Personalization is must
Personalization is not a trend but a necessity in 2021, to build a brand. Your customer mustn't find you spamming their feed.
Be authentic. Don't be salesy, promotive. Rather be helpful, informative, connect emotionally, and try to give them a personalized experience.
Storytelling is the best component to add personalization to your content. Subaru does more than just sell cars in its advertising. Each advertisement tells a story about an adventurous lifestyle. In one advertisement, a blind artist who works at the Enchanted Hills Camp and Retreat in Napa, California guides sighted people on trails.
Long term marketing plan
The key difference between Small, Mid-sized businesses and Big businesses is - bigger brands work to achieve their long-term goals along with small-term goals. While, Small-mid sized business owners provide maximum efforts and budget to achieve short-term goals - which is why they always drop back.
Thus, be smart to plan a branding strategy with a bigger picture.
When it comes to a long-term marketing strategy, it is important to remember that you're in a marathon, not a race or a sprint. It may be frustrating or confusing to not see immediate results, but the ROI on a successful long-term marketing strategy will pay off.
Integrating cross channel for branding
Cross-channel marketing is one of the best ways to keep your brand in front of your customer's eyes. It helps you to create a personalized and stronger bond with target audiences.
Through cross-channel marketing, you can pick up your marketing on another channel from the exact point where it stopped on the first channel - thus can easily grab them.
With the increasing number of marketing channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Giphy, Tiktok, etc, having an efficient cross-channel marketing strategy is a necessity.
Video contents
In this pandemic, where we all are restricted in our house, video calls, zoom meetings are some of the most preferred ways to experience human touch. Because of this, trends in video content are tremendously increased.
In fact, in a recent report of video content, 5 billion hours of video content, watched daily, while on Facebook, 100 million hours of video content are watched a day.
People love to watch videos over text and audio. It makes content personalize and interesting. And, you can easily add emotions to your content.
Also, it's not harder to interfere with the video content in a marketing strategy.
Bonus Tip: People preferred watching How-to and Informative type content. This can be a boon for SMEs to increase brand awareness.
Internet privacy and data security
Security is a matter of concern for every customer. As the world goes online, the gain in cyber-crimes is enormous. To avoid this, users are aware of basic cyber malpractices and how to avoid them.
Your target audience cares a lot for their data and thus wants you to take care of their shared data.
If they observe a red flag with your brand, they'll immediately leave to never come back again.
Use online and offline marketing approach
In 2020, due to pandemics, the growth of digital-only marketing is massively increased. However, this trend found to be changed in 2021.
People love to see online and offline marketing. When you'll integrate a combined marketing approach in branding, you'll be one step ahead of your competitors.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is one easiest way to make rapid growth in your branding. Though, it is a bit costlier, but, the results in worth's each penny.
According to the recent report of Backlinko, 9 out of 10 branding campaigns include influencer marketing as a must-have element in the branding approach.
Marketers say that ROI with influencer marketing is far better than any other channel.
Localizing brand presence
When your target audience includes different countries, cultural nuances, and variations - you want to build an irresistible brand with all of them without fear of big loss, then localizing the brand is the only option for you.
When you localize your brand, your customers are more likely to listen to what you have to say and share your content more. Your conversion rates may increase too.
Burger King used this trend to grab more Indians by introducing Aloo Tikki, which earns them irresistible brand value.
Go for native advertising
If you don't know, what is native advertising?
Here's a quick introduction.
Native advertising is a kind of paid advertisement that engages your readers without realizing, that they are exposed to paid advertising.
When social media is your prime advertising platform over banner, Hoarding, offline, or Television ads, then the native advertisement is the best option for you.
In online advertising, two types of ads are preferred most - display ads and native ads. And, among both, native ads reveal a 52% more engagement rate than display ads, which increases continuously.
E-commerce is best to set up your brands
With the pandemic and restrictions to be in the house, the growth of online shopping increases remarkably. People love online shopping.
Before the pandemic, few people preferred online purchasing with the frequency once a month, which now changed to a go-to option for all shopping.
New populations are persuading toward it. So, if you want to sell anything, then it is advisable to have your e-commerce where people can seamlessly buy any of your products.
Conclusions:
Linking your branding strategy with the current trends is the best way to get success in branding. However, it demands continuous effort and smart work to stay updated.
With my shared branding trends of 2021, you can make it slightly easier.
Also, if you don't know how to put these branding trends of 2021 to work for your brand, do connect with us at DesignLab, where we help you sort out any and every branding problem.
Also, let us know, which 2021 branding trend you love the most? And, let us know, any other trend names on the list.
