How To Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy For 2021
Whether you’re a marketer, an influencer, or the owner of a business, staying on top of marketing and advertising trends is very important to the success of your endeavors.
As we venture into 2021, it’s a good time to review how companies have adapted to the “new normal” when it comes to the different ways of marketing their products. There’s important information to be found in ways businesses kept up with customer demands, what worked for them, what didn’t, and which platforms generated the most traffic and engagement.
Research shows that 60% of the world’s population uses the internet. And with the current lockdown or self-isolation in effect in most of the world, this number has grown manifold since people don’t have much to do in quarantine except for browsing their social media feeds. This is also the reason why more people than ever prefer online interaction with their favorite brands.
If you aren’t taking advantage of this opportunity, your business will lose out on greater engagement, traffic, and ultimately, sales. This means that you’re going to have to update yourself with the latest social media marketing trends to properly leverage them for your business.
Keep an open mind to new strategies, change direction in product development, and reach new market segments. Suppose you are a brand that’s operating online. In that case, you might want to look out for platforms that could potentially gain popularity later on. Let’s explore some possibilities:
Jump on board newly popular platforms
Studies suggest that video content is becoming the most popular aspect of digital strategy. Consumers reportedly prefer some sort of video engagement from their favorite brands and companies.
In fact, 54% of consumers want to see more video content this year.
Let’s look at some of the upcoming video platforms that you might want to make a part of your marketing strategy.
TikTok
TikTok is a video app where users can upload videos of them lip-syncing to famous songs, dancing on popular beats, or create original content. The most talented of the lot become TikTok influencers, which have taken the marketing industry by storm.
The average TikTok user spends approximately 52 minutes on the app every-day – that is a lot of time for your brand to engage with followers! In June 2020, when the pandemic’s first wave was at its peak, a study revealed that TikTok influencers in the United States alone had an engagement rate of 17.99%.
This app offers a wide range of filters, different tools to improve video quality, and a new way of connecting with people who share the same interests. TikTok is definitely going to stick around in 2021 as well!
You can create your brand’s own channel and tell your employees and staff to upload videos. For example, Rihanna’s brand, Fenty, built its own community, #FentyBeautyHouse where housemates share their videos using Fenty products.
Caffeine
Caffeine.tv allows users to create live broadcasts for their audience. This app is especially vital if Gen-Z is an important part of your market audience. It can help you attract them through new content based on live social media interactions.
This app has potential, and marketers can adopt various marketing strategies like having Q/A sessions from important industry leaders, behind-the-scenes videos, or holding other contests via live video. Moreover, Caffeine has also launched a monetization program that rewards users for most broadcast engagement!
If you have a creative, out-of-the-box idea for a live stream that cannot be accommodated by Facebook and Instagram live options, experimenting with Caffeine might be right for you. Additionally, you should also check what other brands are doing with the app and take inspiration from active accounts.
Triller
Similar to TikTok, Triller allows users to create and share videos. It differs from TikTok because it uses AI editing tools to enable users to make multiple videos against the same track at different lengths. Whether it’s dancing, lip-syncing, or comedy runs, Triller can engage and boost traffic to your channel in a go!
Brands can use different hashtag challenges to boost traffic. Hashtag challenges are a great way to increase engagement because they are fun and simple to do. If you’re just starting out, you can kick-start your engagement by collaborating with an influencer who can divert all their followers towards your brand.
How can brands expand growth and implement new marketing strategies?
With the second wave of the pandemic on the rise again, many countries have imposed strict lockdown restrictions. As a result, companies once again find themselves in a tough spot.
However, many businesses had already adopted new strategies to cope with the “new normal”. This shows that having an effective growth strategy can help sustain enterprises through tough times.
As your business evolves, so should your marketing strategies. While your brand needs to tap into new markets, it is equally important to differentiate your products and services and maintain a competitive edge.
Let’s see some of the strategies brands have used to increase their social media presence and profitability, despite the raging pandemic:
Expand your product line
Expanding your brand’s offering is a brilliant way to tap into an unexplored market. However, before you dive into innovating new products and strategies, it is equally important to be mindful of what it is that your customers want.
For most customers, it’s all about personalization and individual experiences. They want brands to understand them and adapt to their ever-changing preferences.
If you’re looking for a sure-shot way of selling new products, it may help run a poll on your Instagram stories and see what your patrons want from you. The poll feature offers two options for the audience to choose from – the final verdict depends on the majority of votes.
Polls are a fun way of knowing whether they want you to innovate or enhance your existing products.
For example, before introducing new furniture and household items, Ikea always holds a poll to showcase their current catalog to understand the buyer’s preferences.
