List of Unpopular Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

2021 is upon us! (finally) and it’s only about time for myriad articles on upcoming digital marketing trends to emerge!

Voice Search (again)
Chatbots (again)
Personalization (again)
Augmented Reality
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning

…will most likely be some of the trends that will dominate the leading digital marketing publications (yet again).

However, let’s face it — the above list will never be part of the day-to-day digital marketing efforts of a small to medium-sized business, regardless of how ambitious it may be!

Under XYZ Lab and especially during my teaching endeavours with General Assembly, I am connecting with hundreds of small to medium size business owners every month — and trust me, their problems have nothing to do with any of the above buzzwords.

As a matter of fact, their pain-points revolve around more pressing matters…for example:

Making sense of digital marketing analytics — Google Analytics 4 is introducing us to a new era of digital measurement

In case you didn’t notice it yet, Google has launched a new, enhanced version of Google Analytics (Google Analytics 4). The new measurement logic is purely events based — meaning that we need to move away from measuring page views to measuring online actions.

Pageviews, website scrolls, Button clicks etc. are now events. Concepts such as “engaged users” are now monitored by default and every company will need to strategise it’s very own measurement strategy.

Beating the Social Media Algorithms — Organic reach is constantly decreasing making it harder for companies to build a brand

Every startup company is quickly realizing that growing an Instagram or YouTube account is much harder than expected. Global platform adoption develops an immensely competitive space in all industries…while the social media algorithms are definitely not build to help SMEs grow.

Startups and SMEs need to seriously “up” their game within the same head-count. This means that sooner or later they’ll need to re-calibrate their social media strategies to focus on fewer channels.

Search Engine Optimisation is becoming more skewed towards content quality

Zero-click searches …. have been on a steady rise for years. 50% of all the search traffic stays on Google. This is because Google will most likely provide you with an answer to your query without the need to click a link. At the same time, competition is growing exponentially with more and more websites being published every day.

Based on the latest Google Core Algorithm update, companies will have to triple down on quality content and user experience.

Target audiences will revolve around Objectives and first-party data — Behavioural Targeting will give way to Signal Targeting

What is signal targeting? Signals are actions that predict purchase behaviour. For example, if a user bought dog food recently, it means that she/he may also be interested in buying pet toys.

Example number two — if a user completes a form on a real estate property portals, it means that she/he may be interested in completing a property lead form to get in touch with a property agent.

How is this different from behavioural targeting? Long story short, Behavioural targeting is linked to browser behaviour, likes, follows and various engagements, while signal targeting is linked to actions taken (events) online.

How is this going to affect day-to-day PPC campaigns? Detailed targeting will become obsolete and marketers will relinquish more control to the advertising platforms via automated bidding strategies and communicating their objectives.

and here it is… the list of unpopular digital marketing trends for 2021!

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Have a happy new year and stay safe! 🎄