Top 10 Digital Marketing Trends 2022 - Sequoia IT Services
We can’t foresee the future, but we can speak about the top digital marketing trends of 2022! It's a big time to talk about what is so far to come and how to adjust your marketing activities to the upcoming changes.
As a marketer, your job is never dull, as you have to reevaluate and adjust your tactics on a regular basis. The trends change and so should your work.
On the second side, it’s hard to differentiate real trends that will change the digital marketing scenery in a few years from long-term development of existing marketing strategies.
Is the ascendancy of Instagram a new digital marketing trend or just a natural course of things? I would proclaim it’s a result of long-planned marketing tactics, not an emerging trend.
What are the real new digital marketing trends that will set you aside from your competitors and which are just an effort to write a well-positioned SEO blog post?
Here’s what we’ll cover today:
What are the emerging digital marketing trends?
1. Focus on video marketing
2. Analyze the social media sentiment
3. Voice search might finally catch on
4. Personalize your message
5. Make use of micro-moments
6. Zero-click searches
7. Influencer marketing
8. Metaverse and VR/AR
9. Digital skills will be highly in-demand
10. Engage in CSR and non-profit activities
Key digital marketing trends for 2022 – a quick recap
What are the Emerging Digital Marketing Trends?
I’ve selected 9 emerging digital marketing trends for 2022 that will assist you put your business in front of the competition and will assist to boost your business.
Be mindful of these forecasts based on what’s already occurring in marketing. You should never forget about the golden rules that are lasting and are proven to work every time.
The new trends, but, are a great chance to differentiate your brand and put you ahead of the competition. The earlier you catch on, the better chance you have, the better chance to get found.
Ready? Let’s take a look at the latest digital marketing trends:
1. Focus on video marketing
I’m sure you know about the “mobile first” idea that has been present for a few years now. And now, with the 5G and better data plans, video streaming is effortless than ever on smartphones and tablets.
That’s why the vogue of Tik Tok was possible in the first place. You can record your video anywhere, but also watch it anytime you want. Something that was much more costly when the mobile data plans were limited to megabytes of internet, by choice of gigabytes.
And people love to devour video content.
Video marketing will be one of the biggest digital marketing trends of 2022, no doubt. If you aren’t designing/editing marketing videos yet, you should certainly think about expanding your digital strategy.
Tik Tok is one of the most famous social media channels. A lot of brands use it to increase their digital marketing strategy.
2. Analyze the social media sentiment
Have you observed the decline in trust in social media influencers?
For a long time, influencer marketing has been the go-to strategy when it comes to promoting a particular or lifting brand awareness.
That started to change a few years ago and reached its height at the end of 2021. All the improprieties caused by many Instagram celebrities caused a trust calamity. People are becoming more dubious when it comes to influencers' approvals.
That doesn’t mean, nevertheless, that influencer marketing strategies are useless.
A game changer in 2022 will be point of view analysis. Many tools, involving Brand24, provide such an option, and the demand for sentiment analysis will only grow in the future.
Sentiment analysis is based on the NLP, which stands for Natural Language Processing. The process necessitates Al learning the ins and outs of human communication and analyzing whether a statement made online is positive, negative or neutral.
A few years ago, the technology had a problem with ascertaining derision or irony, but the technology has emitted since then. Many tools can correctly recognize ironic statements and label them as comments with negative sentiment.
Posts with negative sentiment normally generate high engagement rates, but you don’t want negative comments around your brand. And if you do, it has to be a part of the planned campaign and you are required to have control over the situation, e.g. monitor the number of mentions or the social media reach of your campaign.
3. Voice search might finally catch on
Lots of marketing gurus forecasted that voice search will be a digital marketing trend back in 2019. It wasn’t as famous as we thought, even so.
This year, however, you might want to reanalyze your marketing strategy and involve optimization for voice search. And don’t worry, it’s simpler than you might think.
For years now we, marketers, have been aiming at content marketing and SEO, twisting and optimizing blog posts to be the number 1 in SERPs. Optimizing for voice search is no dissimilar, because search engines such as Google still use written content to present results for verbal queries.
The snag is that it generates so-called zero click searches that might be thwarting for digital marketers.
Unfortunately there’s no way still to analyze traffic from voice search with tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console. In instance if it ever happens, it will be a step forward for digital marketers.
4. Personalize your message
We pull out a tremendous amount of information online. In return, many of us look for hyper-targeted personalization. While talking about digital marketing trends, we can’t exclude this marketing strategy.
We want to see absolutely the content we desire at the exact time we require it. That means you have to customize your digital marketing message and deliver it at the right moment.
The good news is that it is possible to make ready extra tailored messaging. And it is easy, too. Lots of marketing tools permit automated customization whether it’s advertising with Google Ads or sending welcome emails via MailChimp.
So, when working on your email marketing strategy, don’t forget to piece together the users. With advanced tools you can create various subscription pop-ups, and split users into categories based on when and where they subscribed.
When creating social media ads, don’t just target all your followers. Think of various customer types that might be interested in your product, and create ad sets modified to their preferences. Your CTR will skyrocket.
But be awarful. Don’t be too particular while creating your personalized messages. People like similar ads, but might be glided out if you show them how much you know about their interests.
