2021 Advertising Developments: Right here's What No one Is Speaking About
I know you are ready for 2021 marketing trends because you've read this blog and tons of other marketing blogs, right?
Here's the thing: I also read the most popular marketing blogs, follow all marketing YouTube channels, and listen to the same podcasts as you do.
And I've noticed that very few people talk about what's really going to happen in 2021 and beyond.
Sure, they talk about the importance of voice search and that Google is mobile first. You could mention marketing automation.
There are actually more interesting trends that are affecting your marketing that no one is really talking about.
Which marketing trends should you be focusing on?
Marketing trend # 1: companies that rely on Google Analytics are losing
We all love Google Analytics.
I love it so much that I sign up at least three or four times a day. And here's the kicker: I get so much traffic that my Google Analytics only update once a day.
You are probably wondering what is wrong with Google Analytics.
Actually, there isn't much to complain about. It's a great tool, especially considering it's free.
But marketing is changing. New channels are being introduced all the time, such as voice search.
Transactions are no longer as easy as someone who comes to your website from an ad and makes a purchase.
These days there are things like upsells, downsells, repeat purchases, retargeting, and even checkout issues. Additionally, there are so many different ways that you can generate income for your online business such as: B. partnerships, affiliate marketing and even webinars.
This has resulted in companies using analytics solutions like Amplitude, which are better tied into their database. Or better yet, you will see a big boost in business intelligence.
A central place where you can pull in all of your data and make more informed decisions to optimize your worth living instead of your short term income.
In 2021, more companies will be moving from paid to free business intelligence solutions like Google Data Studio.
If you haven't checked out Data Studio, you'll want to start now because it's easy to put all of your business and marketing data in one place.
For example, you can pass more detailed data from your Facebook ad campaigns to Data Studio, which would be a little tricky with Google Analytics.
Another tool that will give you an edge is Ubersuggest (and its free Chrome extension), which allows you to outperform your competitors in the search engines.
For example, Google Analytics no longer provides comprehensive data on the keywords that are driving traffic to your website. While you can make assumptions based on top keywords, you will never know for sure.
That leaves the door open to your competitors.
With Ubersuggest, digging up keyword data takes just minutes, so you can tailor your content and marketing strategies accordingly.
Step 1: Enter your URL and click "Search".
In this example we are using Close, a leading Inside Sales CRM with a strong search engine presence.
Step 2: Check the domain overview
Most importantly, find the number of organic keywords your domain represents. Other data include:
- Organic monthly traffic: The estimated total traffic that the domain will receive for the keywords.
- Domain Score: The overall strength of the site, with 1 being the lowest and 100 being the highest
- Backlinks: The number of backlinks to the website from other websites
Step 3: Scroll down to SEO Keywords
This is the data that you will not find in Google Analytics.
The left column is a list of all the keywords that your website is ranked for. In this case there are 6,135 of them. It follows:
- volume: The number of searches the keyword receives each month
- Position: The position that the URL is ranked for in Google search
- Estimated visits: The estimated traffic the website receives from Google for the keyword.
Analytics not only holds back information about keywords, but also nothing about volume, position, and estimated visits.
You'll have to use other tools like the Keyword Planner to find this. Ubersuggest brings everything under one roof.
Step 4: review all of your keywords
Not only can you check all of your keywords including volume, position, estimated visits, and SEO difficulties, but you can also enter a competitor's name and view their keywords.
This will give you new ideas for terms to search for. If you follow the example above, you can search for Pipedrive. Here's what you get:
In addition to the keywords that you are already ranking for, you can now identify the keywords that your competitors are ranking for and get additional ideas for the next few goals.
I've been using Google Analytics since day one. That will never change. However, it does not do anything to beat your competition.
If you want to win big, combine analytics with other tools like Ubersuggest to access advanced data and make more informed decisions.
Marketing trend # 2: companies optimize for voice search, but not for sales
According to ComScore, over 50% of search queries come from voice searches. But that's not really a new trend – everyone has been talking about voice search for years.
