Marketers will have limitless budgets specifically to invest in experimental initiatives along with the new programs in this world of technology. The customer acquisition and retention landscape are evolving faster than ever after all. Marketing budgets are often limited around what is proven to work, which trends to look different from company to company is the challenge here.
It is the reason why it is so vital to gain access to the data of the industry. We are better positioned to uncover the areas of opportunities by understanding where we stand against our competitors and peers. You wish to know what your competitors are doing with the given overall marketing spend that is expected to grow by 14% in 2021.
We will be discussing the data-backed areas that marketers are aiming for their investments in 2021 in this post.
#1 Growth Marketing
In the areas of your marketing, do you ever wish to invest more in 2021? It is the question that the marketing executive Survey asked their respondents. The main aim of most respondents was to spend the most time on growth marketing.
Growth marketing explains the experiments and the resulting processes that businesses used to build and retain their customer base over time in brief. To make sure that all of the marketing efforts directly result from the data clearly explaining the best practices in terms of converting and retaining customers as it involves running A/B tests.
To give you a platform to update your content to increase acquisition, it is closely related to the conversion rate of optimization.
To connect your brand with your audience to help you stay consistent, adaptive, and recognizable to your target market, growth marketing can also involve the use of design elements and unique content.
#2 Reacting At Speed
Coronavirus pandemic has impacted their teams’ productivity and responsiveness, as noted by 63% of marketing leaders, and according to 11%, it is noted that responding to global environments is a barrier in terms of productivity.
According to the reports of the marketers, they will be investing more time in 2021 to be able to adapt as well as react at a speed due to this. It has proven to be more critical during the current pandemic not only to changes within their industry and also to the global challenges.
In terms of developing unique, creative content at a fast pace and adapting quickly to trends is the major issue to react at speed according to the marketers.
By taking stock of their current content and coming up with an action plan for future adaptations, restructuring teams, interviewing their audience about the struggles, and simply being prepared to make changes when the issues pop up at the notice of the moment.
#3 Investing in Marketing Technology
Foreseeing the upcoming 12 months, 60% of marketers indicated that they are set to increase their marketing technology spending. As it is going to help the marketers retain and delight their audiences and react at speed when required with the investments in marketing technology that are directly related to the above marketing trends.
Marketing technology is often referred to as a “MarTech” as it is a term that is used to describe the software and technology used in terms of attracting and retaining customers as a refresher. There are 8,000 different martech tools to select from, ranging from the data analytics platforms to CRMs to internal team collaboration tools as of 2020.
A martech stack assists the marketers in streamlining their processes and takes a synthetic approach to their day-to-day activities regardless of the tools they use. Access to these technologies makes it easy for the teams to work together regardless of the physical location as remote work becomes more commonplace.
#4 Continued Investments in Diversity Marketing
Increased attention to social justice issues was at the forefront of conversations during the first few months of the year as early 2020 bought many businesses to a reckoning.
By demanding change and awareness from brands on diversity, inclusion, and equity, consumers care now more than ever about the stances that businesses take on public issues. Diversity marketing is one of the ways that they want to see this represented in business.
While considering that people are more likely to consider a product after looking at an ad as they think is diverse of inclusive, and 64% take action after seeing an ad as they believed to be diverse and inclusive as it is an effective practice for the marketers to commit to.
In 2021, the marketers will be making continued and improved efforts to focus on diversity marketing 2021, and they keep their businesses afloat by being the representative of the communities they serve that drive their revenues.
It is even more important that businesses are genuine about the diversity measures they take in the same vein. A recent survey found that 59% of consumers think that companies need to follow up on their statements on diversity with strong actions, or they risk being seen as exploitative and opportunist as consumers can see through the fluff.
#5 Personalization
The way in which you are interactive with your audience and customers in a way that feels individualized by using data and buyer personas to create content that tailors to their likes and interests is what personalization is.
96% say it helps in the advancement of customer relationships, while 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase while brands offer personalized experiences as marketers like this practice. In 2021, think with Google names, personalization is an area of focus for marketers.
So How Do The Marketers Prepare?
Investing in marketing technology helps you with personalization like email marketing services to help you personalize the messages you share with customers and powerful data analytics in terms of leveraging the other trend on this list. A focus on and commitment to diversity marketing also ensures that your audiences are interacting with material that they can relate to and is relevant to their interests in addition to the rest.
#6 Dig Into Data
2021 marketers will not be able to avoid getting hands-on with data, and this is what every panelist agreed on. Those who have invested in their business listening and personalization capabilities will be at an advantage since the pandemic has spurred different business conditions across the country. At the regional level, based on local conditions as they can better target their marketing.
