Global demand is low. Budgets are strained. And levels of uncertainty are off the charts.
This makes 2021 possibly the hardest year ever for B2B marketers to plan their marketing strategy.
However, there are still some vital trends to look out for early in 2021 that you can take advantage of to do ‘more with less’ and meet your marketing objectives.
Here are 5 digital marketing trends we think are worth a look.
1) Grow your audience with audio content
Audio content is on the rise.
In 2020, more than 100 million Americans listened to at least one podcast each month. On top of that US audiobook sales eclipsed ebook sales for the first time, generating over $1.2 billion in the process.
There is an opportunity for B2B marketers to carve out a niche for themselves using audio content. Whether it’s through making a podcast or appearing as a guest, it can be a valuable tool to generate prospects, position you as a thought leader, build relationships and increase brand recognition.
2) Leverage Core Web Vitals to boost your Google rankings
Google are making changes to Core Web Vitals. These track how fast pages load for the device you’re using and its mobile-friendliness and responsiveness. Starting in May 2021, these Core Web Vitals will become Google ranking signals.
Google owns roughly 75% of the search market and with over 70% of search engine users clicking on one of the top 5 suggestions in the search engine results pages, having a high SEO score can boost sales dramatically.
Here are some easy ways you can improve your site’s Core Web Vitals ahead of May 2021:
Upgrade your web host: Better hosting=faster load times overall (including LCP)
Set up lazy loading: Lazy loading makes it so images only load when someone scrolls down your page. Which means that you can achieve LCP significantly faster
Remove large page elements: Google PageSpeed Insights will tell you if your page has an element that’s slowing down your page’s LCP
3) Increase your reach with LinkedIn
Over 80% of B2B leads are generated from LinkedIn - almost seven times higher than any other platform. Moreover, over 91% of marketers choose LinkedIn to advertise professional content.
This looks set to only increase in 2021. With LinkedIn being one of the few social platforms where it’s possible to gain traction with your posts without having a huge following count, it can be an extremely useful tool for outbound and inbound marketing on a budget. There are various ways to advertise on LinkedIn and get yourself noticed to a specific target audience. Why not try banner, carousel or Video ads? With a standout creative idea and call to action you can drive traffic to your website.
4) Get the most out of virtual events
Due to the pandemic events became virtual out of necessity.
By going virtual, companies opened up their event to an entirely new audience they usually wouldn’t be able to reach for reasons of travel, accessibility and cost. This allowed for higher attendance and more participation.
You can do the same.
Via webinars, live conferences, tutorials, interviews and so forth you can engage potential and returning customers and potentially boost your sales. Check out our article on how to make your webinars Zoom-arvelous’ for more ideas.
5) Adapt your SEO for voice searches
Voice searches are expected to reach 5bn in 2021 and increase further to 6.4bn in 2022.
What people say is often different to what we type, so it is important to adapt your SEO strategy to align with how people search for things through their voice.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
Focus on conversational and colloquial keywords
Build pages that answer FAQ’s as when voice searchers ask a question, they usually begin with “who”, “what”, “when”, “why” and “how”
Make your mobile site high quality as voice searches usually take place on mobiles
2021 will no doubt continue with the shift to digital marketing, this is the first article of trends to keep your marketing sharper than the rest. If you would like further consultancy, please get in touch!
georgia.walker@dma-partners.com
dma-partners.com