Product expansion is a great way to boost customer loyalty and generate increased revenue without acquiring new customers that can take up a considerable amount of your resources.
Expand your distribution channels
Distribution channels are one of the most important aspects that can help your business grow revenue and boost its audience.
Think of the different ways you can expand your channels. For example, it might be time to leverage Instagram Shop. This new feature can allow customers to view entire brand catalogs and shop via the app!
Also, look for interesting new ways to leverage other social media platforms. For example, if you have a Spotify account, use it to create a company-theme playlist to add a bit of variation and creativity to your business’s content.
The possibilities of expanding your distribution channels are endless, especially in the age of the social media-driven age that we live in.
Partner with influencers
Marketing through social media is not always an easy task. Due to the extensive information available online, many customers are wary of false and unreliable advertisements. As a result, many online users do not trust social media.
In this case, it becomes essential for brands to create a relationship of trust with their customers. And the best way to do that is to partner with social media influencers.
As we venture into 2021, influencer marketing is quickly picking up pace and is expected to strongly affect purchasing decisions. In fact, 57% of companies collaborate with influencers as part of their marketing campaign and a further 21% of companies plan to get on board with influencers relevant to their niche.
Influencer marketing is so useful because influencers have a way of creating a personal connection with their audience. As they can interact with people and share a more personalized review of products and services, consumers trust them more.
Many brands, especially fashion and beauty brands, rely heavily on influencer marketing to boost their product growth. For example, the famous influencer Olivia Palermo has collaborated with brands like Karl Lagerfeld and Banana Republic, gaining thousands of views on YouTube.
Mobile optimization
Did you know that 54% of all online sales are conducted through mobile?
Most of these e-commerce stores provide an optimized customer experience such as a seamless checkout, various payment methods, and instant buy-now options.
Search engines also prioritize websites and stores that are mobile-responsive and don’t take hours to load. If the search engine that customers are using doesn’t rank your e-commerce store as one of the top 10, chances are you are going to lag behind in the competition.
Likewise, you should ensure that all post images and videos are optimized for mobile screens. Also, post vertical videos instead of horizontal ones so customers can easily view and enjoy video content on both their desktop and mobile screens.
Show off your authentic side on social media
Some brands may have a huge budget to hire a social media strategist or digital marketing agencies. But that is no guarantee for success.
The one basic principle for success across all social media platforms is: Be yourself!
If you’re struggling for followers or are stuck in a rut on how to be creative, here are some effective ideas to help you on your way:
Make behind-the-scenes (BTS) vlogs
Your social media audience is not just looking to buy from you. Instead, they want to truly connect to a brand and form a relationship. According to research, 76% of consumers expect companies to understand their preferences. Around 84% of customers want to have a personal connection with brands.
And the best way to humanize your brand is to show your audience a sneak peek of what your company or brand is really like. Companies who make BTS content – in the form of images or vlogs –can make their customers truly feel like a part of their brand.
For example, suppose you own a creative business. In that case, you can make a video that shows your thought-process behind designing a product. This is one of the most exciting BTS content because your audience can see their favorite brand at work.
The best thing about BTS videos is that they need minimal edits and are relatively easy to make. These videos show that brands, professionals, and celebrities are actually just as human as the people watching them, making the audience feel a deeper connection.
J.Crew has a #Behind The Design series where they take the audience on a creative manufacturing journey of their most lauded fashion styles. It shows the kind of wool they use for their dresses, a limited edition of their paint splatter collection, and a glimpse into their head designer’s jewel vault.
Engage in Facebook Live sessions
As one of the oldest social media platforms, it’s brilliant how Facebook keeps innovating every season to keep up its game.
As the world was gripped by the pandemic and government-imposed restrictions earlier in the year, businesses and companies turned to social media for interaction. Facebook live video sessions had the highest viewership during the lockdown, more than any other form of content.
If you’re wondering how Facebook Live is different from Instagram or Snapchat Live, let us enlighten you. Snapchat only provides short snippets of video that last only a minute, and Instagram live offers the live session to be viewed a couple of hours after the live session. But Facebook goes one step further as its live sessions can be saved forever!
Once you have a live session with an important celebrity or with your audience, you can save the live session to your profile, making it available for people to view it anytime, as many times they want!
As the social media branding strategist, Jasmine Star puts it, “Live video is engaging and has a much higher probability of reaching audiences far and wide. Gone are the days of just uploading pictures, cover photos, and posters.”
Bottom line?
If you want to increase your reach, improve traffic, and create engagement, there is no better way than having live sessions with your audience!
