The Future of Marketing | Digital Marketing Predictions 2021

What Is the Future of Digital Marketing?

Since the launch of the World Wide Web, trade and economics have seen a plethora of changes, the internet shaped the Customer Journey to Connection, Consideration, Search, Conversion and Continuation, where the future of Marketing is definitely combining the whole stages in Digital clicks, physical elements of the process are demolishing, yet the focus is shifting towards customer experience and satisfaction.

We discussed the History of Digital Marketing in a separate post, Search Engine Optimization started Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization future is more local, and it’s not just text, the future of SEO is multi-format, Audio, Video, and Images.

Before digging into The Future of Marketing, let’s agree that innovation has changed how buyer-seller interact in doing business, There are no such things as dropping by and complete a purchase. The possibility that B2B and B2C advertising diversity is no more correct. Clients are connecting with businesses virtually and gaining more trust in online transactions, the connection strengthened due to Covid-19 Lockdowns, and having a digital presence similarly to your brick and mortar store is no more optional.

The Social Media role is defined as a branding and awareness channels, and as long as people are having problems and seeking solutions, Search Engine Optimization and Organic results are here to stay also.

AI and Machine Learning Applications in the Future of Marketing

Artificial Intelligence, Machine, and Deep Learning, it’s just marketing jargon to describe the power of computer analytics to aid with business decisions, delivering ads, creating content, and simple customer service interactions.

Automation is the way forward, different technologies have evolved in the past decade to funnel online traffic to converting customers, Facebook Messenger robots, or scheduling and posting Social Media posts and updates through variant channels from one control panel.

The same leaps are happening on the media production side, GPT1, GPT2, and GPT3 impact on SEO and Digital Marketing are becoming more obvious year after year, it’s helping Digital Marketers to produce more content and cover variant topics at affordable costs, but is it there yet where a user cannot detect that content is auto-generated or repurposed? We don’t believe that any GPT will outdo a proficient human creating the content within the coming 5 years until 2025.

There are endless examples of Big Tech working on advanced algorithms to understand the content, context, and semantic meaning of a webpage, Google is able to analyze text but to understand it!? That’s more complex for humans, so its algorithm is still like a child’s brain solving puzzles.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that no matter how content generators or Article spinners advance, Google will always be able to detect the pattern of the machine and can determine whether a webpage is legitimate or robot-generated content.

The Future of Marketing Is More Focused on Customer Experience

Marketing and Digital Marketing is no more separated from other aspects of the business, any business should find and discover, should be able to reach new audiences, and funnel their clients through the customer journey, while keeping close attention to the customer experience and engagement along the path.

It used to simply inform the world of your stock or services, but recently Digital Marketers understand that customers require more insight and that they’re impacted by far beyond promotions. It’s about each interaction they have with our business brand.

Getting more concentrated on each customer separately over profiling and segmenting your customers into groups is obsolete, each customer is unique, and understanding GA Analytics (Server Log Files if Possible) to assess each page goals, and optimize for more user simplicity and user-centric content to provide a meaningful experience.

Customer Expectation Is Changing After 2021? How to Market for Generation Z

Definitely, The Future of Marketing is shaped by Customer Expectations, when customers were looking for businesses in the yellow pages, it was a must for business owners to be there, in 2010 investing in Social Media – Facebook Mainly- become the trend, but nowadays with hundreds of Social Networks and Apps having millions of users Facebook is no longer dominant! And, as users receive information through variant channels, business should claim their digital real estate on all, but focus on a few.

It’s not that Snapchat, Instagram Stories, or TikTok videos are dominating, but the future is for more types of content, users digest short-form video content, as a business owner you should use it to state that you exist, your objective should not be more than just gaining precious brand awareness, Generation is more skeptical to disruptive push ads, don’t try to sell all the time.

On the other hand, long-form content and podcasts are on the rise, YouTube Video average length is 17 min in 2021, it used to be under 10 min in 2013, people are looking for genuine and in-depth analysis of their interest, beware to choose your communication channels wisely and add value all the time, online attention span is dropping year after year with more competition for clicks, keep your messages balanced across digital marketing channels.

The Future of Safe and Secured Search Marketing

More people are complaining of irrelevant ads – not only SEO’s – therefore, but AdBlockers usage is also rising since 2012, more anonymous searches through incognito, and other search engines like Ecosia.org and Duck Duck Go are gaining traction with over 300% growth in 2021.

Website Security is weighing more in Google Algorithm, with very few websites appearing on the first page of search results without the Https SSL certificate, and users are checking if their website is secured before interacting with the website, we discussed Digital Marketing Security issues in a previous post in detail.

For marketers, you cannot rely on Google Ads alone to get traffic to your websites, consider that more seasoned customers are blind to your ads, and you should prove yourself to be relevant for all types of potential money keywords on Google Search, to keep up with the future of Marketing, balance your Marketing Budget into the main pillars, Paid Ads, Social Media, and Search Engine Optimization.

SEO will remain the best digital marketing channel due to INTENT! If a user has intent to make a purchase and is searching online, you have to get discovered before investing in other marketing activities, it generates 52% of the leads especially for B2B Businesses.