5 digital marketing trends that will impact regional businesses in 2021

1. Regional Businesses can still benefit from paid advertising, but SEO is the best long term strategy

In most parts of the world, paid search is becoming increasingly competitive with cost-per-click rates in the hundreds of dollars. Luckily in regional Australia the market is far from crowded and so we can enjoy only paying a few cents per click on ads that are reaching thousands of eyes. 

The long term online advertising plan for every business needs to be Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This means optimising your web page to be appealing to the likes of Google, so that it shows up at the top of search results when a relevant term is searched. 

SEO can take a long time to yield results – often several months – and the process can seem like black magic, but it is worth it with 32.5% of all traffic going to the first google search result, with traffic rates diminishing in correlation with the page rank.

2. Social media will continue to be great for brand awareness, but Google is where customers will go when they are ready to buy

Social media sites such as Facebook are fantastic for growing your company’s brand. A business Facebook page can be set up in just a few minutes and your content shared organically across personal networks and community groups. 

Paid advertising on Facebook can be used to target extremely niche demographics so it is possible to get your content in front of the exact kind of customers you want to target. 

However statistically the conversion rate on Facebook is terrible at under 0.15% on average. There are a lot of things you can do to increase the success of your Facebook advertising, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that when customers are ready to make a purchase, they will head to google (or bing) and search for the product or service they are after and this trend will continue throughout 2021. 

3. Digital Signage will become increasingly common across all industries

Digital signage is essentially a video screen placed in a public space that will display video, text and images to potential customers. 

Even in regional Australia where we have been relatively unaffected, COVID-19 has seen businesses try to limit the interactions between staff and customers while still providing the best service possible. Digital signs can come in multiple sizes and orientations, are low cost, low maintenance, can be mounted just about anywhere, and the content on each screen can be centrally controlled and updated at a moments notice.

Travel restrictions will also see digital signage utilised for traditional advertising purposes by businesses that service multiple regional centres. Real estate agents remotely updating sales listings and local government communicating directly to the public via digital signage are increasingly becoming the norm. 

Interested in digital signage? Check out our gallery.

4. QR codes will be leveraged beyond COVID contact tracing

QR codes are now commonplace, with the majority of the population comfortable with their use. Businesses will leverage QR codes to provide additional value to their customers -,  providing discount codes, upcoming sales information and other incentives on pages users are forwarded to after completing the COVIDsafe forms. 

The retail sector will use QR codes to augment traditional display advertising on physical products so that potential customers can get more information directly. 

Hospitality will include menus and even complete ordering systems accessible by unique QR codes placed on tables. 

Churches, funeral homes, and venues will utilise QR codes to disseminate traditionally paper based booklets to attendees during the contact-tracing process.

5. Every business will need an e-commerce solution

Customers will expect all businesses to have their products and services to be fully listed, bookable and purchasable from an online store.’

The ability for customers to book a meeting, service, or product demo at the time and date of their choosing, without having interacted with a sales person will see conversion rates greatly increase.

Businesses will need to be aware of the impact this may have on scheduling and stock management before jumping on the trend, although most modern POS and accounting systems should already support this model of business.