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In 2020, with the waves of Covid-19, our operating methods have been shaken up and our priorities have been overturned evolving new Marketing trends during 2021. We have been forced to rethink our economic models, to review our strategies and our allocated budgets. Today, it is clear that the health context has accelerated digitization at all levels, with the rise in teleworking in particular, and that innovation is becoming a must.
New professions appear as sectors initiate a deep crisis and must transform themselves digitally. Marketing departments are going digital and call for new often complementary functions: Inbound Marketing Manager, Growth Digital Manager, Content Manager, Digital Marketing, SEO, Community Manager.
The need to communicate is all the more important as this pandemic has isolated us from each other; and the brands of their customers. After the eruption of virtual events via zoom or other platforms, the disenchantment and disengagement are there. Hence the great need to re-engage its audience and to communicate better this year.
We had discussed following new marketing trends that will be observed during 2021!
Rethinking communication in times of crisis
The health crisis requires adaptation from the point of view of communication. This is the topic that Christian Kinnear, VP of Sales and Managing Director of HubSpot EMEA, discusses in a column titled “Empathy and Business: A Necessity in Times of Crisis”. In this forum, he underlines the importance for companies to communicate on the solutions they put in place to the problems that consumers encounter.
“As devastating and heartbreaking as the COVID-19 crisis can be, the consequence is that it inspires brands to show their values and mission. However, no business should ever take advantage of a crisis opportunistically. (…) those who live up to their mission are those who try to respond to the situation in a genuine and transparent manner. ”
The crisis has therefore accentuated the importance of corporate social responsibility, already on the rise for years: according to a study by Edelman, 87% of consumers believe that companies should place as much importance on business as they do. social issues.
In the coming year, it will therefore be fashionable to focus your marketing efforts on your company’s mission and the actions it implements in a complex context; to inspire consumer confidence.
Revisit the marketing strategy and focus on Human-Centric content
The best way to succeed in this communication is in content marketing, which is emerging as a major trend for 2021: it is the way to start a relationship with prospects. This is one of the points raised by the Marketing Evolution Report produced by Hubspot, after interviewing 3,400 marketers and collecting data from more than 70,000 customers around the world.
The report identifies content marketing as one of the most effective levers for converting leads, holding the attention of buyer personas and improving brand visibility. A lever already acclaimed by marketers: 70% of them say “actively invest in content marketing”.
The report also recommends the creation of “content groups” (or pillar content ): grouping your different types of content by theme is an effective method of establishing your authority on the key themes of your brand (which are aligned with the solution offered by your offer to the problems of your personas).
“As Marketers, we need to create a much more human customer experience and the content needs to be built around real conversations between people in the relevant industry, who organicly offer the level of conversation that today’s consumers expect. hui ” says Lindsay Tjepkema , CEO of Casted .
The AI revolution and the rise of smart chatbots
The global pandemic has also accelerated the use of chatbots: more and more consumers are turning to digital communication channels to find the answers to their questions, and chatbots represent a sure way to improve the customer experience. A trend that is still accelerating in 2021: according to AMEinfo, $ 5 billion will be invested in chatbots this year.
The quality of chatbots keeps improving. Indeed, if the first chatbots provided only limited responses in pre-recorded scenarios, the new chatbots rely on artificial intelligence to offer an increasingly human customer experience.

With artificial intelligence, chatbots are able to continuously learn and improve: they enrich their vocabulary and increasingly take into account the context around a question. Their conversations are therefore becoming more and more organic and their answers more and more precise, far from the first chatbots which could find themselves blocked and repeating the same answers endlessly.
The New Marketing trends, new possibilities of SEO, voice assistants
The issue of SEO is all the more important as the health situation has increased visits to business websites: it is therefore crucial to adapt your SEO strategy to be able to take advantage of the increase in traffic.
SEO is also evolving with the habits of Internet users: for example, more and more of them are familiarizing themselves with the Google Lens tool, which allows you to search from an image. This tool should therefore be taken into account in its SEO strategy, especially for e-commerce companies: users can search for an item they want to buy from a photo. The relative novelty of this tool offers opportunities to divert traffic from your competitors during an image search.
Another practice that appeared a few years ago but still booming is the use of voice assistants to perform research. This generates a change of keywords (we do not use the same ones in writing as we do orally), and therefore new Marketing trends, possibilities to modify your SEO strategy and integrate voice keywords.
Engage in a real conversation with prospects
As pointed out by Auseh Britt , VP, Growth Marketing at Terminus,
“We have seen an acceleration of the digital transformation in 2020, in part thanks to the effervescence of virtual events. These substitutes, like the virtual conferences organized, are deeply lacking in capacity. to generate trust and compromise with audiences, and the webinar gold rush has exacerbated clients and even caused Zoom fatigue. I see this trend continuing into 2021, but in a more creative way with much more personalized meetings with prospects, a more significant and direct impact on emails, more intimate virtual interactive experiences and through exchanges of more educational content. ”
According to Jake Milstein , CMO at CI Security
“People are now interested in real debates and panels where they can participate and share their own expertise. It’s not something you can do when you’re on stage, but online. The interactivity so much announced for years has become a necessity for 2021. ”
2021 will be an opportunity for companies to refocus on their values and their mission, to flesh out their content strategy while finding new Marketing trends, channels of communication with their audience, by taking advantage of the large-scale digitization initiated by the pandemic and health restrictions around the world.