The past year has seen the complete transformation of PR as the digital world became a reality for most businesses. However, since the global pandemic accelerated the pace of change over the years, the digital PR trends guiding the digital marketing strategies now seemed outdated.
New issues or tactics have cropped up to command more attention. As consumer’s needs and behaviors have dramatically changed, new future digital PR trends have become essential to help businesses stay ahead of the competition.
1. Change in Consumer Behavior Is Here to Stay
According to a McKinsey report, the pandemic has accelerated eCommerce growth by ten years. About 60 percent of companies have seen new buying behaviors over the past year. Most companies are now transitioning to robust infrastructure, deploying contactless mobile payments, and developing digital selling platforms.
Companies are now re-creating the plans about where they could be by now if the pandemic hasn’t happened. As a result, timelines, budgeting, scope, and priority of the organizations have changed. Some new initiatives are being accelerated while other plans are being scrapped in their entirety.
2. Real-Time Data to Get to the Consumers
Consumers are now telling brands about their demands, needs, and wants. So naturally, brands do not want to delay any time in providing the consumers their wants. Hence, the search insights are as close to the real-time voice of the buyer as you can get.
If you haven’t been listening to what your consumers or users are saying, you lose a massive opportunity to connect and engage with the audience. Therefore, you must activate these insights with real-time personalization.
3. Creating Quality Content to Get the Edge
When it comes to content, the more is always better. That’s why the new digital PR trend focuses on both velocity and quality content in equal measures.
You are missing out on some exciting opportunities if you are publishing your content just once a month. In addition, you are losing out on the promotion on social media, email, and other channels compared to your competitors. However, there is no point in churning a large volume of content with poor quality.
4. Increased Focus on Providing Digital Experience to Customers
Most customers believe that consumer experience with a company is as crucial as its product and services. So, whether you are chatting with sales executives online or talking to a chatbot, customers expect that your representatives have the necessary information.
They expect that the interaction picks off from where they left off. As a result, organizations are now bringing digital transformation to the table to keep up with the consumers’ expectations.
5. Advanced Intelligent Automation
SEO professionals and PR agencies have already found that simply automating tasks to minimize redundancy is not sufficient. A crucial trend is that there should be multiple touchpoints for increased customer interaction.
As a result, new and modern technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and robotic process automation (RPA) have found their way into the SEO process. It means that machines are taught to read user behavior to provide personalized messaging, content, deals, and recommendations.
6. Hyperlocalization is No More Regional
The pandemic brought the desire amongst the consumers to support local businesses. Consumers look for labels that align with their belief systems and values.
Marketers and executives are working to ensure the brand’s message and mission are communicated with the target audience. In addition to content by geography, businesses are mainly focusing on sharing information about their location, refreshing GMB profile, developing unique content by location, and targeting by location. These values can be propagated through marketing efforts.
Trends in digital marketing are evolving. Unfortunately, no one-size-fits-all approach fits everywhere. Instead, one has to assess the potential impacts of these trends and how they could be used to market your organization as a whole.