Digital Marketing Predictions for 2021

With the global pandemic raging on the shift to working from home appears to be the new normal.   Over 72% of all employees recently surveyed plan to continue working from home at least two days per week.  With a new President taking office and appearance of new strains of Covid around the globe we are no longer going to return to normal we are going to evolve to a new normal.

So as it relates to digital marketing what is the new normal for 2021?

  1. The Buyers journeys have been forever altered and transitioned from linear to much more investigative non-linear forever.   75% of all buyers are spending more time researching solutions and suppliers.   What this means is the buyers journey involves multiple channels in the discovery of solutions and had become more complex and multi-dimensional.   Here are the B:B facts:
    1. A buyer touches content on 5 channels before becoming a prospect (top of the funnel)
    2. 5 more channels before becoming a qualified lead
    3. 6 more channels before becoming a customer.

That’s 16 channels !

  1. Security and Privacy will be a top concern as cyber-attacks are up 400% in the last year and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is center stage for most organizations and a major priority.   Data that is shared and available for marketing purposes will become more tightly controlled and managed as consumer concerns increase.
  2. Artificial Intelligence:  Personalized messages have always been important, however, in 2021 it will be damaging to a sales cycle if a prospect receives information that is not relevant.  In fact 66% of consumers surveyed say that non-personalized content would stop them from making a “buy decision”.    To find the right prospect and deliver the right content and the lowest cost per click needs the heavy-duty computing and learning capabilities of AI.
  3. Marketing Tech stacks will become mission critical and a tremendous competitive differentiator.  With over 2000 tools available in the market that perform different functions the need for a set of applications that support a strategy and integrate seamlessly is essential.  An “All-in-one” solution allows sales and marketing to work together without gaps or delays caused by a series of un-integrated tools.
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