#7 Play The Long Game
Marketers should look beyond short-term campaigns and think about long-term impact though digital allows for quick campaign pivots. In the times like this, the results that you want arrive a bit later.
In risk-taking and innovation that birthed new social platforms, technology, and business models, years of economic uncertainty spurred an uptick. SAP has since published over 3,330 articles in generating 30 million page views on Forbes is a pioneer in its field.
As an enterprise tech thought leader, this consistency and dedication have solidified SAP’s status. SAP’s newsroom commits to communicate with customers to help them navigate challenges in real-time, whether it was reporting on Amazon wildfires, current pandemic, or climate change.
#8: Martech Expenditure Will Rise
To increase martech spend in the next 12 months, 60% of marketing leaders indicated that they are anticipating this.
Many marketing teams are relying on technology to collaborate on campaigns and manage work as remote work becomes an integral part of the current workforce. 60% of marketing leaders indicated that they are anticipating to increase the spend on martech in the next 12 months according to the survey.
Surveys reported a larger increase in the martech to spend for 2020 and 2021, although the last year’s projection was 26% of the total budget for 2020. Many teams will be focused on the tools that will help with visibility, campaign management with the increase of demands for collaboration tools.
#9: Investment In Content Marketing Platforms
For marketing organizations, 20% of marketing leaders will significantly invest in a content marketing platform.
So, what exactly is a content marketing platform? The software tool that allows the marketing teams to manage and streamline marketing processes from ideation and to plan to collaboration and approvals is the content marketing platform.
Many CMOs and marketing leaders are focused on finding tools to assist in creating more content quickly, including the blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars to make up for the live event with COVID-19 transforming the way we reach our audience. The survey reported that 20% of marketing leaders would significantly invest in a content marketing platform for their marketing organization is noted here.
#10 Focus On Measuring Campaign Attribution Will Be Key
Measuring business impact is quite important, but only 36% of them indicated that they do this well, as 81% of the marketing leaders will find this.
It is very important to measure the outcomes and impact of the campaign. To measure the influence of the prospect’s desired outcome, it is an important component to demonstrate to your executive team that you need more budget and/or resource as marketers use campaign attribution.
Many have no idea how to accurately measure their impact, as most marketers find campaign attribution to be very important to them. Only 36% of the marketing leaders indicated that they do this well, as 81% of the marketing leaders find that measuring business impact is very important.
It can be difficult to accomplish if the right process and technology are not in place. Effectively measure the success of the content being produced across the complete marketing team is the main feature of the content marketing platform. This is the tool to help you in measuring the impact of your campaigns if you struggle to measure campaign attribution.
#11 Accelerating Campaign Execution
Accelerating campaign execution is a top priority for their team, as indicated by 70% of the marketing leaders.
The top priority for most marketing leaders is the improvement in productivity. Many industries are becoming increasingly competitive with producing campaigns so that the ability of a marketing team to be agile is crucial additionally. 70% of marketing leaders indicated that accelerating campaign execution is a top priority for their team, according to the survey.
Planning and executing campaigns efficiently in a timely manner is the key to run an agile marketing team. Marketing leaders need to find ways to automate the time-consuming processes that keep marketing work from being executed quickly instead of spending time on work about work and executing campaigns through email.
Using technology to streamline processes and implement documented marketing workflows for getting campaign-related work done will accelerate campaign executions while working remotely can hinder campaigns from getting done quickly. As they continue to work remotely the tools like these can help your team collaborate and work efficiently.
#12 Improve Collaboration
The collaboration will be the pinnacle for your overall success, last but not least. Choosing the right tools will structure a strong foundation for your team as remote work becomes normalized in most businesses.
From the ideation and planning to deployment and measurement are every stage of marketing workflow should be supported by the collaboration tools, which is the reason why it is important to select a platform that will be accommodating every step of your campaign execution process here.
Top Martech Trend Survey Respondents
You can summarize both the primary job function of the survey respondents as well as their titles in order to offer more insight into what participated in the top martech trends for the 2020/2021 survey. In enterprise-level businesses, the survey targeted marketing leaders. 91% of respondents say that they are changing agents in the organization since 58% of the respondents identify them as the champions of the company.
Concluding Thought
Marketers are focusing on and investing in the above trends for 2021, while this is not an exhaustive list. Join other marketers in making these investments and understand how each trend is affecting your business.
Dilip Tiwari
Dilip Tiwari is Digital Marketing Expert at USS LLC he likes to share Tips on Digital Marketing Services, Google ads management, Amazon ads management, and other blogs ideas.