2021 trends CMOs are watching

COVID-19 changed all of our lives, even as it changed the digital landscape for brands.

In the course of a few months in 2020, we witnessed products and services move online, employees shift to remote-working models and consumer behavior change to focus even more heavily on digital platforms and channels. The question on marketers’ minds is: What have we learned from 2020, and what must be done differently in 2021 as a result?

Here are three areas that will prove essential for CMOs to invest their time and resources in the year ahead:

1. Customer acquisition on social media

During 2020, engaging customers online became an even greater priority for CMOs, simply because the amount of time people were spending online increased dramatically, affecting the way they researched products, brands and businesses.

One area of digital reach that CMOs focused on was social media marketing. Research from Hootsuite shows that social media budgets accounted for 24% of total US marketing budgets during Q2 of 2020, up from 13% year-over-year.