This document summarizes 2021 business and digital marketing trends presented by Milestone Inc. It discusses how the global economy is expected to recover in 2021 with 4.4% GDP growth. Digital transformation accelerated in 2020, and customer experience will remain important. Speed, mobile optimization, security, and local search will also be key focus areas. The presentation provides recommendations on measurement, video strategy, and ensuring an authentic corporate character.

1. MilestoneInternet.com | +1 408-200-2211
Be everywhere your
customers are
2021 Business and Digital
Marketing Trends
December 2020

2. Confidential2
Your Speakers
Erik Newton
VP of Marketing
Milestone Inc
Benu Aggarwal
Founder and President
Milestone Inc

3. Agenda
1. Macroeconomic trends
2. Digital transformation
3. Digital experience
4. Speed
5. Mobile
6. Security and availability
7. Entity
8. Local
9. Culture
10. Video
11. Corporate character

4. Confidential4
About Milestone
CMS
Schemas
AMP
FAQ Manager & Voice Search
Local &
Reviews
Insights
Analytics
Milestone Presence Cloud
Design & UI
Content
Marketing
SEO
Paid Media
Local
Analytics & BI
Omnichannel Services
We help you organize and amplify your digital information to reach the right audience
Hospitality • Restaurants • Retail • Finance • Automotive • Healthcare • Technology

5. Confidential5
1. The World Economy Will Grow Again
• From stimulus
• From recovery
• Pent-up demand to travel and shop and
be entertained and have weddings
• US GDP
• Q2 down 33%
• Q3 up 31%
• Q4 up 4%
• Overall expected down 3.5% for 2020
• 2021 predicted to be up 4.4%

7. Confidential7
Paid Search Conversions Rebound with Holiday Promotions
• We saw paid search conversion return to 90% of pre-COVID levels
• Packages and holiday promotions help drive conversions

8. Confidential8
2. Digital Transformation Accelerates
Digitize
Automate
Personalize

9. Confidential9
What Does Digital Transformation Look Like?
• CDs to MP3s
• Paper documents to images
• Open houses to online house shopping
• Car test driving to car delivery
• Menus to QR codes
• Photographs to jpegs
. . . in-person conferences to virtual
conferences
• Scrapbooks to social feeds
• Tellers to ATMs to online banking
• Classrooms to distance learning
• Offices to remote working
• Metal carts to digital carts
• Your signature to e-signature

10. Digitization enables automation
Why Digitization
Is So Important
. . . and personalization

11. Confidential11
3. Digital Customer Experience Is King
• 61% of marketing departments have pivoted resources
toward improving customer-facing digital interfaces and
• 56% are changing their business models to focus on digital
opportunities, according to the The Creative Group, a
Robert Half Company
• 35% of prepared CMOs said they were completely
changing the customer experience in reaction to the
pandemic
• Customer journey
• Touchpoints, UX/UI
• Engagement
• Consistent messaging

12. Local Searches Have the Most Purchase Intent by Far
• Rise of local intent
• Local search intent in 53% of 2 trillion searches
• 80% of people feel more committed to help community and local businesses
• 81% of small business searches are unbranded queries
• Crucial to engaging with consumer at the local level – Post, FAQ, Social Media
• Reviews are becoming a strong trust factor
• Voice search does surface information from GMB, Bing, Yelp
https://player.vimeo.com/video/481497881

13. Confidential13
Increase Awareness:
Identify and enhance under-
performing content around
relevant keywords
MORE
CONVERSIONS
Increase Engagement:
Optimize under-performing
content around the right search
intent to bring more visitors
Increase Conversions:
Refine experience and content of
traffic driving pages to maximize
conversions
Full
funnel
analytics –
measure
effectively
Reach
Act
Convert
Engage
• Journey touchpoints will
get harder to connect
without 3rd party cookies
• Attribution will get more
challenging
• Omnichannel thinking and
tracking more important
• Connecting online and
offline
• Better dashboards and full
funnel data analysis are
needed to make right
decision
Omnichannel Perspective Needed to Make Good Marketing Decisions

14. Confidential14
Online – Offline Attribution Analysis
Organic Paid Local Direct Social
1200 700 800 716 844
Online
Offline
Journey
Users
Leads
Sales

