BELOW ARE MY MARKETING AND LEAD GENERATION TRENDS, OPPORTUNITIES AND PREDICTIONS FOR 2021
1) Knowing your audience will be as important as ever – The noise is only going to continue to go up. More and more people are hopping into the online marketing game so it will be crucial to build a targeted audience and really focus on helping them with their struggles with your marketing efforts. If you want to cut through the noise you really need to get clear on who you are trying to get to. People’s buying behavior will continue to shift toward buying from people they know, like, trust and view as the expert.
2) Personalize your marketing more in 2021 if you want to stand out – This includes online content, offline content (Snail Mail), emails and more. With this rise of automation (Yes ,you should continue to automate marketing) there is an opportunity to do a little bit of both. Why? Because while automation is effective, more and more people are using it aimlessly causing people to shut off from it. A personal touch will help push everything over the edge.
3) Attention spans are getting shorter so make sure your content is the same – Focus more on short-form copy and short videos. Our attention span is getting shorter and shorter and there is no end in sight. Creating shorter, easier to consume content more frequently will be key to be effective with your marketing this year.
4) Amplify your brand awareness – It’s time to stop overthinking how often you should create content and start pushing to publish as much as possible. With the increased noise and competition the brands that stay most top of mind will ultimately prevail. Forget about creating perfection and focus on creating more GOOD content.
5) The rise of the podcast – Expect more and more companies to shift to podcasting as one of their main forms of marketing. Podcasting has become the new blog but it has also become a great new way to engage with b2b prospects. If you feel like you have a face for radio then go all-in on a podcast.
6) Making it past spam will only get harder for email marketing –Machine learning for inboxes is getting smarter and smarter. It will be critically important to get people to subscribe to your list if you want a chance of it hitting the inbox (Not spam folder) with the frequency necessary to build a relationship. Overall, I actually expect a pick up in email response but only with those that have a genuine relationship with their list.
7) Video marketing will stay hot – Video is one of, if not the hottest marketing trends and it likely won’t change anytime soon. Video is the quickest way to build a connection with your audience and it is the easiest content to repurpose into other types of content. I think the biggest opportunity in video right now is in 1:1 personalized videos for targeted prospects.
8)LinkedIn will continue to boom but you will have to be different. It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a great place to engage with your market but with the amount of people flocking to the platform using a transactional approach the long game will be the way to play with your content as well as your messaging. Take the extra step every time you can when trying to get someone’s attention. Make it personalized, make it relevant and show up differently with a voice or video note.
9) Expect a pick up in print marketing – Because of everything mentioned above I think there will be a lot of opportunity to get back to some old-school snail mail. When everyone is going right, consider going left.
And that’s it! That’s my 9 marketing trends for 2021!
Reply back and let me know which of these you would be most interested in learning more about!