What's the big deal?
Voice search optimization is a great way to get your brand better known. However, how is it converted into sales?
I haven't seen too many solutions so far to harness your voice search traffic, but so far there is Jetson.ai.
If you are unfamiliar with Jetson.ai, users can use voice search to shop on your website. It doesn't matter if it's Alexa or Google Home. You work with the most popular devices.
The cool thing about Jetson.ai is that it can learn from each customer and customize the interactions.
For example, if I keep ordering the same toothpaste over and over again using voice search at a particular store, Jetson.ai will track it so you can easily order the same product over and over again with no friction.
It's easier to log into your computer or pull out your phone to make a purchase.
Marketing Trend # 3: Your Email List Is Not Converting. Look for alternative communication channels
E-mail; It's something that we all use in the marketing world.
But here's the interesting thing: I'm in a group of just over 109 email marketers in different industries in different parts of the world.
Can you imagine what we all notice?
Our open rates stay about the same, and that's mainly because we all know how to clean up and optimize deliverability.
But our click rates are falling.
So far, our click rates have fallen by 9.4 percent.
That's crazy considering that as a group we have over 146 million email addresses.
Does this mean the email is dead?
Of course not!
Email is here to stay, and will be here for a very long time.
However, companies need to use more communication channels.
Chatbots take off. Not necessarily the intercoms or drifts in the world, but above all the solutions like ManyChat and MobileMonkey.
In addition to chatbots, more and more people are using tools that enable push notifications such as subscribers.
It's so powerful, here's the impact I've been getting from push notifications with subscribers so far.
You can wait until next year to start using chatbots for lead generation and customer service. However, I would recommend that you start sooner rather than later.
Marketing trend # 4: There are no moats other than brands
You have probably heard the word "moat" before. If you don't have it, just think of water around a castle.
There is water around the castle and a drawbridge takes you in and out of the castle to protect it from intruders.
With your business, you can have a moat.
This could be a characteristic, your cost structure, a technological advantage, or even a marketing advantage.
Over the years, the moats have slowly disappeared in the online world.
It is easy for anyone to copy marketing strategies these days. What makes you different from your competition?
Something that's working right now might not work next year.
But do you know what will be a strong moat in 2021 and even stronger in the future?
It's branding.
People buy Jordan shoes because they love Michael Jordan. His brand is stronger than ever, despite not having played in the NBA in over a decade.
His shoes are so popular that he has grown his fortune to over a billion dollars. Plus, it doesn't hurt to own a basketball team either. 😉
What is interesting, however, is that after retiring he made more money than he did as a basketball player.
Not only did Jordan build a strong brand, but the Kardashians too.
Kylie started a billion dollar company, according to Forbes, and all because of her personal brand. Your cosmetics company isn't doing anything revolutionary. She only has a strong brand.
Same goes for companies like Ferrari, Tesla, American Express – and the list goes on and on.
That's why companies spend over $ 10 billion annually on influencer marketing.
Just take a look at my agency NP Digital. It is literally one of the fastest growing advertising agencies out there. If I look at all of my competitors' numbers, we grow much faster because of my brand.
Yes, we have a great team, but that's not a moat either as a lot of agencies have great teams.
It's my brand that gave us a very quick start and hopefully pushes us further up.
You want to focus on brand building in 2021. Personal or business, it's the best moat you can build in marketing. It also helps you with Google's EAT.
Marketing trend # 5: you have no choice but to use automation
When I started out as an entrepreneur, I turned to SEO because I couldn't afford the huge advertising budgets my competitors did.
I couldn't even afford to run paid ads.
Over the years, the competitive conditions have become more even.
Credit card companies like Brex make it easier for startups to get approved for larger limits, and you may not have to repay them immediately.
There are finance companies out there that will give you money for marketing purposes so that companies that are not funded by venture capital can more easily compete.
