Lead Generation Trends for 2021: Here’s something no one else will tell you.
You must be excited and busy wrapping up your work for this year to spend the holiday with your loved ones. You must have already charted a plan for the upcoming months and you are ready to take off for the holiday season. What if I told you that you are missing something.
I went through most of the marketing blog posts, Youtube videos, podcasts and also attended webinars that you also must have attended. Sure they will tell you how 31% of the companies have AI implementation as their agenda in 2021. But, let me bring to light a few specifics in each trend that no one is talking about.
Here it goes…
Trend #1: Artificial Intelligence is probably one of the agenda items for your organization in 2021, but where do you get started?
According to Cognilytica’s survey on Global Artificial Intelligence adoption, more than 40% of the companies have already started their AI adoption process or are in the process of implementing the technology. Well, it’s not so easy for organizations to make this change. You will face a bunch of challenges down the road. Truth is, that you are probably already satisfied with existing non-AI solutions and already concerned about how to justify ROI for an AI implementation and the need for change.
Let’s make things simple; Artificial intelligence has huge potential. Here are some next-generation tools that you can start with right away to leverage that potential for your own business.
- Uberflip: I know you have been trying to personalize your content or your campaigns to each prospect but the automation softwares at hand, are faulty. A wrong company name in your leads list and you end up apologizing to the prospect about how you’re are still trying to better automate your campaigns. Try Uberflip. It is an advanced content personalization platform that helps you create unique experiences for each customer.
“Content is King” and that’s why Bill Gates realized this in early 1996. Running a B2B lead generation agency myself, I understand your content speaks for yourself. With Uberflip, you can quickly and easily publish campaign destinations with personalized branding and content that are designed to engage and convert.
2. Cogito: We are not all born sales masters. I still remember my first call with a prospect and how I got turned down after just 5 minutes into the call. I wish I had someone telling me how to understand that customer emotionally and then respond. Cogito can do that for you. It analyses your conversation in real-time and predicts what kind of reaction your sales team should give to your prospects, thus, increasing their chances of closing more deals.
3. Unmetric: Your business prospects spend at least 3 hours each day on social media. This is substantiated from the fact that 60% of B2B marketers say that social media is the second-best lead generation channel after email. But, there is a catch. Social media is like fighting a war for attention.
Unmetric can help you win this war by understanding what’s working for you and what’s not. The best thing I find about the tool is the automated reporting feature which provides you with internal benchmarks and also competitive intelligence to tweak your social media strategy anytime.
Trend #2: Companies that use video content will be closer to their customers
Coming from a Facebook executive, “Facebook will be all video & no text by end of 2021.” Do you know what this means? You need a major overhaul in your strategy if you still haven’t looked into leveraging video content to grow your business. As humans, we find videos more engaging & memorable.
Many people fear putting themselves out there, and it’s challenging to catch everyone’s attention with an article or a post (that includes text only). A perfect solution would be combining both of them. Let me do that here for you. Check out this video of the latest video marketing statistics.
A whopping 4 billion people watch videos daily on Youtube or Facebook. So, here’s how you can start to get ahead in this direction.
One of the tools that I see immense potential in is Slackla, an AI-based user-generated content platform that helps you discover, manage, and display the most engaging visual content across all your marketing touchpoints. Beware, this is not an animation video creator. Use Slackla to access content that your target audience is already creating and other members of your audience that are engaging with it. You get in on the action and voila, you are off to a great start.
Trend #3: Smart marketers will optimize for voice search & smart speakers
You know, 66.4 million people in the US own smart speakers such as Amazon Echo (Alexa), Apple Homepod, or Google Home. That makes it around 500 million voice searches on such devices every day.
People search for music, products, news, weather, and accomplish basic day to day activities using smart speakers at their homes. If I were you, I would capitalize on this opportunity right away before someone else does.
If you are a local business, voice search is your best bet at growing your business to another level. Around 50% of consumers visit a store within 24 hours after using their phones to search for the business or its products.
There is a strong relationship between local search and voice search in marketing. They seem to go hand-in-hand when it comes to generating local leads.
For you, it means optimizing your website and your online content for voice search. You need to focus on long-tail keywords. Such keywords mimic real-life speech patterns of people searching for answers online.
Hence, your potential customers are more likely to search for you with sentences like, “Hey Google, which is the best software for email marketing?”
I personally focus on wrapping my SEO efforts around phrases that my target audience uses.
BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer comes in very handy for analyzing multiple questions related to your business that are posted on forums & Q&A sites (like Reddit) across the internet.
Trend #4: Treating your customer like humans and not leads will turn your business around. Personalization is the way forward.
If you want to stand out in 2020, you need to personalize your marketing – and that means personalized content, products, emails, and more. Consider these personalization stats:
- 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them. – Accenture
- 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. – SmarterHQ
- 88% of marketers say their biggest driver in personalization is to deliver a better customer experience. – Evergage
- Consumers are 2.1x more likely to view personalized offers as important versus unimportant. – Salesforce
Hope I don’t need to stress the fact how personalization can work wonders for you business and delight your customers. Kevin George from EmailMonks asserts that “personalized, triggered emails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast emails.”
Take the examples of Netflix and Amazon. They have successfully personalized their content & websites to gain loyal customers.
Let me walk you through the example of Grammarly’s weekly personalized usage reports that help me know how much I wrote and the quality of my writing each week.
Trend #5: Conversational marketing is the next needle mover for your sales funnel
Chatbots are already powering 85% of customer service in 2020. What’s amazing is 67% of millennials in the US are open to purchasing products and services from brands with chatbots.
People crave quick responses to their questions and chatbots can be automated to greet & guide people in real-time. You know responding to a lead in the first 5 minutes is absolutely critical for higher conversion. This is where the magic of chatbots happens.
Mainstream chat applications such as FreshChat or Zendesk will not make the cut this time as your own sales team or customer service team may be time-crunched. Not to mention the high costs involved.
You need to explore solutions like Drift, Intercom, or even more so tools such as ManyChat and LivePerson.
ManyChat makes it about as easy as it can be to create Facebook Messenger chatbots with the platform’s drag-and-drop builder. Forget about the coding implications of building a Facebook bot because ManyChat’s got you covered and it throws in some hefty analytics and automation features for good measure.
LivePerson takes artificial intelligence to the message apps your prospects are already using and creates a sales channel on the platforms they’re most comfortable with.
Essentially, you’ve got AI-powered chatbots integrating with apps like WhatsApp, Line, Google Assistant, and even your website – so you can have meaningful conversations wherever your prospects want to have them.
Trend #6: Interactive Content & social media
You are on the right track with your content marketing if you have already started working on some form of interactive content to attract your customers. What you’ll see in 2021? Likely more interactive content such as short videos, mobile-optimized content, and virtual reality (VR).
We already see examples such as TikTok, McDonald’s Happy Goggles, LinkedIn Polls, Quizzes, and ROI calculators. Next time you think about engaging your customers think:
- Quizzes, Polls, Games & Surveys
- Infographics
- Augmented reality ads
- 360 degree VR videos
- Embedded Calculators
- Interactive ebooks
- Live chats, diagnostics, and troubleshooting tools
Here’s an amazing example of KitKat India and how they used VR 360 degree video for their ads on Youtube.
If you need convincing, consider that 91% of buyers are actively searching for more interactive content. People like it not just because it’s fresh and original, but because it makes them feel more connected to brands and more involved in the buying process.
Interactive content is more engaging, more memorable, and more likely to generate the results your business needs.
So, what’s the lead generation trend you’re looking forward to in 2021? Share them in the comments!