Get creative with email campaigns
Marketing trends may keep changing annually, but if there is one thing that stays constant, it is the tried and tested email marketing method.
Digital marketers understand the importance of making creative email campaigns to boost engagement and traffic. However, it is normal for them to sometimes lag on innovative ideas.
Thankfully, with online tools, creating an email campaign has never been easier! Whether you want to make personalized email content, design discount vouchers, or enhance the visual appeal of your email – PosterMyWall can get you started right away!
The best part about living in a digital age is that most of these online tools are absolutely free for users to let them experiment with their creativity. As a free user, you have access to enough email templates that you easily send in different campaigns. If you want more options, you can become a premium member or get access to more designs with more credits!
Schedule your Instagram posts for a consistent feed
Have you ever had days where your creativity has dried up, and you’re at your wit’s end about what to post? Similarly, you might have experienced days where your creativity and enthusiasm to create content is at an all-time high, and you want to post consistently. It’s time like these that scheduling posts would prove really useful.
Instead of creating content on the go and posting it, plan and schedule your social media posts to have a visually consistent feed to maintain all year long. If you’re making custom designs, you can choose from a range of different templates to use in your feed, and with Premium subscriptions, you can even schedule your posts for a later date!
Posting regularly also keeps your audience more engaged. A social media report by WebDam shows 60% of the top brands on Instagram use the same filter and hues to maintain consistency throughout their feed.
Remember to make a proper timeline before you schedule your posts. If you want to be consistent on Instagram, go to View Insights and scroll down to see the number of people who reached your account and identify the optimal time when your audience is online.
This not only helps create content that gets the most attention but can also help you curate a visually aesthetic Instagram feed.
For example, Sam Ushiro, the industrial blogger, plans out her feed in a way that makes each of her Instagram pictures pop with bold and bright colors. She uses oversaturated hues to unify all her images and schedule them to make a welcoming feed for her audience.
Source: Instagram
Create engaging ad copies on Facebook
Short ad copies are a brilliant way of offering your brand’s services to your audience in the briefest way possible. However, suppose your ad doesn’t attract your audience or convince them to make a purchase. In that case, you may need to re-think your copywriting strategy.
People often think unique captions will garner attention. However, it’d be better to try to create ads that resonate with your audience. You can use popping imagery or tug at people’s hearts with a socially conscious message that invites them to engage with your brand.
Here is an example of how Pura Vida successfully sold twice as many unique products by creating an eye-popping carousel campaign accompanied by a message to help Costa Rican artists.
The best facebook ads go heavy on design and visuals, while also providing a unique value proposition and a clear CTA (like in the example below).
Source: Sproutsocial
Facebook ads are better than Instagram sponsored ads because the Instagram ad has no headline and just has a little “Learn More” button at the end of the post. In contrast, the Facebook ad has a good ad copy and an option for readers to learn more.
Additionally, Facebook also prefers brands to make video advertisements as video content results in a higher click-through rate. The focus of these video advertisements is on the minimal text and greater visuals.
Check out this video sponsored ad by Sephora, which leads to a 41% higher traffic and engagement for the brand.
Create more user-generated content
User-generated content is all the rage now on all social media platforms.
Sponsored ads and virtual magazines can help drive traffic. Still, customers sometimes get tired of brands outrightly promoting their products.
But here comes user-generated content (UGC) that includes content created by the audience instead of the brand. Customers now want a more engaging shopping experience as they turn to fellow shoppers and online reviews before making a purchase. Around 90% of shoppers’ decisions are influenced by UGC content on social media after seeing people enjoy the experience that certain brands generate for them.
So, you may ask, how does UGC work?
Brands can feature customers using their products on their brand page or introduce a hashtag for each customer to use to avail a discount. This kind of content makes brands reach audiences beyond their market segment, boosting their product’s credibility and value in the process.
For example, TheHorse has a couple of user-generated content saved on their Instagram highlights that show people wearing TheHorse watches in different places.
Source: Instagram
Summing up
And there you have it: some essential guidelines for building an unbeatable social media marketing strategy for the new year.
Whether you run a bonafide online business or plan to take your brick-and-mortar store social next year, these ideas will help you boost your online visibility, create buzz and find more followers and eventually enhance sales.
As a marketer or a business owner, your best bet of making your way up in the digital game is to jump on these social media trends and craft them according to your business needs.
In 2021, it is time to explore your creative juices and test new ideas and media channels. Give your audience something exciting to anticipate! Remember to do a test run before making any official decisions. We hope this guide will help you in your efforts to move forward and let your business grow well beyond 2021.
Here is a free graphic design tool for you to experiment with and boost your audience engagement. So what are you waiting for? Get creating!
