Digital Marketing Trends 2021

Is anyone else as excited as we are that 2020 is officially in the past? We know Gibraltar has always been at the top of places to live and work, but last year really took its toll on many businesses here and we don’t know about you, but a blank slate of a year to refresh our energies as well as our marketing strategy is just what we need to breathe some life back into the incredible businesses that Gibraltar has to offer the world.

Hindsight, though, is 2020, so to help build your digital marketing strategy into your best yet, you’ll want to take these lessons learned from last year into your 2021 digital marketing strategy:

Artificial Intelligence with a Human Touch

The use of artificial intelligence, in digital marketing continues to boom so this year it’s in your best interest to embrace it fully. Chat bots, live chat, voice searches, and augmented reality aren’t exactly new technology this year, but if your marketing strategy doesn’t include them, you need to this year to keep up with the everything-online world we now live in.

For those businesses really looking to stay ahead of the curve, you may want to even consider applying some new trends into your digital media platforms: visual searches, “shoppable” posts, and augmented analytics are all big, up-and-coming technologies that can really boost your online presence, interaction, client relationships, and more, if used correctly. Just make sure you run any new ideas by a professional digital marketing agency before investing too much time, energy, or expense into them to get the very best return on investment, more important than ever in these turbulent times!

Geo-Targeting

Gibraltar is wonderfully unique and the people living here just as much so. They, like every geographic area of the world, won’t settle for online content that isn’t specific to their needs and wants, especially during a time like now when local -not to mention international, travel is severely restricted. For your marketing strategy to be successful this year, you need to fully embrace not just what makes you and your company or product great, but what makes the people who use it or buy it even better.

Take the time to *really* get to know Gibraltar and the people who live here, then change your offerings (product, branding, and marketing) as necessary so that Gibraltar is celebrated in everything you do. Forget the outside world -they’ll come later, organically.

FOMO Phobia

Fear of Missing Out is a real thing, especially this year since people around the world spent most of 2020 missing out on so much already during Covid-19 fears and restrictions. What does that mean for 2021? Easy: everyone is online these days and getting our physiological need for human interaction is often happening here. In marketing terms, this means that more casual conversational marketing, social media stories that offer micro-moments of connection, interactive marketing (like polls, quizzes, 360-degree videos, embedded calculators, augmented reality, etc), and user generated content (UGC) that let customers get personally involved in the lives of others are all definitely trending as successful marketing strategies in Gibraltar and beyond.

Position Zero

Gone are the days of aiming for ranking #1 in Google and other search engines. In today’s world of voice searches and AI speakers like Alexa, being #1 is no longer good enough. Position Zero, or the aptly-named ‘no-click search’ is the prime position now. This means that your marketing strategy must absolutely be content-focused.

Quality information (Google themselves recommend the E-A-T or expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness strategy as your SEO content goal) that can quickly offer solutions to consumer needs (the “I-want-to know/go/do/buy” model) should be up-front and centre in your digital marketing strategy, including social media marketing, website content, and blogging.

It’s a lot to take in and implement at once, so a great way to learn if your current or planned strategy is meeting this goal and will be ultimately successful is with SEO A/B testing and analysis. You’ll likely want to rely on a professional SEO agency for this, though, as they can offer the most reliable results to get your SEO strategy on the right track.

2020 taught us a lot when it comes to planning and implementing a successful online marketing campaign and there’s no going back. This year, the lessons we learned last year will only continue to become more relevant and more important as they grow and expand in our ever-changing world. Our minds, our businesses, and our marketing, then, must also adapt if we have any hope of growing bigger and better in 2021 and beyond.

If you’re not sure how to implement these or other marketing strategies in your digital marketing plan this year, get in touch with us here at MINT. We love all things marketing and live and breathe Gibraltar -a perfect match for your locally-based business looking to get ahead this year. Give us a call, send us a message, or pop in anytime to pick our brains on how our experienced teams’ expertise and know-how can help propel your business and your brand straight to the top where it belongs!