Digital Marketing Technologies: Trends and Examples for 2021-2022

Digital Marketing technologies are still trendy. Since users are extremely picky, convincing them to purchase anything is a challenging task. The usual advertising is no longer fashionable either. The challenge now with digital marketing is to stay alive in the competition. The best way to do so is to know the market trends and understand what the audience is looking for. Right from the best online casino, advertising companies, to a retail marketer, everyone must come up with some kind of marketing strategy to sustain the competitive edge and increase their sales while improving their brand awareness. 

Content Marketing

Quality content is still the USP of digital marketing. According to research, it is 62% cheaper than other marketing strategies and brings in thrice the customers. 

Every brand out there maintains their blogs to keep their customers aware of their services with relevant information on their products. While sharing their expertise, one must maintain a niche to be able to gain the customer trust that will give the ultimate push for their brand awareness. 

Every reader of the blog is a potential customer. If the content managed to catch their attention, they are easier to warm up to the idea of being a potential buyer as well. A regular reader of the blog is more likely to trust the brand, even if it has been relatively newer. 

The best examples are the travel blogs where people or brands share information about the various destinations. These blogs would also have relevant information regarding the visa for forign trips, accommodation, food, travel options etc. Such useful content pulls traffic which can later convert to leads and sales. 

Also Read What is a content farming|How to Recognize a Content Farm

Automated Chatbots and Consultations

People are so busy with their lives that they no longer like to wait in line to find answers to their queries. Whale chatbots were an added advantage in the past, it is quite common everywhere. It is one of the most important obligations for sales. 

Chatbots are useful when someone wants to get an answer to their query at off hours. They can get their answers from the automated systems without any delays. One of the most competing examples of such systems are seen with Do Not Play- world’s first robot lawyer. 

Chatbots just need a few seconds to perform whatever actions they are supposed to do so that no one is wasting their time. This works like a well oiled machine for finding a simple solution of escalating an issue to the higher authorities.  

At the same time, there must be an option to switch to an in-person chat with an operator should the customer find it uncomfortable to have a chat with a robot. 

Micro Influencing (Influencer Marketing)

The word influencer was coined recently for the bloggers who have managed to convince their audience to find solutions for their problems and can literally influence others with their content. Brands tried to pull in bloggers with million followers to do their advertising but it did not normally come under the exact fit when a brand is looking for a target audience. This is a reason why the new concept of micro influencing or influencing marketing came into existence. marketing is not as flourishing as it used to be. 

Micro influencing means marketing and advertising reduced to smaller audiences for better promotion. Here ads are done through bloggers having a smaller audience anywhere between 10k-100k. This opens up the target audience to be narrowed down. People are after specific niches to find their solutions and products. 

For example, a target audience of book lovers are targeted through book topics in social media. Parenting or child care products are handled through the parenting niche. This will narrow down the target for better sales and would also cut down the cost of digital marketing drastically. Instead of focusing on one blogger with million followers, it is easier to target the compact and better potential customers through smaller communities. 

Adapting to Voice Search

In this digital era, the attention span of people is diminishing. People are impatient to search online and find answers to their queries. They may not be interested in opening another browser to find their answers. Their easiest resort is voice searches.
Most leading brands and smartphones use voice searches to help their customers find their answers. 

These days half the queries on search engines are done through voice searching. A steady growth in the sales through such searching is also recorded. It is forecasted to go up further by about 8 million in another two years. So one of the inevitable strategies of digital marketing should be voice searches.

Also Read How Can Video Content Help With SEO Strategy for a Brand

Omnichannel

A single channel of promotion no longer works effectively. The audience needs to be influenced through multiple channels. One channel may have managed to pull in customers but it will need another way to convert them into leads. It would further require a thread or fourth way to get the conviction of a sale. 

For example, when people are searching for a particular course it may have taken them multiple steps through advertisement through social media, blogs, seminars and freebies of some kind to ultimately convince them to purchase the course. So the best strategy is to combine multiple channels effectively to get the proper leads, conversions, and sales.

Unique Client Experience

Novel customer support is the ultimate game changer in digital marketing. It impacts the overall interaction of the customer with the brand. With the digital marketing field rapidly evolving into various areas, it is important to keep track of what exactly influenced the customer. It will help pln the further strategies and gain ultimate sales. The major factors that influence the customers are, 

Consistency with interaction with the customers. The best experience is when the customer gets answers directly from whatever source they use to and being redirected constantly. It applies to all areas such as chats, messengers, and social media. 

Quality of the service is another major factor. Finding competent employees who can deal with the customers with utmost politeness and patience is the key. The customer is more likely to com back if the quality of the service is better. 

