise towards the end of the year, and we expect them to keep peaking. It’s important to check sites such as Search Engine Journal for your everyday marketing news, to see what sort of changes are going on in the digital marketing industry.