5. Make use of micro-moments
The hike of smartphones abbreviated our attention span. We conclude in an instant-what to eat, where to go or what to buy. Think about that while working on your digital marketing strategy.
Google calls these moments micro-moments and differentiates 4 types:
I want to know moments
I want to go moments
I want to do moments
I want to buy moments
To meet this new, rapidly decision-making procedure brands require to capture readers attention within seconds.
A current study by Microsoft found out that our attention span fell from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds. We are worse than a goldfish.
Micro-moments are firmly related to customization and targeting advertising. You have to be present on the platforms where your customers are present and invest in short ads that meet exactly the question asked in that exact moment.
What does it mean for digital marketing? You cannot ever be dull. You should always think about being of interest to your audience first. Nothing will have the time, neither interest in checking your ad if it’s too popular.
One of the most common mistakes I observe in social media marketing are discount ads with nothing but a logo and info such as “-50% discount”. If you target your ads outside of your followers base, at least show what products you are selling. Don’t make the potential buyer guess.
6. Zero-click searches
We all like to optimize for Google but as you likely see, search queries now have more and more featured snippets.
That might be a problem for some digital marketers, because they always want to rank #1 with their content, and that also means Google will probably use some chunk of the content and place it directly in the SERP. If that part of the text is pivotal to the user, they will most likely just read the necessary info and never visit your site.
There’s no cure for that. You might want to readdress your content and focus more on subjects that require more explaining. Notice how various search queries look in Google and decide if it’s considerable to get that featured snippet.
7. Influencer marketing
Yes, we did say earlier that the ending of 2021 put a little mistrust in influencer marketing, but that doesn’t mean this branch is closing.
Influencer marketing is still related in 2022. What’s more, it’s a great way brands can bond with their potential audience and look more humane.
In 2022 there are thousands of ways you can execute influencers in your digital marketing strategies. Look at the amount of social media channels you can use - not only you can switch between Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube, but also you can select different ways you can market within the selected app. For example, Instagram provides regular posts, Stories, and more recently - Reels.
Just be careful which influencers you select to convert digital users. Part of the influencer marketing strategy involves rigorous audience research. There are different tools that might assist you to recognize the right influencers.
You can try such as Hootsuite for recognizing influencers you select to convert digital users. Part of the influencer marketing strategy added by audience research. There are different tools that might assist you to identify the right influencers.
You can also try Sprout Social for recognizing influencers in your marketing niche. Focus on the right keyword and the app will show you the most influential social media profiles.
8. Metaverse and VR/AR
In October 2021 Mark Zuckerberg announced the transformation of Facebook into Meta. The company disclosed they are working on “Metaverse”, a next generation of social media or maybe even the Internet.
Will it change the way we gobble content on social media and alter our aim of the Internet social life? We are so far to search out.
You can begin with planning Metaverse strategies already. There's a huge amount of information on how it will look.
But you don’t require to wait for Metaverse to traverse the possibilities of VR and AR marketing. There are a number of apps that already work in the increased reality available by your smartphone camera.
As the mobile devices are getting more advanced and VR sets more reachable, VR and AR marketing will be an apparent digital marketing trend in 2022. We are still to see how it will play out.
9. Digital skills will be highly in-demand
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work and speeded up the procedure of moving into digital media for those, who were still to do so.
Without any doubt, one of the biggest digital marketing trends will be aiming on online strategies and interlinkages.
There are thousands of opportunities for e-commerce's to grow while people in separation switched to online shopping rather than going to stores. Digital marketing has to be aware of that process and incorporate the post-pandemic behaviors into strategies.
Each business owner who wants to pursue digital advertising will be looking for people with advanced digital marketing skills.
Additionally, with the uplift of popularity of remote work, digital marketers are not constricted to their area anymore. We will see people from Europe working more for the US companies, and the other way round. It’s simpler than ever to work for the favorite brand.
10. Engage in CSR and non-profit activities
In 2022 it’s peak time we perceive the marketing effect on the environment. Luckily, CSR campaigns are becoming a standard in the marketing industry. Not only is this strategy beneficial to society, but also brands can seem more humane in front of their target audience.
People can be crazy for “good” companies. They like to identify with their love brands, and will share all the great acts businesses are doing.
2022 marketers should once and for all find that non-profit activities have vast positive feedback on brand awareness and how people see the company.
For example, we arranged a tree-planting event for our 10 year anniversary. We planted more than 3000 trees, and that’s not our final word for 2022.
Key digital marketing trends for 2022 – a quick recap
Let’s take a quick recap of the key digital marketing trends for 2022. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and additional development of social media algorithms will make our marketing experience even more customized. Your window of chance to reach your targeted audience is becoming tapered, and the audience is growing more particular about the content they want to see.
To reinstate the trust in social media and social media influencers, investigate the social media sentiment around the celebrities you want to collaborate with.
Be aware of the latest digital marketing trends to stay at the top of your game and ahead of competitors.
Don’t be frightened to use the new and emerging marketing tools that use machine learning. As a digital marketer you should always run after the latest trends and decide if they are right for your brand.
Now that you know the top digital marketing trends for 2022, why don’t you read our other related articles?