Digital Marketing: what has changed and how to prepare for 2021
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:24 am
This year we went from working in the office to working from home , from birthday parties to family live streams, from classroom lessons to video lessons, from going to bars to the tranquility of #stayathome . It was a year of upheavals, no one has any doubt about that.
But have you ever stopped to think about how much this pandemic has accelerated the evolution of Digital Marketing ? If you are a business owner, you have certainly realized that without an online presence, you will rarely survive after this. If you were already in online media, you have seen that it is not enough to just be present, you have to know what you are doing and do it differently.
To understand what awaits us after this year, it is important to identify consumer behavior in digital media in 2020.
Top Google searches
According to Google (Think with Google – Sep2020), the most searched terms in digital-first life were:
Birthday on the Internet
Online therapy
Mass on the Internet
Virtual museums
Digital reporting
Exercise at home
Homeschooling
Lives on YouTube
And this data clearly shows us people's concern about adapting to the new reality created during the pandemic. Have you searched for any of these terms? Yes, I have! o/
Some more interesting facts
1. 58% growth in demand for Home & Garden items . Many people are whatsapp mexico always saying that they would like to spend more time at home, including me. Well, with the pandemic, this became possible. And, being at home, people started to “take care” of their space more, since they would be there full time.
2. Learn how to make digital transactions
5x increase in payments via digital means;
74% of financial transactions in Brazil were carried out through digital channels.
3. E-commerce shined
112% increase in online orders , more than doubling the number of online tickets issued between 2019 and 2020;
104% increase in e-commerce revenue, from R$16.2 billion in 2019 to R$33 billion in 2020;
New e-shoppers: 24.2% is the share of new virtual buyers in total sales.
4. Categories that grew the most in digital
Online/offline e-commerce marketplace
E-commerce Home & Garden
E-commerce home appliance industry
Food retail, supermarkets
Delivery apps
Beauty e-commerce
Fashion e-commerce
E-commerce technology industry
More than understanding how people behaved during the pandemic, it is important to look at the next steps and try to find out how they will react next year.
3 insights into how digital retail responded to the pandemic
1. The marketplace has become more robust
An online store created PER MINUTE between March and June.
In March alone, Abcomm (Brazilian Electronic Commerce Association) registered 107 thousand new establishments in the online environment.
2. Physical retailers who have proven themselves to be digital experts
63% growth in online and offline retail traffic and 39% growth in online retail traffic
While physical stores remained closed or, more recently, with limited opening hours, physical retailers that invested in e-commerce saw a greater increase in traffic on digital channels.
3. The washing powder race
Many people made their first online purchase during the pandemic. And the first step towards this purchase is often a Google search, where the consumer searches for: “product name + how to buy online?”.
Digital Marketing Trends for 2021
1 – Growth of in-house digital marketing teams
This is a direct consequence of the crisis caused by COVID-19, which meant that many companies, seeking to reduce costs, ended up discovering that they could do very well without needing the support of a specialized agency.
2 – Even more advances in terms of Artificial Intelligence
Google Analytics recently gained a new version, which promises to take the Machine Learning process to even more sophisticated levels, which will be of immense help when it comes to making our digital marketing campaigns even more segmented.
New technologies and integrations, such as segmented audiences in Google Analytics with ads created in Google Ads, will make the conversion rate even higher.
3 – SEO as a strategic part of digital marketing
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This is the technique responsible for the organic (non-paid) exposure of a website's pages in the list of search results on major search engines such as Google and Bing.
SEO techniques have been improving rapidly as Google algorithm updates become more and more frequent, seeking to adapt to new consumer habits and new technologies that emerge every day.
That's why we've drawn attention to a new dimension of SEO, which we call SEO On SERP, that is, techniques to stand out on search engine response pages.
4 – Google My Business Growth
Google My Business is a free Google tool for promoting small and medium-sized businesses, which has become a powerful ally in promoting local businesses, as it guarantees great exposure on Google's answer pages, at zero cost.
The tool has been receiving new features almost monthly and these functionalities have been attracting more and more companies, a movement that we believe will intensify in 2021.
5 – Voice searches on the rise
Still in the area of search marketing, one of the trends worth highlighting is the increase in voice searches, whether on Google's own search platform or in applications such as Google Assistant, Cortana and Siri.
According to a survey carried out by ComScore, in 2020, no less than 50% of searches will be done by voice, which has a significant impact on the way brands should work on their search engine optimization process.
6 – Social media going beyond marketing
In the area of social media, they will not only grow in importance, but also occupy a prominent place in terms of sales directly through their platforms.
Facebook and Instagram are investing heavily in new social commerce tools for these two networks, which will give social networks an increasingly important role.
Nowadays, selling through Instagram or selling through Facebook is no longer a problem, but we still miss some features.
7 – WhatsApp enters the game once and for all
WhatsApp as a digital marketing tool has been part of our “arsenal” for some time now, but in 2021 this presence tends to be even greater.
The platform has been announcing some important changes, mainly for WhatsApp Business soon, which will make this tool even more versatile and offer new opportunities in terms of online marketing.
8 – Career increasingly demanding training
A career in digital marketing has never been so valued and more and more companies are looking to form their own teams to escape the high costs of digital agencies in the country, as we said in the first item of this analysis.
