Rising ad blocker numbers and increasingly fierce competition make online shops more and more difficult to attract the attention of customers.
Trusted Shops lists the most important marketing trends of the year.
Trend 1: Social Commerce
A marketing trend that is particularly well received by customers because it makes their lives significantly easier. With just a few clicks, customers can order on the go after discovering an interesting product on social media. So-called shoppable posts have shortened the sales funnel by simply eliminating steps from discovery to purchase. Since this new shopping fits so well into the normal course of shopper life and ensures more spontaneous purchases, it is difficult to assume that social media shopping will become even more established in 2020.
Trend 2: Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is a term that has already been established in the marketing industry. This marketing strategy will continue to have a major impact in 2021. Companies and brands have always relied on the reach of opinion leaders to present a product or to strengthen a brand. Nothing has changed with the strong changes in the media world.
Instead of relying on the classic celebrities from film and television, small celebrities from social media are used to reach new customers. In contrast to the classic advertising formats, users have actively chosen to pay attention to this one person. That is why influencer marketing is perceived less as an advertisement and more as a recommendation from a friend.
Shop owners can get some of the attention by working with (smaller) influencers.
Trend 3: Personalization
The mood is against collecting data, but customers prefer personalized offers. And despite the increase in automated and tailored marketing campaigns in the digital space, customers still want to build a relationship with a company. Generic email newsletters that appeal to all customers at once will continue to lose strength in 2020.
And adapting the newsletter based on customer history and other data must become the new standard in order to remain relevant. The key to success is making customers feel like they are being treated as individuals.
Trend 4: Content Marketing
Content marketing has changed significantly over time. A simple 300-word blog post that appears once a month and reports on industry news is no longer enough to inspire the target group. Anyone who wants to motivate customers to buy with the help of content in 2021 must respond to the expectations of their own target group. And that doesn’t mean they have to be active on every social media platform, send newsletters every day and then blog twice a day.
Rather, it is about producing content that optimally appeals to the target group, on a platform that they use, in a format that they consume.
Because there is no point in producing content that the dream customer doesn’t care about or is not noticed at all.
Trend 5: Video Marketing
The past few years have been under the star of video marketing. On every social platform, videos were the non-plus-ultra when it came to reaching their “fans”. No matter whether on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. Videos currently play a big role in marketing.
Not much will change in 2021, because in times when the attention span is around eight seconds, the moving image offers a good chance to draw new pairs of eyes to its products.
Insights behind the scenes of the shop, exclusive competitions, discounts, the presentation of new products or answering questions are types of content that can be presented on video. This content also enables more personal communication between consumers and companies.
Trend 6: Augmented and Virtual Reality
Everyone is very excited about the development of technology in the areas of Augmented and Virtual Reality. Because in many ways it will take online shopping a step further.
Augmented Reality is a technology that allows digital information to be integrated into our physical environment. On the other hand, virtual reality can simulate an environment in which we are not currently.
Trend 7: Voice Search
Optimizing your own content in the direction of voice search can therefore be very useful – for small and large companies.
With the Google Update BERT, the search engine no longer focuses exclusively on keywords, but also attaches great importance to the content of voice search queries.
