The increasing use of videoconferencing, the explosion of e-commerce, a huge increase in content on social networks… The year 2020 has seen many changes, which have affected web marketing in particular. That’s why brands have a significant interest in following the latest trends to reach their target audience…
1. Strengthen relationships and closeness with the public
First, brands need to focus on the closeness and relationship with their audience. Indeed, consumers feel an increasing need to be closer to the companies from which they buy products or services.
As a result, brands that have an authentic purpose, a real cause d’etre, are the ones that will see the most success in 2021. The same goes for companies that take care of supporting their consumers on a daily basis.
For example, an online betting site can reinforce this closeness by publishing regular articles on sports news, as well as providing suggestions on how to play better. This makes it possible to become an integral part of customers’ daily lives, and therefore to build more lasting relationships.
2. Encourage Conversions Via Social Networks
Then, social media traffic and engagement skyrocketed throughout 2020. The trend was already on the rise for over a decade, but within a few months the traffic exploded.
And now, social networks are much more than just sharing platforms. For brands, they will also become essential in 2021 to generate consumer interest and purchase intent.
In addition, networks such as Facebook and Instagram have also integrated a purchase and conversion process within their application. Thus, 130 million Instagram users click on a product tag every month. Often placed on sponsored posts, this tag allows them to purchase products directly in the app.
3. Focus on Voice and Visual Search
Finally, more and more consumers are turning to voice search. This includes both smartphone voice control (such as Siri on the iPhone) and smart personal assistants (such as Amazon Alexa).
At this stage, SEO experts have noted different results between voice search and text search. This is one element to keep in mind for your web marketing and SEO strategy for 2021. Especially if you want to stand out in increasingly saturated markets!
In addition to voice search, visual search is also in progress. Actually, Google’s image recognition algorithm (Google Lens) encourages more and more Internet users to search based on images and videos. Thus, you will need to integrate the features of visual search into your strategy in 2021 especially for e-commerce.
To start off simple, you can first customize the titles and descriptions of all the images on your site. Also consider writing alt text and/or alt tags. Both of these methods will help Google index your images more easily.
Article written in collaboration with 7figures