2021 State of the Union: Marketing Predictions for the Year

Happy New Year! I am so excited to be back, and to share my marketing update and predictions for 2021. To give you a state of the union of what you can expect from me for the rest of the year, where I’m thinking things are going in the marketing world, and some things to keep in mind for you.

Business Marketing Recap and Plans

Last year we did 48 YouTube videos, 59 podcast episodes, and 320+ social media posts. This resulted in 1,398 new subscribers into my email list.
My focus for this year is really going to be on my YouTube videos and my podcast. I want to double down on content assets that have a longer lifespan than a social media post. My YouTube videos and podcast episodes give me traction for weeks, months, even years.
I will continue posting on social media, but I’m going to be pulling back with the amount of time that I spend there. I won’t be engaging as much in groups as I have until now, but I will continue engaging in my Making Marketing Simple group .
We will have two SLO funnels that we are launching. (A SLO funnel is a Self-Liquidating Offer, and it’s essentially just a break-even to build a list of buyers instead of building a list of leads). The first one will be out this month (January), and another around April/ May.
My main focus is still my Business Ecosystem Builders program and I’m really excited about that. The first quarter of the year is going to be about launching.
I am working on a private podcast feed only for my clients and people subscribed in any of my programs.
In February, I will launch a foundational program, which I’ve never really done before! It’s really just to set yourself up for success in the online business world. It’s called The Foundation, and you’ll see that coming out soon. If you head over to thefoundation.systems, you can get on the waiting list for that as well.
In March, we’re doing a social media detox and retreat. It won’t be an in-person retreat, but rather online over the course of five days, followed by a social media summer camp.
I also have my book coming out later this year and we’ll have the Business Ecosystem Builders Conference.

My Focus

As I mentioned in the beginning, I will be worrying less about social media content and content that happens in the moment, and rather be really focused on creating high-quality content that I can share with you. Quality over quantity! That’s really important to me. Creating business assets and marketing assets is also really important to me because time is a big struggle for me. Like many other entrepreneurs, time is my most valuable asset and time is also the thing that I am in a constant battle with; making sure to have enough of it.

That was a state of the union in terms of what is going on in my world this year.

2021Digital Marketing Predictions

In terms of my marketing predictions, you will see more and more audio experiences as evidenced by Clubhouse and podcasts aren’t going away.

You will see this audio experience increase, especially if you have clients who have a household income with over $100,000 and more.

I’m seeing a lot less people, with higher household incomes, spend time scrolling on Facebook and Instagram. They’re spending more time intentionally consuming content. They’re not allowing the scrolling to dictate what it is that they’re consuming. They’re being more intentional about it and they’re consuming podcasts and joining rooms on Clubhouse. They are getting really intentional about how they spend their time. That’s not surprising!

Quality over Quantity

Given everything that’s been going on with the pandemic, and I don’t really see a foreseeable end to it, I think people are going to get really strategic with their time because they’re tired of just sitting around and spending endless hours on social media. I believe you’ll see people being more intentional about that. I also think people are tired of keeping up with the rat race of social media. Quality over quantity will become increasingly important. And I think with everybody staying home and many of us on some sort of restrictions in place, it’s hard to really create content that isn’t just pictures of you in different rooms of your house or going on a walk, etc. So, I think that’s something to be mindful of as we venture out into 2021.

User Behavior on Instagram and Facebook

I also think user behavior is changing on Instagram and Facebook. A lot of that is due to a couple of things:

There is a massive lawsuit against Facebook in 48 of the 50 States in the US
There is a lawsuit against Facebook in Europe
Instagram rolled out new terms of service to be way more transparent, so they don’t end up in the same situation as their parent company Facebook. (Check out JP Sears great spoof video “Instagram’s New Terms of Service – Not Sketchy at All!”) While a lot of the stuff he talks about regarding the Instagram terms of service update is very funny, it is also sad because it’s true.

Facebook and Instagram have been king for a long time, so ultimately as things progress, things change, and there hasn’t really been anybody able to compete with Facebook yet. Instagram was a close second, but even still it’s a different user behavior.

