As we begin 2022, many businesses are planning ahead and mapping out their digital marketing strategies for the coming weeks or even months. It is a well-known fact, that whatever worked in 2021 may not work the same way again in 2022 as times and consumer demands change all the time.
The digital marketing landscape is always evolving. Whether you are running a startup or a global business enterprise, staying up to date with current trends in digital marketing can help define your marketing strategy in the new year and beyond.
In a 2021 Smart Insights report, it was found that 45% of organizations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. Likewise, in an online survey conducted by the UK company RedFish Group, it was revealed that 17% of marketers felt that content marketing was the only digital marketing technique with the biggest commercial impact for their clients and business, whilst another 17% identified marketing automation as the most effective digital marketing techniques of 2021. These were then closely followed by big data, AI and machine learning, and finally social media marketing.
With that said, 2022 looks to be the year of content-based marketing for businesses of all sizes. Digital marketing will be a key component of your overall marketing strategy in 2022. When used effectively, it is a great tool to help you identify, grow and more importantly determine your audience, who in turn will then become your customers.
Here are the top digital marketing trends to keep an eye on in 2022 and how you can use them to your advantage.
Content
Content can work wonders if it is personalized and tailored for each customer segment. When it addresses pain points that your customers struggle with constantly and conveys how your brand can solve the problem and make it all go away, thus making zero to a little convincing from the sales team to close the deal.
It is a great way to generate new leads and to move them down the marketing funnel to boost conversions. Here is a great tip for content in 2022, experiment with different forms of content and repurpose the ones that have already been published. That way, this will ensure that no content will ever be left wasted or shortage for your planning calendar.
Blogs work for you, great! How about converting them into videos and podcasts? If one of your posts was a hit, why not turn them into a long-form content piece?
Personalisation
Personalization has been a growing trend for the past few years and will continue to do so in 2022. Brands give customers more control over how they interact with them as consumers, which includes tailoring ads towards their interests or automatically making recommendations based on your recent or past purchases.
Note that Millennials and Gen Zs are the driving force behind personalization. Together they represent 65% of consumers stressing the importance of implementing personalized marketing. Therefore, personalizing your offers, experiences, communications, and recommendations is absolutely critical if you want to thrive in the coming years.
Some successful brands that have nailed personalization include both Netflix and Spotify. Indeed, both Netflix and Spotify use machine learning to customize based on suggestions and recommended lists of movies, TV series and music. Every time, users watch or complete a movie or a TV series episode; the algorithm collects the data and recommends new titles based on these past behaviors and interests. Likewise, this also happens on Spotify as well.
Voice & visual search
Voice-activated digital assistants continue to be huge sellers. The popularity of voice search both at home and on our phones has led to one of the most significant shifts in using keywords.
When writing content, choose your keywords based on the questions people may ask when using Siri or Alexa. This increases your visibility and it shows no sign of slowing down.
On the other side of the spectrum, users can now upload an image and get information about an item based on just a picture alone. If they are uploading a plant photo, the search returns the type of species information, while a landmark image will return the specific historical date and data and lastly a product, returns similar products and where exactly to buy them.
How can you leverage these searches? You can add high-quality images and tag them with specific descriptive keywords.
When LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, it was mainly perceived as a professional networking site. However, in less than two decades, LinkedIn has attracted 660 million users spread across 200 countries.
Today, it is not just a social media platform that connects job seekers with prospective employers. Rather, it has transformed into a beneficial marketing tool. It has become impor
tant for every business to develop an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy.
When executed properly, it can help you build brand awareness and forge long-term professional relationships. It can also be effective for lead generation.
LinkedIn continues to be the rising star in the digital space. Each quarter they show considerable gains in monthly active users and engagement on the platform. They are also continuously launching new features that drive better results for businesses and pages.
Video
Video is one of the most powerful digital marketing trends, and it is not only here to stay but to lead the industry. Customers do not like to receive scores of emails from your brand and read multiple paragraphs on social, however, an appealing relatable video has the power to stop them right in their tracks and to pay attention to the content.
Short-form videos are an extremely popular trend in digital marketing thanks to newer and rising platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and more recently, Google, LinkedIn, and Pinterest who have also expanded and adapted their platform to accommodate short-form content. Any video up to 2 minutes and 30 seconds in length is considered to be ‘short-form’.
With more consumers more likely to be convinced in purchasing a product or service based on this form of marketing, and short form video content being twice as likely to be shared and having the highest ROI of any social media strategy in recent years, we would recommend that businesses should invest more into this type of content than any other trend in 2022.
Hybrid Events
Hybrid events bring together face-to-face meetings and virtual audiences. In this way, it will be possible to reach a wider audience.
Hybrid events serve different purposes for businesses, such as promoting or launching a new product. The main goal here is to mobilize consumers; It could be motivating employees or establishing a new collaboration. At the same time, augmented reality technology will guide hybrid events. You can use remote communication tools to make hybrid participants more effective.
Here at Hashtaqs, we have the omni-channel marketing capabilities in uplifting businesses through online activities such as digital marketing and content production, and also hybrid activities through B2B and B2C events, seminars, webinars and expos in-house and externally, to expedite our clients’ business growth through extensive marketing exposure.
Hashtaqs uplifts business through brand transformation and marketing advisory and implementation online and offline, internationalisation through business matching and community development.
Our consultancy work is supportable with the funding scheme of up to 80% for local businesses. Contact us for a consultation at +65 8868 1418 or email us at [email protected]. For more info, visit www.hashtaqs.com.
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