What will 2021 Bring in Marketing
We’ve all anticipated the end of 2020.
We know that COVID-19 will not magically disappear on January 1, 2021. But we know a vaccine will potentially be widely available which should help lift our confidence for the new year.
But what should we be thinking about 2021 as we plan for first quarter 2021? Here are few ideas:
- Double down on ecommerce. Look for more ways to provide products, services, and information in a digital form.
- Audit your website compliance. W3C compliance means that your website’s HTML and CSS code is fully compliant with the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C for short).
- You are your own medium. Remember quarterly newsletters? That slow-news thinking is dead. New content needs to be developed and posted every week. You are now running your own network, newspaper or radio station.
- Digitize your content. Start podcasting, developing video newscasts, holding video programs. It’s time to make your own shows.
- Voice search will grow. Asking Alexa to replenish your favorite coffee or cleaning supplies will become more common. Accurate SEO (accounting for how people talk) will play a key role in making voice search and voice commands more effective.
- 5G is become mainstream. Phones will become as powerful and, in some cases, more powerful than laptops or desktop computers. Mobile will dramatically grow in importance. Watch for more hybrid phones like Galaxy Note and the foldable phones.
- Influencer marketing will become more important. It’s not just what you say, but who says it. Attribution will be the gold standard to marketing and SEO structured data approaches.
- Customer experience should be your battle cry. Enough thinking from the inside out. It’s time to make sure what you are saying is what people need to hear. Is your website designed to make your CEO happy or your clients happy? Testing and research will be key. Nonprofits will no longer be able to disregard their websites.
- Work from home will go beyond a Covid-19 vaccine. How we communicate, sell, attend conferences, raise money is going to change forever.
What about autonomous cars, quantum computers, drones and AI. There is a lot to be excited about when you think of 2021 and beyond.
The expectations are high for 2021. We need to get people healthy first, stimulate the economy, bring our country together and work for social justice for all. And then get our marketing innovation with the underlying foundation of customer/patient/stakeholder/donor experience optimization.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.