2021 is an entirely new look at social media and marketing. After a long year of growth, hardship, and survival (for many), people are ready to experience authenticity on a new level.
Here are my 2021 marketing predictions:
Everything stems from intention. It sounds fluffy, but it’s actually incredibly foundational.
What is your intention with that Instagram post? Sales or service?
What is the intention behind your YouTube video? Vanity metrics or value?
What is your intention for replying to comments? Engagement or connection?
By starting with your intention before creating a single piece of content, your fans/followers will feel the authentic care you and your brand have for them. Instead of resisting new platforms such as Clubhouse and TikTok, lean into the intention of showing up where your customers are.
Here are some starting points and ideas for intentions:
To serve our fans and followers deeply.
To help our customers get out of pain/frustration by offering solutions that actually help them.
To understand our fanbase more deeply and meet them in their need.
To bring light to the issues that matter to our people.
Apply this prediction to your marketing, and watch your fans/followers soar as your intention is felt.
-Rachel Pedersen, Founder of The Viral Touch & RBP Productions
www.rachelpedersen.com
Where are your customers hanging out?
In 2021 it’s going to be more important than ever for businesses to continue to engage their clients and customers online. That means more purposeful, connective communication needs to be happening wherever your ideal clients and customers hang out. Utilize the video features of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok … pick your favorite platform and start publishing!
-Christa Nichols, Christa Nichols Messaging
Show up as the face of your business
If 2020 taught us anything it’s that everyone is getting online (even if we thought everyone was already there). That means more online businesses, but also more competition and noise! The only way you are going to break through the noise is to show up. Show up massively with quality content, but don’t forget to have fun, your followers want more joy in their life. Visibility, video, value and being more vibrant will win in 2021!
-Crissy Conner, The Visibility Queen
Businesses need to attract and retain customers with paid traffic
Utilizing Facebook Ads to grow and expand will become even more important in 2021 to stay front of mind to your customers, attract new people into your ecosystem and grow your revenue in an ever changing world.
-Kelly Sturtevant, Blue Page Social Inc
Cutting through the noise will be more difficult in 2021 than it has been in years prior
While always necessary, your social presence has become essential – but focusing your message on corporate-branded posts and generic, expected messaging won’t cut it. We need to know and understand our ideal client’s on a whole new level, not only their demographics, interests, and behaviors – but who they are on a personal level. People are tired of bots, being sold to, and corporate feeds. Business owners need to focus their strategy in 2021 on integrating humor, realism, and understanding into their marketing strategy, finding a way to be memorable in a sea of sameness.
-Tricia Stone, Stone Marketing Strategy
Be flexible and pivot quickly
With TikTok’s rise, Instagram Reels and all the other video formats on Social Media, creating video content is becoming a necessity. I predict that leveraging video content to connect, support and entertain your followers and customers will be key for business success in 2021.
-Dennis Lenhardt, Dennis Lenhardt Marketing
Delivering a high-class service and overdelivering are both extremely important
If your systems don’t work correctly, your integrations are broken, your email automation is not personalized, you are giving yourself too much of a hard time. Automations take time to set up in the beginning and save you time, money, and energy every single day. Your back-end, even though it’s somehow “invisible,” it’s the backbone of your business.
-Kitty Kalman, High-Converting Funnels
Turn to Pinterest for free traffic
For businesses with an online offer and funnel established, Pinterest should be the #1 platform to conquer. It offers a safe and positive environment to share your brand and engage with a growing audience of 442 million (Dec 2020) people looking for inspiration.
-Tereza Toledo, Tereza Toledo Social
Growth on demand and at scale
Online courses will be the name of the game in 2021 as more business owners discover that an online course doesn’t just bring in a new revenue stream – it allows them to scale their businesses without sacrificing time, sanity, freedom, or relationships.
-Lynley Hipps, L Squared Digital Media
Consumer behaviors are changing
Businesses should be focusing more on optimising and streamlining their marketing strategies to get the most out of their digital marketing efforts. Businesses need to know how they can cut through the noise to stand out in front of their target audience. They need to explore the social media space to find innovative ways of reaching, attracting and nurturing cold audiences.
-Nola Mutogo, Havilah Creative
Focus on your users/audience more than yourself
Get reacquainted with your audience. The shift that 2020 has brought to all of our lives around the world has changed and disrupted behaviors. You want to ensure that you know how and where your clients are interacting and make sure your marketing strategy is still aligned.
-Desiree Grimaldi, 1×1 Impression
Whilst predictions are fun, stability is better
As consumers and marketers become increasingly skilled at utilizing technology to realize ideas, 2021 will be all about speed. How fast can you innovate on strategies without losing sight of the big picture? Voice – such as voice search optimized content is huge and will be more important next year. Omni-channel marketing – speaking to your audience from a variety of channels whilst remaining streamlined in your message, is getting more complicated, and more necessary.
-Chloe Cristallini, Crush @ Social
‘Performance’ and ‘accessibility’ aren’t just buzzwords for the techies anymore
With unprecedented volumes of internet activity, many home and office networks are struggling to serve ‘heavy’ content quickly enough – and sales are lost when pages load too slow, don’t work well on mobile, or if videos keep stopping to buffer! I expect to see a rise in demand for web professionals who can optimize websites and videos to still work well under such extenuating circumstances – because if 2020 taught us anything it’s that being EASILY accessible online is essential!
-Georgia Mountford, GEMO Creative
SEO & IG Reels are powerful
We predict IG reels and IG guides will be game-changers in social media marketing. The guides will lead Instagram to have its own SEO. User experience will have a major impact in the world of SEO. Now more than ever, companies are having to find creative and innovative ways to communicate and engage with their customers. Social media is a great way to do so; when done well.
-Kim Lamothe & Belle Cordero, Thrive Seven Media LLC.
SEO strategy needs be on point
A strong SEO strategy is going to be more important than ever before. With more and more companies moving toward an online presence, the competition is going to grow even more. To rank and be seen you will need to be producing awesome content and be seen. By being seen, I believe it is going to be very important to use video in your marketing strategy for 2021.
-Candace Alley, Greater Heights Solutions
A more data-driven approach
We are seeing new social media platforms quickly joining the top ranks of Facebook (Hello TikTok!), lower email open rates, and the costs of online marketing increasing (Facebook/Instagram ads for instance). With all these options, business owners want to know what is working and what isn’t working. They don’t have the time and money to be everywhere. Using metrics for online assets such as websites and membership sites, social media presence, SEO, and email marketing as well as understanding your ideal audience will be crucial for business marketing as consumers try to streamline and cut through all the noise.
-Jennifer Grayeb and Megan Hansell Henderson, The Nimble Co.
Social strategies with measurable KPI’s
In 2021, business owners need to know which marketing trends to invest their attention, time, and money on. Video Content and Mobile-optimized Content are two strong trends that if you invest in now as a business owner, the ROI for your investment will pay off in both the short term and the long term with a well thought out content strategy (*think IG Reels short term/YouTube (SEO) long term)
-Megan Flanagan, 609 Media
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