Which Digital Marketing Efforts Should You Focus On in 2021?

A new year is here, and you may be setting your goals for the year ahead. As you set your eyes on those new goals, we want to give you some tips on what to focus on to get your digital marketing efforts to move the needle toward that growth. 

The tactics below are based on what we saw work for small businesses and startups in 2020, and efforts we believe are crucial marketing cornerstones that lead to success. No matter if you are handling marketing on your own, want a consulting session for strategic support, or want to see what options lay ahead if you hire an agency like ours to help you reach your goals this year, you should keep the below in mind!

Track & Review The Analytics 

As 2021 kicks off and you’re heading into marketing your business, have you reviewed all the free analytics available to you, to see who your audience truly is? Where do they live? When do they click to your site? What content did they like most? What made them unfollow you? And is there a page on your site that makes everyone leave? 

These are key things that free analytics can tell us, so that you don’t waste time nor money on tactics that don’t yield results. Free analytics tools would be Google Analytics, your Facebook page’s analytics and pixel (desktop is best), your Instagram business account’s insights (mobile only), and Twitter analytics (desktop only). 

We know, not everyone’s a numbers person or perhaps you haven’t set up your analytics to track from site visit to product sale, so we’re here to help with our consulting sessions, starting at $200. 

Review The Customer Journey

You set up your website and your social media at some point, but have you tested the customer journey lately, to see what’s working and not? It’s important to ensure that the site is working, and that nothing looks funky, as you’ll lose customers over tiny errors, misplaced information, or slow load speeds.

How do you do this? Try finding your site by googling first, then go through the entire journey from first visit to the site to purchase. Did it work? Was it wonky? Did you receive an email about abandoning your cart? Did it look good on mobile? Let us know if something’s not working right, and we’ll help you out! 

Up Your Game With Professional Content

First impressions are key. Have you ever considered a restaurant or a hotel, but the photos did not do it justice, so you went somewhere else instead? Let’s make sure your brand doesn’t make that same mistake. It’s OK to have a small budget or not a budget at all, but that’s when we need to get creative to ensure your brand puts its best foot forward and can be taken seriously. 

Think about how much content you realistically need, and plan ahead: Some may wish to post fresh content every day for the sake of posting, and select the content the day of the post at 5pm because “I know I need to post,” but if you plan ahead and decide to post 1 piece of great content per week, you’ll likely get further than posting bad content daily.

So, what should you do about content?

  1. Make a plan of the types of content you need, versus the content you want is a crucial first step

  2. Review what content you already have, that can be used or re-used. This can be user generated content, past products, past shoots, or taken by you and your staff. Just be sure to have a critical eye while reviewing your content - a good question to ask yourself in this process is “would I care about this photo if [main competitor] posted it?”

  3. Make a “mood board” on Pinterest or in a folder on your desktop, of the type of content you’d like to create. 

Then, let us help you figure out a way that this can be done - there’s a way to make this happen for as low as $100/month, with the right plan of attack. Let’s discuss and brainstorm in a consulting session, to get you started on your own, or with us!



Utilize User Generated Content

OK, this isn’t a new one, but it’s one worth repeating for all the businesses that have recently moved online or are finding themselves focusing more on their online presence.

Much like 5-star customer reviews for a restaurant, user generated content from your existing customers in form of posts you’re tagged in, posts you re-share to your feed, and the posts that the user shares are worth more than you think. 

Big influencers are great in getting your brand in front of many eyes, but potential customers get inspired to try something new from their friends, too. There are many ways to start inspiring users to share their experience of your brand, for example giving discounts for those who tag you in a post - we’re here to find a way that makes sense for your brand! 

Try Working With Micro Influencers 

What if you have a new product, or you don’t have an overly engaged customer base that would share posts about your brand? Well, influencers can be the answer. Nope, we’re not talking Kim Kardashian and other mega stars that would cost as much as a bachelor’s degree for one post. Influencers come in all sizes, for all industries, and we’re here to help you unlock this avenue.