The lack of truly qualified labor has been putting upward pressure on digital marketing salaries, a trend that has lasted more than five years and is expected to continue in 2021.
But have you ever stopped to think about how much this pandemic has accelerated the evolution of Digital Marketing ? If you are a business owner, you have certainly realized that without an online presence, you will rarely survive after this. If you were already in online media, you have seen that it is not enough to just be present, you have to know what you are doing and do it differently.
To understand what awaits us after this year, it is important to identify consumer behavior in digital media in 2020.
Top Google searches
According to Google (Think with Google – Sep2020), the most searched terms in digital-first life were:
Birthday on the Internet
Online therapy
Mass on the Internet
Virtual museums
Digital reporting
Exercise at home
Homeschooling
Lives on YouTube
And this data clearly shows us people's concern about adapting to the new reality created during the pandemic. Have you searched for any of these terms? Yes, I have! o/
Some more interesting facts
1. 58% growth in demand for Home & Garden items . Many people are whatsapp mexico always saying that they would like to spend more time at home, including me. Well, with the pandemic, this became possible. And, being at home, people started to “take care” of their space more, since they would be there full time.
2. Learn how to make digital transactions
5x increase in payments via digital means;
74% of financial transactions in Brazil were carried out through digital channels.
3. E-commerce shined
112% increase in online orders , more than doubling the number of online tickets issued between 2019 and 2020;
104% increase in e-commerce revenue, from R$16.2 billion in 2019 to R$33 billion in 2020;
New e-shoppers: 24.2% is the share of new virtual buyers in total sales.
4. Categories that grew the most in digital
Online/offline e-commerce marketplace
E-commerce Home & Garden
E-commerce home appliance industry
Food retail, supermarkets
Delivery apps
Beauty e-commerce
Fashion e-commerce
E-commerce technology industry
More than understanding how people behaved during the pandemic, it is important to look at the next steps and try to find out how they will react next year.
3 insights into how digital retail responded to the pandemic
1. The marketplace has become more robust
An online store created PER MINUTE between March and June.
In March alone, Abcomm (Brazilian Electronic Commerce Association) registered 107 thousand new establishments in the online environment.
2. Physical retailers who have proven themselves to be digital experts
63% growth in online and offline retail traffic and 39% growth in online retail traffic
While physical stores remained closed or, more recently, with limited opening hours, physical retailers that invested in e-commerce saw a greater increase in traffic on digital channels.
3. The washing powder race
Many people made their first online purchase during the pandemic. And the first step towards this purchase is often a Google search, where the consumer searches for: “product name + how to buy online?”.
Digital Marketing Trends for 2021
1 – Growth of in-house digital marketing teams
This is a direct consequence of the crisis caused by COVID-19, which meant that many companies, seeking to reduce costs, ended up discovering that they could do very well without needing the support of a specialized agency.
2 – Even more advances in terms of Artificial Intelligence
Google Analytics recently gained a new version, which promises to take the Machine Learning process to even more sophisticated levels, which will be of immense help when it comes to making our digital marketing campaigns even more segmented.
New technologies and integrations, such as segmented audiences in Google Analytics with ads created in Google Ads, will make the conversion rate even higher.
3 – SEO as a strategic part of digital marketing
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. This is the technique responsible for the organic (non-paid) exposure of a website's pages in the list of search results on major search engines such as Google and Bing.
SEO techniques have been improving rapidly as Google algorithm updates become more and more frequent, seeking to adapt to new consumer habits and new technologies that emerge every day.
That's why we've drawn attention to a new dimension of SEO, which we call SEO On SERP, that is, techniques to stand out on search engine response pages.
4 – Google My Business Growth
Google My Business is a free Google tool for promoting small and medium-sized businesses, which has become a powerful ally in promoting local businesses, as it guarantees great exposure on Google's answer pages, at zero cost.
The tool has been receiving new features almost monthly and these functionalities have been attracting more and more companies, a movement that we believe will intensify in 2021.
5 – Voice searches on the rise
Still in the area of search marketing, one of the trends worth highlighting is the increase in voice searches, whether on Google's own search platform or in applications such as Google Assistant, Cortana and Siri.
According to a survey carried out by ComScore, in 2020, no less than 50% of searches will be done by voice, which has a significant impact on the way brands should work on their search engine optimization process.
6 – Social media going beyond marketing
In the area of social media, they will not only grow in importance, but also occupy a prominent place in terms of sales directly through their platforms.
Facebook and Instagram are investing heavily in new social commerce tools for these two networks, which will give social networks an increasingly important role.
Nowadays, selling through Instagram or selling through Facebook is no longer a problem, but we still miss some features.
7 – WhatsApp enters the game once and for all
WhatsApp as a digital marketing tool has been part of our “arsenal” for some time now, but in 2021 this presence tends to be even greater.
The platform has been announcing some important changes, mainly for WhatsApp Business soon, which will make this tool even more versatile and offer new opportunities in terms of online marketing.
8 – Career increasingly demanding training
A career in digital marketing has never been so valued and more and more companies are looking to form their own teams to escape the high costs of digital agencies in the country, as we said in the first item of this analysis.
The lack of truly qualified labor has been putting upward pressure on digital marketing salaries, a trend that has lasted more than five years and is expected to continue in 2021.