Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends For 2021

My clients always ask “What’s new in digital marketing?” or “What more can I spend on for advertising?” They want to know what they’re missing. They realize that digital marketing changes quickly, a new flavor each day. They rely on jSinger Marketing to keep them updated, pointing them in the right direction of where and how to spend their marketing budget.

To that end, this week I “attended” the AdWorld virtual conference,  with roughly 90 presentations over three days. Topics ranged from advertising, to agency tips, technical website tips and more. Below are my top 5 tips for 2021 – a mix of ideas picked up from the conference and my own digital marketing observations.

Hyper-Target Your Advertising

Let’s say you are a golf store. Wouldn’t you prefer to advertise some of your products to affluent men ages 30 to 65? Each year, Google, Facebook and other networks get more targeted than ever, and you can do just that. jSinger Marketing has been doing this for customers for years. But if you don’t have someone on top of this running your campaigns, you could be spending on “stats” and not “sales.” It doesn’t matter if you get 1,000 views of your products if you get 2 sales. Go for the 150 targeted views, and 20 sales!

Consider Informal Partnerships

We all know word of mouth is the best advertising. So why not pair your business with a complementary one? Co-marketing, as I would call it, gives an implied stamp of approval from one company to the other. An example might be a paper company posting on its social media accounts about how great their document shredding company is.

Not only does that help a friend, but it helps your customer. And for the company that was promoted, they are reaching a whole new set of followers that they never would have reached.

Content Is Useless Without Strategy

Blog posts, social media posts and website content are necessary for Google rankings, website visits, and landing a customer. But, consumers are overwhelmed every day by too much noise, whether its their Facebook or Instagram feed, YouTube, or streaming TV commercials. Gone are the days of just writing tons of content and expecting it to bring in sales. Customers are smart, and they are automatically filtering what they see, blocking out excess stimulation. So, whether you are writing a blog post or posting a video on YouTube, you need to optimize it properly, from descriptions to tagging. Below is an example of one of several dozen videos jSinger Marketing optimized on YouTube for Indiana University Health. We added hashtags, links, descriptions and more, and provided the client with a template to continue their own YouTube video search optimization going forward.

Be Honest With Metrics

I loved hearing a presentation about reporting. jSinger Marketing gives clients monthly reports showing traffic, rankings, ad clicks and more – depending on what services we provide them. Each meeting with clients (typically monthly) there is a temptation to paint a good picture. It’s hard to break bad news. But, I heard a good reminder that clients want the honest picture, and they respect an agency that doesn’t say everything is great each month. Thankfully, 90% of the time, we do have a true, good story to tell, because digital marketing does run with momentum once a good campaign is running. But for that 10% that struggles (I had one this year) it’s best to share it and re-strategize to adjust to a changing customer.

YouTube’s Ongoing Success

One great tip I heard during AdWorld was regarding YouTube and why it’s different than other social media, or even Google searches. Think about this: A Facebook post is seen for seconds, then scrolled past. Same with Instagram. But YouTube, similar to your website, is ALWAYS there. If you create a high-quality, helpful video, it not only will help you get views today, but tomorrow, and a year from now. It’s an ongoing sales tool for you – just like your website.