15. Confidential15
4. Speed Is Critical
• Google’s best practice is to have a speed index
under 3 seconds. Where does your site fall?
• https://www.machmetrics.com/speed-blog/average-page-load-
times-for-2020/
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-need-for-speed/
• CPUs are 40X faster than 7
years ago
• Bandwidth is 4X faster than
7 years ago
• Mobile web pages were 2X
SLOWER in 2019
• A 10% decrease in bounce and conversion
is the same as 10% more new visitors

16. https://player.vimeo.com/video/481496721
Core Vitals for Your Online Presence
https://web.dev/vitals/

17. Confidential17
5. Mobile-First Becomes Mobile-Only
• If mobile exists, desktop content is now ignored for indexing
• Mobile experience is often overlooked by managers working on computers or laptops
• Make sure your team uses your mobile site on lesser phones and weaker coverage regularly
• Optimize your mobile experience

18. Confidential18
6. Security, Connectivity, Reliability & Availability Required to
Maintain Customer Relationships
Connecting with
your customers
through various
online channels
Cloud
Infrastructure
HTTPs,
SSO, ISO
Real-time
dashboards

19. Confidential19
7. Entity Is the Way to Ensure Consistent Presence Across All Your Channels
BERT
Conversational
Schemas
FAQs
Newer Entities
• Special announcement
• Online events
• Temporary hours
• Cleaning protocols
• FAQs
• HowTos
https://player.vimeo.com/video/481492550

20. Confidential20
8. Organic Will Be More Local-Savvy and Local-Weighted
New Local Features and Content in 2020
1. Temporary closure
2. Special messaging
3. Secondary hours of operation
4. Prominent attributes
5. Virtual services
6. Google Shopping free for all merchants
7. Health and safety attributes
8. Support and fundraising for SMBs
9. Updates to make travel safer

21. Confidential21
GMB Drives Local – Only 4% of Businesses Have Perfect Local Citations
• UNAP vs profile completeness
• 30+ fields to optimize
11
5
1
4
12
6
2
7
8
3
13
9
14
10
15
Enhanced information across all local channels

22. Speed,
Alignment,
and Digital
Enablement
9. Prioritization &
Collaboration
“If you want to go quickly, go
alone. If you want to go far,
go together.”

23. Confidential23
10. Video Consumption Will Strengthen Further
Mobile share will exceed 60% in most B2C
industries by Fall 2021, so mobile+video
Netflix will surpass cable subscriptions in 2021
Video, Visual, Voice: V3
Saturate the SERP, Potential 85/15
Invest in your YouTube channel

24. Confidential24
11. Corporate Character and Authenticity
Will Matter More
• What 72M Millennials think will matter more
• Companies that do the right thing will acquire
and retain customers better

25. Confidential25
Special Offer, Brand New Customer Experience Benchmark
• Download our new Core Vitals Benchmark research report
https://go.milestoneinternet.com/core-vitals-benchmark
If you want to discuss any of these trends, contact your CSM
or sales@milestoneineternet.com

26. Sign Up for a 2021 Readiness Audit
First 30 attendees* to register will get a
complimentary review and recovery
recommendations
• Technical SEO
• Schema
• Speed
• Local
• Core Vitals
* Available to first 30 to respond, not available
to agencies, consultants, or individuals
https://www.milestoneinternet.com/resources/request-audit

27. Key Takeaways
1. Be hopeful and prepared, growth is on the way
2. Actively accelerate your digital transformation
3. Understand and track customer journey and touchpoints
4. Optimize the digital experience, speed, UX, UI
5. Place compelling CTAs at all touchpoints
6. Build a better dashboard to capture omnichannel results
7. Plan to improve mobile and increase video
8. Upskill your people
9. Partner with vendors that innovate and keep you ahead

28. Thank you, contact us to learn more or request a free digital audit
https://go.milestoneinternet.com/audit
sales@milestoneinternet.com
+1 (408) 200-2211
https://milestoneinternet.com/

29. +1 408-200-2211
MilestoneInternet.com
Silicon Valley | Bangalore | Ahmedabad
Thank You