3 Powerful Marketing Predictions For 2021

3 Powerful Marketing Predictions For 2021

Marketing Prediction 1: Digital Ad Spend To See Massive Peaks

As far as marketing predictions go, in today’s post-pandemic ‘new normal’ saying that ‘digital marketing is at an all-time high’ is an absolute understatement. With massive growths in screen-time during the pandemic, businesses will continue to find value in a digital-first advertising strategy.

While businesses across the spectrum—online and offline—were quick to pivot their thinking around fortifying digital marketing strategies, understandably, during the pandemic, brick-and-mortar businesses were hit the hardest. Large businesses were early to adopt— shortening the consumer’s path to purchase and taking their sales cycles mostly if not all-digital. Take the swoosh for example. The Wall Street Journal reports—the sneaker giant increased digital sales by 82% and made a cool $3.7 billion in revenue through direct e-commerce sales in the summer quarter, up 12% from last year.

In 2021, digital marketing fuelled by increased ad spends, will form the centerpiece of marketing strategies for brands across industries. According to the Insider Intelligence Report on Global Digital Ad Spending, digital ad spending worldwide is expected to surge from 2.4% to 17% in 2021. What this means is that an already competitive space is set to get even more aggressive. Brands need to ensure they inject enough capital to be prioritized and placed in front of their audience while also cutting through the clutter with innovative campaigns — more videos, clutter-breaking visuals, and overall smarter content.

“What this means is that an already competitive space is set to get even more aggressive. Brands need to ensure they inject enough capital to be prioritized and placed in front of their audience while also cut through the clutter with innovative campaigns—more videos, clutter-breaking visuals, and overall smarter content.”

Marketing Prediction 2: The Rise Of UGC, Live Streaming, Edit-Table Films, and Branded Content

It’s hard to pen down marketing predictions without thinking about the growing impact of video. Investing in video content has, is, and will—for the foreseeable future—continue to be a marketing trend with high ROI.  However, 2020 saw adaptable shifts to the way video content was created. With global lockdowns, production took a backseat, and brands re-built their video strategy around post-production-reliant narratives and treatments. The ‘You Can’t Stop Us’ campaign by Nike is an absolute masterclass of a film made on the edit table with a mix of UGC and archived footage.

At Red Bangle, while we made more videos than we ever had before, our shoot days were cut by a little lesser than half. One of the few outliers where a camera was still involved, was a format that was just waiting to blow up – live streaming. According to a late-2020 study, Forbes reported the live streaming industry to have grown by an unbelievable 99% in a pandemic-struck year. But along with UGC, live streaming, and edit-table films, was a creative direction that made marketers smile with nostalgia – branded content, or non-ad-ads. In fact, to spark some inspiration, a couple of weeks ago, we did a whole story on some of the best branded content produced by businesses around the world. Take a look at what resulted in this shift and get inspired.

Marketing Prediction 3: Quality-Rich Gated Content – A Renaissance

The ad-tech ecosystem is geared up to witness dramatic shifts all through 2021. With Google’s announcement of making third party cookies obsolete by 2022, this addition to the list of marketing predictions almost wrote itself. Brands that relied highly on programmatic, retargeting, and cross-domain tracking, have to re-align strategy for the long-term. Marketers will need to focus attention on building a deep-routed content-driven data strategy that prioritizes creative ways of collecting consented data that’s solely centered around user experience and consumer benefit.

The maxim ‘content is king’ keeps getting truer and more relevant with each passing day. Old-school link building methodology will see a resurgence in a big way. In order to build customer profiles with strong firmographic and demographic attributes and data sets, marketers will need to build creative drips and automations such as action-based gamification of data. 

A mailing list subscription, however, is not going to cut it. According to a 2018 study from Acxiom and Foresight Factory on data privacy and what the consumer really thinks, 83% of consumers are open to sharing data with brands that they trust, and brands that provide direct tangible benefits. Businesses need to invest in creating rich, informational, and educative native content in the form of infographics,
explainer video content/tutorial videos, webinars, reports, and more—that is gated—incentivizing users to build a sense of trust and familiarity with the brand. 

“Marketers will need to focus attention on building a deep-routed content-driven data strategy that prioritizes creative ways of collecting consented data that is solely centered around user experience and consumer benefit.”

Does this spark any inspiration? Want us to take you through marketing predictions that directly impact your industry? Want to test out one of these trends for the coming quarters? If you have a brief that you need help executing, like always, the Red Bangle team is here to help. You can write to us at [email protected] or simply fill out our contact form and we’ll get in touch.