The usage of smartphones is increasing every year. Search engines and social media platforms are focusing on mobile content. Moreover, as people are majorly working from home owing to the pandemic, the use of smartphones increased exponentially in 2020 alone. With a sea of possibilities in mobile marketing, trends like shoppable ads, voice search, and text-based marketing are going to dominate 2021 and years to come.
Last year’s pandemic has changed the way people interact with brands online. They have become more vocal in their feedback, review articles & videos have gained popularity, and people have become more vigilant in their online purchase decisions. Moreover, they’re spending more time on social networks like Facebook and Instagram. The smartphone revolution has opened up big gates of marketing opportunities for businesses.
These marketing opportunities are going to shape the mobile marketing trends in 2021 and beyond. We have listed four popular trends that you need to keep an eye on in 2021. Have a look.
The Rise of Mobile Commerce
Desktops and Laptops were used pervasively in the last decade. Not anymore; the use of mobile phones gained popularity after 2015, platforms like Facebook, Shopify, and Instagram optimized and added their interfaces with mobile shopping.
This made shopping easier and gave rise to mobile-commerce or m-commerce, which became viral in the past few years. By the end of 2021, mobile sales will hit a massive $3.56 trillion revenue, a staggering 22.3% increase – according to Oberlo.
The fact that Google released a mobile-focused algorithm (Mobilegeddon) shows the potential mobile marketing has. Make sure to optimize your site for smartphones and tablets.
Connect your Instagram posts with your website’s shopping pages. People are getting comfortable with shopping online. Be omnipresent in your marketing effort and drive great ROI using mobile traffic.
Audio Marketing
According to marketing experts, audio marketing will be on the rise in 2021. People nowadays prefer to consume information on the go. So, while watching a video or reading a blog requires stopping everything else; this isn’t the case with listening. You can plug in your Airpods and listen to a product review, or it’s specifications while continuing your work.
According to a study by PodcastHosting, fifty percent of the US population actively listens to podcasts that contain over thirty-four million episodes. Podcasts are developed for mobiles and are meant to be consumed on the go. Marketing gurus leverage podcasts to provide digestible content bits to their audience and enjoy high engagements.
The point
If you’re looking to spruce up your marketing efforts in 2021, don’t forget to include audio marketing in your strategy. Select the best audio marketing platform, send custom voice notes, and engage your followers for increased brand exposure.
Voice Search
Voice search is the future of searching answers on search engines. It takes fewer efforts to speak than to type. The voice search feature is used by one-third of the American population. According to Oberlo, voice search queries are estimated to rise by 9.7% (122.7 million people) by 2021. This number is estimated to grow even more in 2022 and beyond.
Mobile operating systems like iOS and Android have also introduced their voice assistants (Sire & Google Assistant) several years ago. These voice assistants use AI and Machine Learning to understand the keyword and respond accordingly.
Voice search is going to play a crucial role in your business’ SEO efforts in 2021. Make sure you’re optimizing your articles with long-tail keywords that are extensively used by people. Leverage tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush to gain information about such keywords.
Text-Based Marketing
With audio marketing and voice search ringing so many bells in the marketing industry, only a few marketers understand that text-based marketing will be equally effective in 2021.
Several people (especially the ones aged forty and above) still rely on text-based content. They like to read review articles, read product specifications, and feedback online before making a purchase decision. These people are reluctant to switch to voice-based marketing out of their habit. So, as long as articles and text content exist on the internet, you will always find them available to consume the text content.
Moreover, you can implement text-based marketing without an active internet connection. You can broadcast texts to your target audience using mass texting services to engage them.
If you wish to create a winning marketing strategy in 2021, make sure you include the above tactics in your plan. A perfect marketing strategy is a combination of old and new marketing methods to appeal to all types of audiences.
Interesting related article: “What is Online Marketing?“