With 2020 now firmly behind us, let’s take a look at the major takeaways marketers should keep in mind from 2020.
Analytics and Data Drive Marketing
It’s becoming easier and easier to make more data-driven decisions for your marketing plan. Any business, even small local ones should be using some sort of CRM software, many are very inexpensive if not free, that lets you track leads and helps you to put numbers on customer acquisitions and relationships. Also using some sort of email marketing software will give you easy to access analytics regarding your email campaigns. When you combine those with the dashboard-style analytics present in digital marketing platforms like adwords, facebook and even youtube, you have a pretty strong glimpse into exactly how your brand is performing online.
This is immensely important as you can see what types of messaging and content resonate with your audience. A continual refinement process is used via A/B testing to try new things and optimize your ad spend.
More Reliance on Email Marketing
Email marketing has become increasingly important as the pandemic continues. You want to stay in fairly constant contact with your audience, and email is one of the most effective ways to show off new offers and specials to your email list. When you use a CRM, you’ll find that coordinating email marketing campaigns is easier than ever.
It’s important to not be spammy with your emails, but try to send out an email message of some kind weekly. It can be promoting sale items, talking about special sales events coming up, or new products you are releasing.
Just like your digital marketing, email campaigns can be heavily optimized with A/B testing and group segmentation to overtime drive higher engagement.
No Longer optional for Local Businesses to Up their Online Game
Many local businesses have not been as proactive as they should be when it comes to their online presence. Particularly as sales shift more and more to an online e-commerce model as the pandemic has altered the business environment with fewer in-person sales, a functional and good looking website is a real necessity in order to be successful. Your competitors will have an easy time taking your customers if they offer online shopping solutions and you don’t!
This should be your number one priority going into the New year if you think your website isn’t as good as it needs to be. While a professionally made website with an online store will represent a significant investment, it will also become a major source of your revenue. Many small businesses get a solid percentage of their sales through their website.
ROI for Video and Rich Content has Increased
As we all know, competing for views and for attention can be extremely difficult in an era where consumers are bombarded by ads on nearly every platform. Video content is increasingly becoming one of the key ways to differentiate your brand from your competitors. Digital ads that use video content also have a higher CTR by 40-60%, sometimes even higher, that is a HUGE boost in how efficient your ad buys are being converted.
Just like a good website, video content is more expensive than traditional static ads, but the higher ROI that comes from incorporating it into your ads, emails and website, easily represents some of the more efficient marketing spend you’ll do. One video can be edited into multiple formats and used across a large period of time and multiple marketing channels, which is why video is generally a very strong ROI. Just look at the ads you get from larger brands, how many use video? The answer is likely a lot if not all.
Increased Focus on Social Media
Heightened by the pandemic, online shopping and e-commerce exploded in 2020. As a means of staying better in contact with your audience, constant communication via your social media channels is an important tool that will continue to be leaned upon in 2021.
Take a look at your social media pages, make sure the contact information, address, hours of operation and any other missing information areas are completely filled out. This will help potential customers find you and help you to capture more searches.
How to Continue Operations in a Pandemic
Creating procedures to maintain company operations throughout the pandemic has been a huge challenge for many businesses. Not only did businesses have to quickly figure out how to operate with as many employees as possible from home, but also do everything they could to make sure that any customers visiting were safe. More businesses than ever have started offering curbside options as we as online purchasing and shipping.
This is another trend from 2020 that will only strengthen in 2021. Businesses that do not offer some sort of curbside delivery or shipping will have a difficult time competing against those that do.
2021 will no doubt offer up its own challenges and trends, but we fully expect the above marketing trends from 2020 will continue and grow to be more important than ever in 2021.
About Volan Media
We’ve worked with dozens of businesses across many different industries and sizes to plan content marketing plans. Volan Media is a top Knoxville based content marketing agency, we not only work with clients in the Knoxville, Maryville, Chattanooga, and Nashville area but also work with clients around the country!
Let us know how we can help your business push forward in 2021!
