Marketing Trends for 2021: Boost Your Business in the Next Year

How is your marketing plan shaping up for next year? Got any good ideas? This list of marketing trends for 2021 should help you fill out your plan and leave 2020 in the dust.

Emotion-Based Branding

People want to connect now more than ever with the brands, products, and services that they like. Following a brand is a thing now, so brands need to be entertaining and offer good, solid, useful information more than just SELL SELL SELL.

Emotion-based branding is a fantastic way to connect with people where they are in the buying process AND make them feel part of something. Your brand is so much more than just your logo, color pallet, and tagline.

How do you want your audience to feel when they interact with your brand? Happy. Supported. Informed. Special. Passionate. Relieved.

The easiest and most effective way to create this type of emotion-based branding is through the Brand Archetype’s strategy. It’s simple yet powerful and ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING IT.

Learn more about Brand Archetypes HERE.

Discover which archetype you are HERE.

User-Generated Content

This is huge. Traditionally we think of marketing as something that brands do by making ads, creating campaigns, and telling customers why they should purchase. Social media has vastly changed this landscape.

Marketing is a two-way conversation now, and the latest step in this transformation is User-Generated Content. That means some of your most valuable marketing may be created by your loyal customers. When people tag your business on Facebook or Insta they’re showing their followers they value your brand. Influencer marketing is part of this trend, as are reviews, photos, and videos made by people other than you.

This means it’s increasingly important to make content for long standing loyal customers.

To Sum it Up: pay attention to and value your customer’s social media interactions. The best marketing you may ever get can come from a customer.

Want to become an influencer? Check out our LinkedIn Boost Service.

Nostalgia Marketing

What’s old is new again! This is a powerful marketing trend for 2021, from the resurgence of the sitcom Friends, to the retro 80’s series Stranger Things, to Star Wars memorabilia. Nostalgia is safe and comforting. Marketing using nostalgia creates positive feelings and a sense of continuity for the consumer.

To Sum it Up: times are chaotic and right now nostalgia is safe and comforting, which means as a marketer, it’s a great place to focus.

Social Commerce

This simply means that more and more social media platforms are creating ways for people to sell their products and services directly through those platforms.

• Instagram has just changed their layout to include a shopping tab directly in the main interface.
• Facebook continues to have shopping options built-in.
• Pinterest is also integrating shopping more fully.

To Sum it Up: marketers know that social proof is a huge component of trust. By selling directly on social media, they allow customers to purchase their products in the places they go to get recommendations.

Google Verified Listings and Local SEO​

Marketing Trends for 2021 are going to include Google. It continues to be the juggernaut of search engines and their guidelines and updates shape SEO, websites, blogs, and pretty much every aspect of content creation. So watching what they do is always important.

Right now they’re optimizing for local SEO and business listings, which is a great opportunity for small businesses to get noticed in Google rankings.

To Sum it Up: Get your small business listed on Google My Business and make sure your website content is updated for the latest SEO standards.

Customer Driven Content Marketing

Trends show increasing segmentation of content marketing, including blogging, email marketing, and social media. Customers want personalized experiences rather than generic email blasts. Make sure you’re creating content for all levels of the buyer journey, from when they just become aware of a problem you can solve, through consideration of the options, purchase of your product and finally creating content for loyal customers.

Also, trends are strongly showing that research-based content that responds to the customer’s values rather than being created from a project-based perspective. Most marketing content is still not created using data from the customers to drive creation.

To Sum it Up: Find out what your customer wants rather than assuming that you know. Once you know what they want, make content focused on their needs and values through the whole buyer’s journey.

Marketing Trends in Interactive and Moving Content

This includes video, animations, quizzes, games, and polls.

Visual storytelling is the up and coming powerhouse of content creation. People view videos, animation, micro-interactions, YouTube, and engage more with those brands. New up and coming platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram Reels show that social media is already shifting to adapt to increasing video engagement.

Live video is especially big right now, which can be scary for your average entrepreneur. It makes sense, however, especially with the ongoing pandemic lockdowns and increased time spent inside. People want to see authenticity and normal life. Less produced live interactions with brands hold a great deal of appeal.

To Sum it Up: Make your social media move. Include animations, videos, and try out some live video interactions in the coming year.

Keeping it Fresh

Marketing is always shifting, as fashions change and new technologies become available. Keeping up with the marketing trends in 2021 can help your business reach your target market, close some deals, and sell some products.

Some things are consistent within those trends, focusing on SEO is still a key part of online marketing as is having a website, and being on social media platforms. Most importantly, it always comes down to listening to the customer and helping them solve their problems.

Need Help With Your 2021 Marketing?

We can help you implement these Marketing Trends for 2021.

Zeedia Media creates killer content for all sorts of things. We know all the words because “words matter!” We also walk clients through the Brand Archetype discovery process to create a powerful emotion-based brand.

Contact Zeedia Media for content, branding, and social media management. We can also help you with your online reputation if you aren’t happy about what people are saying about you. Let’s exchange some words–the good kind!
@ZeediaMedia