Even though Face44 is mainly focused on assisting its partners/clients with tailored digital design and development solutions, knowledge and following best practices about digital marketing techniques still play a crucial role, because after all, whatever we are creating is for the digital world. So here are our 2-cents about how the digital world is evolving and what it has to offer in 2021.

2020 has been a crazy year, mainly because of the pandemic. So many things have changed, from companies shifting to permanent work from home to a rapid increase in online sales, from Google algorithm updates to people going after Facebook over privacy policies and whatnot. But 2020 is done and dusted, and we are already halfway through 2021. So, what is going to happen for the year ahead?

The digital marketing industry has experienced a new boom. It has become saturated, primarily due to Covid-19, everyone’s coming online to buy stuff.

Covid has pushed almost every business to go digital, and this has made it super competitive for companies to sustain their presence online. Hence, everyone is leveraging digital marketing. So, how do you get a leg up in the competition and win the Marketing game in 2021?

Point 1: Optimising Website’s Page Speed

Page speed is going to be more critical than ever. It should be your priority moving forward. Do you know that carefully assessing and Improving page speed increases conversions by approx. 7% and more? If not, you better speed up your web pages. And if you don’t know how to go about it, Face44 can help you with that.

Minimizing the page’s loading speed can reduce the bounce rate, improve traffic flow, and rank across search engines. 

Let’s take another look at it. We now have 5G out there, but look around and see how many areas there may be with 3G, 4G, or 5G or whatever home connection there is, and it still takes a long time for a website or a webpage to load. Why is that? 

Just because your internet connection is fast doesn’t mean;

• that users accessing your website from different places would have the same internet speed
• the website loads fast 
• that you’re in an area where the reception gives you that high-speed internet

We are not there yet! And that’s why you need to make sure that your website loads super fast and is optimized for all sorts of internet connections, even for the ones with the lowest reception rate. 

One of the tricks you can do to improve and optimize your website’s speed is to load your non-static files from CDNs (Content Delivery Network). And by putting your non-static files on a CDN, you can boost your page’s load time, improve all of your SEO’s rankings, overall web traffic, and conversions. 

Point 2: Content Lenght Won’t Matter Much

The second trend that we are seeing is the content length. In 2021, the length of text-based content won’t matter as much. In the past years, everyone’s talked about whether you want to rank your website or reach the top 10 search results of Google; you need to have 2000+ words. That’s not the case anymore!

Well, go on and Google how to tie a shoelace. Do you think Google wants to show you 2000 words on that? We bet not. Why? Because YOU as a user wouldn’t want to see 2000 words plus content on how to tie a shoelace instead, you want to see an image, an animated GIF, or a short video that breaks on the given search topic as quickly as possible. 

And that is what’s happening with text-based articles and blogs. Everyone is used to creating lengthy articles based on the perception that the content needs to be super long with all the high-priority keywords if we want to rank higher. That’s over with!

Text-based content doesn’t matter as much as the quality of content. Google is changing its algorithms and showing content that’s valuable for the users, delivers the solution, and aligns with the user’s intent and search patterns. 

In 2021, the hack is to improve your audio length and video length longer. We observed that audio and video length that is 10 mins performs better than the shorter versions that are only 3-5 mins long. On the other hand, audio and videos above 20-30 mins do not have as big of an impact as having a 10min long audio or video on the website. 

Point 3: Little Marginal Gains

There is no Holy grail of digital marketing because it is super competitive and rapidly evolving. That means that one hack or trick will not get you that silver bullet you think would make all the difference and help you beat your competition. Instead, it’s all about getting those little marginal gains. For instance, if you want to win a 20km cycling tour, you won’t be able to win that just by pedaling or training harder; everyone else already does that. But there are many little things that nobody’s doing to help you level up your game against your competition. 

The same goes out for marketing. Are you investing in those little marginal gains of marketing? Are you using voice search on your website? If you are using voice search, then are you also using advanced AI to make your website compatible with all the voice devices so that people can buy your products and services? The thing is that you might already be getting traffic from voice search, but you probably don’t realize whether you are getting conversions through it or not? 

These are the little things that can help you get an extra edge over your competitors. Make use of every little bit; this is what marketing is all about. 

Point 4: Ranking Will Matter More Than Ever

Older data and general perception suggest that websites or webpages that appear in the first ten results of Google – the first page, get the most traffic, increased clicks, higher conversions, and user attention than if you ranked on page number 2,3,4, or so on. 

In 2021, getting your website ranked will be much more challenging than ever. As Google changing its algorithms, business models are forced to maintain their page’s ranking. Thus, your website will face a big downfall f you are not in the first few searches. 

To compete against the odds, you really need to roll the balls for SEO, both on-page and off-page. There were rumors that SEO will be dead in 2021, but that’s not entirely the case. You need to focus on providing quality content to your users. More authentic and more relatable, and more human-centric. 

It’s just that you need to go after the top spots on Google because they will matter more than ever in 2021 and who knows what the later half holds for us. So, if you want to hook the clients, improve your retention rate and conversions, then investing all your efforts into improving your website’s ranking is a MUST! 

Point 5: Repurposing and Updating Content – The New Norm

Everyone talks about creating unique content, content that’s not been published anywhere else out there. But, if you think it aloud, that’s not even possible, right? There are over a billion blogs, thousands of YouTube channels, social media platforms, and new platforms like Clubhouse – an audio-chat social networking platform. 

So, the point is that there is already a ton of content and information out there, and people are already benefiting from it.  Creators are creating content in different places, but are you also benefiting from it? Are you repurposing the content? 

You can just take out the relevant information you have already created before and repurpose it with updated content and data. You can take your text-based content and transform it into a video or audio – a podcast. You can even use the same information and create a room on the newly launched social networking app – Clubhouse. Talk about your industry, collaborate with different people and industry experts in your exclusive room. This app can be the next hit in the upcoming few months based on the potential it has. 

A trick to follow – update your existing content more frequently than emphasizing creating new content from scratch. It would keep you afloat amidst the competition and is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic to your website. 

Final Thoughts

There is so much more to follow and expect in the latter half of 2021. We observed that trends are changing majorly because of the ever-changing updates in the algorithms of search engines and social networking sites and the way users are interacting with different content available on the internet. 

But for any business, small or large, it has become essential to look at multiple trends and figure out how they can optimize their social presence. Unfortunately, there isn’t one silver bullet to win the digital marketing game. 

Use your time and resources to rebuild and prepare for what is yet to come —whatever you thought wouldn’t happen until 2020 just did! So, get ready for any unforeseen changes that might occur in a flicker. The future is here!