The metrics that help assess the customer experience are, 

• NPS – It is a customer loyalty index that uses a survey to check if the user recommends the brand to others.
• CSAT – This is a Customer Satisfaction Index using a survey that appears after every transaction as well any kind of technical support. 
• CES – This survey is conducted when a customer has placed an order. Here it is enquired about the difficulty level the customer faced while doing the transactions or actions. 

Metrics can change the whole demeanor of the brands or firm and their way of working. It helps the brands to create strategies in the near future that would bring in long-term sales.  

Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing focuses more on the targeted audience who are likely to make a purchase than a wider target. The various promotional offers, freebies of samples, and sending out gifts are part of suc strategy. 

Messages are sent directly to the potential customers or on their home feed through their social media accounts regarding such offers and sales. This can be to a border audience or target a speci group according to their gender, age, locations, etc. For example, a cosmetic company cna target their specific audience in a particular age group for their products. 

Metric can track how many of these customers have even bothered to open such messages and how many have gone through with the purchases. Those who make an order are also likely to order another product. So, such account-based marketing can filter and funnel the customers according to various parameters. 

Another example is the case of Billing Tree that applied this strategy and gathered the attention of their customers. They sent an email to the customers with an Amazon coupon in it as a promotional strategy. It also included a video explaining the brand’s work. 

Their metrics showed that over 60% of those recipients beame their customers and many of them were willing for a repurchase or another order as well. Thus their ROI from these ad campaigns turned out to be over 700% with over 200k revenue. 

Video Marketing

Video Marketing is the most popular way of content marketing. There is a sudden growth in companies that use such marketing in the last 2-3 years. It is still growing with every social media platform making it their leading method to attract an audience.  

Videos are the easiest way of attracting customers and gaining their loyalty. Instead of reading longer texts people are more interested in watching videos to understand. Shorter videos gain more momentum as that cna convey the message in a shorter time. This is why adding videos into email marketing is also on the rise. It increases the CTR by 200-300%. 

The most video ideas for online marketing include, Educational, entertainment over social media platforms, demonstration videos, sales etc. It is also recommended to use different types of video rather than relying on a single type. Eg, live videos, reels, question answers, etc. 

Of all of these live streaming interactive sessions has more leverage than other formats.This enables the customers to clarify any doubts regarding the services. It improves the authenticity and credibility of the claims in the other campaigning formats. 

Also Read How Can Long-Form Content Result in Better Search Rankings?

Auto Sales Funnels

Direct sales method will not work anymore. Since it is difficult to convince a customer about a new product, marketing through multiple channels and then creating an auto funnel is the best route to get more sales. This strategy helps sustain the competition. The autofunnel system includes, 

• Lead magnet can be anything such as freebie offered that the customer can use immediately. But here the customer will have to provide their contact info such as email address to the company. This way the company attracted a potential customer with something and they are now in their database.
• Tripwire.  Here, the company offers a product with a nominal price to the potential customers. Such a financial relationship between the company dn customers will help create awareness and customer satisfaction. This is a way of converting the potential customers into real customers. 
• The actual product. The third stage is where the customer is offered the actual product. At this stage, if the customer is interested, he or she is likely to buy the product as they are already familiar with the customer service. The motto here is to increase the conversion rate. 
• Maximizing the profits. Now that there are sales and better conversion, the target is to maximize the profits. Here the customers are offered more products that they may be interested in. 

Creating such steps and promotions are the real job of a digital marketer. To find the potential areas and createstartegies tt cna help push the CTR, conversion, and sales.

Tik Tok

Tik Tok, is the trendiest and the newest tool of digital marketing. Its popularity is increasing with each year and there are millions of followers for several accounts in this micro-blogging platform. 

Interestingly not all digital marketers are keen on utilizing this platform. It is the cheapest available marketing strategy that can bring in organic traffic. Taking a chance at this will only help the brands to push forward in this highly competitive world. 

UGC – User Generated Content

User-Generated Content or UGC is an interesting strategy that uses the customer content to promote the brand or product. It is one of the most effective promotion methods in recent times. 

UGC works well when people who have used the product share their experience and review with their friends and family through social media.  

It is a cost-effective method where the company need not do anything other than let the customer decide their opinion. In social media such review posts get more push and reach through comments and shares. 

The challenge here is to get the customer to create such sharable content. This is where hashtags come into play. The customers may use the company generated hashtags to reach a wider audience. Such hashtags should be visible to the customer in the physical shops, online store, social media platforms etc. It may also be offered that the customer who is willing to share the review or a photo get further discounts. 

Conclusion

Digital marketing needs constant reevaluation, changing strategies and finding the right platform for each product. As the digital world itself is changing constantly, the strategies on marketing them also should be up to date and that can catch the attention of the customers in whatever manner that is applicable. At the same time, companies or brands must also be willing to adapt to the changes happening.