Companies like Lighter Capital offer loans based on your existing earnings.
To top it off, software solutions are now starting to incorporate AI to make better recommendations. From Clickflow and RankScience to distilled ODN, anyone who uses AI to make SEO and other forms of marketing easier.
Heck, BrightEdge can even automate your SEO (or at least a large part of it). Their automated SEO solution increases pageviews per visit by 60% and offers 21% more keywords on page one.
Remember, their customers are really big (their software starts at thousands of dollars a month) so they are likely to get better results than most companies. Still, you will find that many more software companies are using AI in search engine optimization.
This is being driven by the rise of AI, Rank Brain, and natural language processing.
Even with Ubersuggest, I'm working on an AI that will do search engine optimization for you so you no longer have to spend endless hours doing search engine optimization to save thousands of dollars.
In other words, the marketing conditions become more balanced. If you want to do well, you need to leverage AI and marketing automation to survive.
How can you beat your competitors when they are all using the same AI marketing technology?
Well, everything else will matter – price, customer service, upselling, operations, sales. All of these little things will help you win.
This brings me to my next point.
Marketing Trend # 6: There are no more silver bullets, we all need to optimize for marginal profits
Many companies were built with just one marketing channel.
Dropbox grew through referral marketing. Invite more friends and get more free space.
Facebook was created from your email address book. Facebook accessed it earlier and invited all of your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf.
Companies like Quora and Yelp were built out of SEO. All of these rankings really help drive your business forward.
However, you can no longer build a business through just one marketing channel. Good channels become saturated extremely quickly. (Take a look at Facebook's organic reach if you need a reminder …)
Even if they work and cause explosive growth, it will only be a short time before your competitors jump on board and make it more difficult.
Marketing will soon be all about "marginal profits".
There is a British cycling trainer named Dave Brailsford. He believed that if you improved every area related to cycling by just one percent, those small gains would translate into remarkable improvement.
He's right, that's how you win a race.
The same goes for your marketing.
There will be a huge shift from people focusing on one channel trying to find the "Holy Grail of Marketing" to slightly improving any area of ​​your marketing.
From split testing your title tags to some ranking improvements, to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a bit more on your paid ads, to using Google Data Studio to get your lifetime value better to optimize – it's all about the few things.
That will lead to profit.
You need to change your mindset on that to win in 2021 and beyond.
Marketing trend # 7: Depersonalization is the new marketing
The problem with marketing today is that 95 percent of your visitors never turn into customers. If you are lucky.
Chances are 97 percent or more of website visitors will leave without a conversion.
The main reason isn't that your marketing sucks, or that all of these visitors are junk and unqualified.
The fact is that your message will not suit every single one of your visitors.
Personalization allows you to convert more visitors into customers.
A basic example of this is Amazon.
When you go to Amazon, they know what you usually buy and show you what they think you want to increase their conversions.
It works out! When I log into Amazon, I see tons of housewares because these are the most common purchases. I never buy dog ​​food (which is smart because I don't have a dog) so I never see dog food adverts.
Companies also try to personalize every single experience both online and offline.
Companies like Amperity are trying to create a customer relationship engine so that you can better serve each of your customers, online or offline.
Marketing has become a game of personalization. With advertising costs and general marketing costs soaring, you have no choice but to figure out how to convert 97% of your traffic that just never comes back.
The problem is, everyone else is using exactly the same personalization strategies and consumers are getting smart.
Therefore, the depersonalization will be great.
Instead of using names in an email, brands need to call back the fake personalization efforts and focus on transparency and writing like a real, live person.
Conclusion
These are the marketing trends that will come true and you need to be prepared for them.
Here's the nice part, however. Now is your chance to act on the information before your competition. Make sure you are ahead of the crowd.
I want you not only to be successful but to beat your competition. I believe you can, whether you are a big company or are starting out with very little to no money.
What do you think of the above trends? Do you see marketing trends that few talk about?