Digital Transformation in Marketing: Latest Digital Marketing Trends
The marketing field has drastically evolved since the inception of the internet — with digital marketing quickly becoming the most effective form of marketing. It’s critical that businesses and marketers alike stay in the know when it comes to the ever-evolving digital space. Companies can see a significant ROI if the right marketing strategies are deployed. Even if a marketing strategy worked in the past, it’s essential to understand that marketing strategies should be constantly adjusted as we actively listen to our audiences and the latest trends within the space.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation occurs when an organization makes a conscious effort to evolve with the new technologies that prove to be beneficial to the company and its customers. The obvious change comes from the IT sector of an organization physically installing newer technologies that will replace outdated technological systems.
The act of digital transformation isn’t done by simply updating the organization’s computer software and systems, though. Instead, digital transformation involves creating actual change that allows a company and its employees to establish digital tools and strategies to make customers’ interactions more positive.
87% of companies believe that digital will disrupt their industry, and 44% say they are ready to deal with those disruptions. If you’re a marketer, you must understand that an integral part of the job is to listen to the world’s happenings so you can be prepared for change. Change is inevitable in the growing digital economy — so you must be an active participant in digital transformation to keep your business relevant.
Marketers should see the advances in digital technology as an opportunity, not a threat. Digital transformation involves embracing newer digital methodologies because they will boost employees’ synergy and create a more efficient working environment. Digital transformation should also enhance the customer experience through using analytics to make adjustments to marketing techniques, so marketing efforts are further customized.
Here’s how you can create digital transformation within your organization:
Understand the different purposes of different social media platforms: Teddy Heidt, Founder of The Gauge Collective, shared his expertise with Forbes Magazine: “Social media platforms like Facebook are making it easier for consumers to go from discovery to purchase without ever having to leave the platform, creating a simple and seamless path to purchase. With social commerce continuing to grow into 2021, retail brands will have to adapt to these platforms with new rules, similar to what many did with Amazon.”
While social media platforms are more popular than ever before, a marketer must understand the individualistic purposes for each platform. Each platform has a different culture. For example, Twitter is best for short-term messages meant to reach an audience quickly. Instagram is the most suitable platform to post engaging photo and video content; Facebook proves to be the ultimate platform for marketers to advertise to a specific audience.
It’s important to understand that it’s unnecessary to change your content entirely, but rather, slightly tweak your content for every platform, so it’s optimized and relevant.
Create a customer data platform (CDP): Digital transformation is all about integrating systems that will allow you to take advantage of technology. It’s crucial to stop using multiple technologies to track a customer’s journey when newer technology is at your disposal. Instead, you should create a customer data platform to maintain a persistent and unified customer database that structures your data.
Optimize your customers’ experience: There are many ways that you can make your customers’ experience more enjoyable. To know exactly how you can optimize your customers’ experience, you’ll need to look at the analytics to thoroughly understand what they’re looking for. One of the most critical aspects of marketing is using analytics to understand how to reach your customers effectively.
We want to encourage you to enhance your digital marketing efforts by engaging in digital transformation. Here are some of the latest digital marketing trends that you should be aware of in 2021:
1. In-email Purchases
While email marketing has been around for years, this new update will change email marketing in its entirety. The Vice President of Marketing at Mailchimp, Tom Klein, spoke to WordStream, “Subscribers will be able to make purchases right inside a marketing campaign, without ever leaving their inboxes. Campaigns will offer more of an app-like experience, too, with embedded video and other interactivity.”
This upcoming feature will change how marketers approach email marketing, which is still a lucrative form of marketing as emails continue to deliver a strong ROI. For every one dollar spent on email marketing, companies can expect an average return of $42. MailChimp dominates the email marketing niche, so we predict that the average ROI for email marketing will substantially increase with the introduction of in-email purchases.
2. Easy to Consume Content
Content is king in the digital world, but it’s essential to keep your brand’s content short and unique. There is a constant stream of readily available content that anyone can access throughout the day. So, take advantage of that information and create content that the average consumer can easily consume. It should be informative, entertaining, or interactive. Your brand will receive high engagement rates if you’re strategic about the content you publish.
3. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has grown substantially since the inception of social media websites like MySpace, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok. Hiring influencers to help spread brand awareness has been done in previous years, but the influencer marketing trend continues to grow in 2021.
Influencer marketing is effective because an influencer’s audience actively chooses to consume their content. A brand can find an influencer on an applicable social media platform that shares the same target audience — before paying the influencer to advertise the brand’s products or services directly to an audience composed of the brand’s target market. The chart below shows the incredible ROI of influencer marketing — and it’s projected to keep growing!