Things will start to shift there. I’m not saying that it’s going away. I’m not telling people to jump ship or anything like that. We’re still going to leverage Facebook and Instagram for many of the marketing strategies that we are suggesting for clients in 2021. However, don’t be surprised if things start to change a bit in terms of your ability to reach people, or that in 2022 you might need to add another level to the marketing mix.

Less User Engagement

Another important element to keep in mind is that people aren’t engaging as much because of the fact that they are aware of what happens when you’re engaged, because of the information that they share, they’re tired of seeing retargeting ads. (Apple is also giving fewer data to advertisers because they’re protecting the privacy of the user.)

As I said, I don’t think it’s the end of Facebook or Instagram, I just think they’ve reached their peak and they’ve been on a plateau for quite some time. Facebook has reached its plateau. Instagram is a whole other beast. It’s not necessarily growing as rapidly as it has been. I always believe that when that happens something else is going to emerge. I don’t know what that something else is, but it’s something to keep in mind as you’re marketing yourself into 2021.

LinkedIn is really going to need to get its act together because users are sick and tired and fed up with the pitch fest it has become. I know that they’re taking steps to try and clean that up a bit. After my two-week break, I logged in and had around 47 messages, all of which were trying to sell me something!

Twitter is making a comeback because of its integration with Clubhouse. I haven’t spent a lot of time there, as I’m being very mindful of my boundaries with marketing this year, but Clubhouse is the new kid on the block in terms of audio experiences. With its Twitter integration, I’ve seen a lot of my friends talk about how they’re actually logging into their Twitter accounts again. So, don’t be surprised if you see some movement there as well.

And then lastly, Pinterest. It’s not going away! More and more people are seeing the benefits of the power of search engine optimization on Pinterest. Don’t be surprised if you see more and more people doubling down on that platform or spending more time there. It has great user demographics, and I believe it’s a really strong platform for people who want to create assets in their business. Yes, it’s a fair amount of work and it takes time to pay dividends. But it’s going to pay dividends faster than a YouTube channel. We’ve been leveraging it now for about six months and it’s been really powerful with search engine optimization for us and driving traffic to the website. So, I highly recommend Pinterest.

My Suggestions

I highly recommend creating content assets in your business. You’ve heard me say this for a really long time. Business blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Pinterest, anything with a long lifespan of weeks, months, years. I highly recommend investing in that and making sure that if you are going to take that route, you spend the time to make sure that it’s SEO’d properly.

Make sure you spend the time to get the alt images properly.
You edit the video
you add the closed captioning
you do all the steps to optimize it to the best of your ability because that’s what’s going to give you that longevity on those platforms.

Spend the time to do it. And have someone help you implement it to the fullest extent of your ability if you don’t know how, because it’s super important to get those little pieces right so that you can succeed!

Understand who your human is!

Something really important to mention is the need to understand who your human is and who your ideal client is and where they hang out online.

Are they on YouTube?
Are they listening to podcasts?
Are they on Instagram Stories?

Understanding where your ideal client is and where they spend their time is very helpful to determine where and how you should show up online for social media. Again, think quality over quantity.

I will start integrating email marketing even more so than we have so far. We will also add a layer of text message marketing. Those are elements that you own, or at least lease, such as the email address or text message numbers. Therefore, it’s super important to have those assets because I have seen too many of my clients lose their entire Instagram accounts in the last 90 days.

So really start adding more focus to building that email list, build those text message marketing campaigns, because those are the things you actually have some semblance of control over.

Consistency and Quality are key

If you’ve been following me for a while now, you know that I truly believe that consistency is one of the most important things when it comes to marketing your business. Consistency and quality are key. I highly recommend that you get really consistent, focused, and get a plan in place. If you liked this information and you really want to build a solid foundation in your business in 2021, get on the waitlist for my new program (The Foundation) that is launching in early February. There will be a bunch of early bird bonuses for anybody that is on the waiting list. I haven’t done a program like this before, and I’m not sure I’m going to do it again. It is going to be jam-packed!

The foundation is for you if

you want to create a really solid marketing plan
you want to package and have a suite of services.
you want to figure out what to prioritize in your business.
you want to know what you’re going to publish on social media each week, and you want to actually start to create a profit.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business for a while or you haven’t. This is really for people who want to get intentional about building their business through the online space.

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