No area of the marketing world changes faster than digital marketing. According to a survey conducted by the Digital Marketing Institute: two-thirds of brands have seen a drop in revenue since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and yet over a quarter of marketers are spending 90% or more of their budget on digital marketing

In a field, that is crowded, you are going to need to stay on the edge if you don’t want to fall behind. Here are some of the top trends in digital marketing you need to know about going into 2021:

1. Adjacent Search
The importance of SEO in digital marketing is unquestionable, but are companies tackling the issue properly? For most companies, SEO means getting a certain webpage or two to appear as high as possible for specific search terms. but it ignores some of the nuances of how customers search online.
According to the search specialists, between 70 and 80% of consumers research a company online before doing business with them — and a big chunk of that research starts with search. You can’t just rank your site for a narrow column of keywords; you need to consider as many searches as possible adjacent to your primary business. Zoom in too far and you’ll risk losing customers who are searching terms similar but not identical to your own. Companies are increasingly tapping experts to round out their search profile, and that trend only looks to accelerate in 2021.

2. Chatbot
Chatbot adoption has certainly been massive, but users haven’t been as quick to adapt as companies. It can take a while to get used to engaging with chatbots, particularly first and second-generation ones. The conversations can be clunky and far less helpful than those with a real human. 2020 and 2021 will be remembered as milestone years in chatbot development, the time when chatbots finally reached a level of conversational capability that will earn them wide acceptance among consumers.

3. Video Content
Between YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, the video has definitively risen as the medium to beat when it comes to content. The great news for marketers is that there’s an appetite for nearly every form of video content out there: short-form, long-form, animated, live-action, humorous, informative, and so much more. All you need to do is create content that correctly reflects your brand, and there’ll be an audience for it.

Conclusion:
For the past many years it has been the time of the digital marketers. The industry simply cannot stop growing, and it only gets more effective with every new development. People who rise to the top will be those who stay ahead of the curve.