So, what’s a micro influencer? Someone with 2,000 followers and up (some call those under 5-10K followers for nano influencers, but let’s stick to “micro” for now). The reason these people matter is because someone with a small audience will have a higher percentage of engaged users, that likely are geeking out about the same topic. In return for their content created, you’d likely send them a product, and/or pay a smaller sum than you would for a mega star. It’s a great way to test the waters, and get some amazing content in return for use in-feed or as ads. 

A few micro influencer examples: A teacher with 5,000 teacher followers who love learning new hacks for the classroom may be the perfect audience for a children’s book or teacher app. Alternatively, an architect with 5,000 architect followers may be a neat audience to promote your tiles to.  


Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Pinterest

With a big push toward e-commerce, Pinterest is actively growing as a result of two things: The pandemic inspiring DIY projects, self care and cooking, and the flight from Facebook for advertisers.

As you can see below, this platform is gaining younger users, and is taking over as a secondary platform for industries that share tips and products for a variety of industries. Did we mention, it’s quite affordable to advertise on the platform?

Some interesting stats to keep in mind:



Invest The “Searchability” Of Your Brand/Product

More business moved online in 2020, with the increase in people Googling their way to products and services they were looking for. While search engine optimization (SEO) has always been important, more small business owners and entrepreneurs started focusing on it, as a direct result of shifting more focus to their digital marketing opportunities. In the end of the day, if no one can find your product or service, how will you gain new clients?

Now what does this mean for you in 2021? SEO is a long-term strategy that will yield results down the line, as different search engines like Google and Bing learn to crawl (read) your site. So, what should the game plan be for 2021, so that you end this year with your site further toward the first place on Google’s results?

  1. A site evaluation is key: Let’s determine whether website issues like site speed, non-existent URLs, and duplicate pages are weighing down your search engine results 

  2. Mobile first: Google switched to mobile-first indexing in 2020, so we’ll need to ensure your site is optimized to be found and visited on mobile devices

  3. The low hanging fruit: Ensure all your pages have basic SEO in place 

  4. Review existing site copy: Site copy needs to focus on relevant keywords and phrases 

  5. Make a plan for quality content publishing: Search engines want to see that your site is actively publishing quality content, so we’ll help you review what terms and frequently asked questions we can capitalize on, to improve your site’s SEO and get you closer to that #1 spot on Google search

  6. The nitty gritty SEO: Have you heard of backlinks? Alt-text? Internal linking? Schema? And how does Google Maps and Yelp help my SEO? Don’t worry about it, we’ll explain what’s needed along the way, but these are all other ways that search engines know that “others are talking about your site” and “we know how to sort your images” and more.

Beat Competition With Search Ads

SEO takes a long time, but while we work on getting you that golden organic (aka free) reach, we can supplement it with some targeted search ads.

Based on your product or service, as well as your target audience, we’ll be able to figure out whether Google, DuckDuckGo or Bing would be the best avenue (or a combination of sorts), and what your competition would look like. Perhaps we lean toward driving audiences to your blog content answering FAQs, or straight to products, based on what a potential customer would search for. 

How much does that cost, you ask? We can start testing this with a budget as low as $5-10 per day to start seeing some movement. Sales are never guaranteed with any advertising format, but this will increase your site visitation, and we’ll be able to track “events” aka: who visited, who added stuff to their cart, who almost checked out, and who should we hit with another ad reminding them that they forgot to check out.

Search Is Expanding On Social

While many will continue to go directly to their preferred search engine like Google, there’s a big shift away from search engines to social platforms that have improved their “searchability” in the past year. What platforms are increasing in search?

  1. Pinterest is a golden place to search for fashion, beauty, DIY, home goods and more

  2. Twitter is a sure-fire place to find information on any topic - pop culture or not

  3. YouTube has long been the #1 spot to learn how to do something, whether it’s cooking, home improvements, beauty hacks and so much more

  4. Instagram recently piloted their updated search function, which now includes searching copy, not just hashtags or account names

Want more?

We hope these tactics give you some homework for the new year, but if you’d like to brainstorm a bit further, let’s set up a consulting session! 


Anette Nilsen