4. Artificial Intelligence
The rise of artificial intelligence in marketing isn’t as scary as it may sound — don’t worry, robots won’t be taking your job any time soon. Marketers should work with AI to better understand a brand’s audience. AI is very efficient and effective at quickly gathering all sorts of information from a user like their age, profile information, interests, browsing history, and purchases.
Marketers can use the information gathered and categorized by AI to understand the specific wants and needs of an entire audience. Digital transformation is all about utilizing technological advancements to improve business processes — and AI does precisely that. The chart below shows that as artificial intelligence improves, so does a company’s ROI.
AI helps a brand create content and communications that will better suit what an audience is looking for. This not only helps the marketer, but it’s also convenient for consumers as they can receive advertisements and communications that are seemingly made for them.
5. User-Generated Content
Social media is a prevalent form of marketing — and the demand for a constant stream of content is made relatively easy by utilizing user-generated content (UGC). This type of content is when a brand reposts content created by a customer who decided to share their experience with the brand’s product or service on social media. This trend will grow your social media profiles while also increasing your customer engagement. Let your customers help tell your brand’s story — and they will relate and connect with the brand much more. Marketing on social media in 2021 is all about authenticity!
6. Conversational Marketing with Chat Bots
As we’ve mentioned throughout the article, digital transformation isn’t solely about updating technology. You should use the technology available to improve your bottom line and have a better connection with your customers. Conversational marketing is a new trend that allows customers to ask questions and provide feedback through different digital channels. Customers love to feel like their voice is heard, so it’s necessary to engage in short conversations as frequently as possible with them.
Chatbots are an up-and-coming technology that can be established to have small conversations with customers, utilizing keywords to help them understand how to communicate effectively and answer questions. A recent report found that “more than one in three brands say customers and prospects prefer to complete a purchase or resolve service issues without speaking to a human associate, if possible.”
These types of studies are imperative for marketers to understand how to make their customer’s experience better. Whether customers want to engage with a representative behind a brand’s social media page through conversational marketing or with a chatbot, the main idea is that your customer’s interactions with your company should be seamless. Customer service is an essential part of marketing, so it’s necessary to give your customers different options for communicating with your brand.
7. Voice Search
It’s no longer necessary for someone to take out their phone to type something into the search bar when they want a question answered — they could simply use a voice search on their phone without ever looking at it. This new trend is something that marketers must adapt to. Now more than ever, SEO (search engine optimization) is an essential part of marketing.
SEO looks different thanks to voice search gaining popularity. When people use voice search, they are typically asking questions. It’s important to keep this in mind when marketing; you should phrase some of your SEO keywords in a question format so you’ll have a higher likelihood of being pulled up as the first website on the results page.
8. No-click Search
Google and other popular search engines have established something called the ‘no-click search’ to help people find the answers they’re looking for quickly. When someone searches a topic, a box called position zero will appear at the top of the page. It will feature an excerpt that generally answers the question right away.
In the photo below, you can see that keywords played a significant role in deciding which website would take position zero. If you can effectively use search engine optimization, you’ll have a higher likelihood of ending up in position zero. A user will likely click on the link provided in position zero to find out more about the topic, especially if the excerpt is engaging.
9. Gamification
Another emerging marketing trend is gamification. Essentially, gamification is when marketers add a game-like feature to a company’s website. Customers love interactive features, so gamification tactics have been quite successful. One of the most popular avenues of gamification is the ‘spin the wheel to win a prize’ feature. Although this seems like an insignificant feature at face value, gamification engages customers in a fun and unique way. This type of marketing strategy is excellent for building customer loyalty — because consumers love to feel like they’re getting something extra out of a transaction.
10. Video Marketing
Video marketing is a personable and interactive marketing tool that became an ultra-popular marketing tool in 2020 due to the pandemic. While marketing trends slightly change each year, video marketing proves to continue to dominate advertising because people feel that this type of content is authentic and relatable. In fact, video marketing has one of the highest conversion rates of any form of marketing. Customers generally feel more inclined to interact with a brand if video content is involved, so video marketing will drive up your engagement rates.
In digital marketing, brands that have a competitive advantage over others are the ones that continue to grow and adapt with the technological advances being made. We hope that you can utilize the latest digital marketing trends above to boost your brand’s presence. It’s important to create a digital marketing strategy that you regularly revisit to make adjustments as time goes on. Elevate your brand to the next level by applying the latest digital marketing trends we’ve mentioned to your strategy.
