Top 10 Digital Marketing trends to look out for in 2022

For a digital marketer, one of the keys to staying relevant in the industry is to keep up with the ever-evolving Digital Marketing trends. The constant innovation and exciting developments in the marketing strategies are aimed at providing an exceptional customer experience. However, unexpected digital trends can sometimes prove to be a real challenge and have a huge impact on business growth. 

Here are some of the key Digital Marketing trends that will determine the future of marketing.

1. Brand Storytelling

Digital Marketing Trends - Brand Storytelling

Consumers now care less about the usual call-to-action brand promotions explaining benefits and claiming the best products. They are more interested in story-driven content visualization and in those brands that give them such creativeness. Customer engagement has reached its next level through brand storytelling. 

Brands should tell compelling stories that are unique to them. These stories have an emotional connection with the user and thus build a loyal customer base, that goes far beyond product and service.

Brand stories won’t sell directly but make customers think and relate to the product. World-class customer experiences are the new social currency.

2. Age of Short Video Formats

Digital Marketing trends - age of short video formats

Video content is captivating and has been topping trends for the past few years. The short video format had a bandwagon effect since Tiktok videos replaced the usual status and photo grid contents. Following the trend, Instagram moved away from IGtv to Reels which became an instant hit. Later, YouTube also joined the trend with Shorts. 

The short video formats cater to the fast-paced consumption of content in the modern world. Simple and effective information could be shared with the users within seconds. Also, anyone could upload this content without prior editing or design knowledge, since the format encouraged unpolished content.

These engaging short videos have the added advantage of being real, candid, and easy to make. They could easily be used by marketers for brand promotions, and awareness campaigns. Want to know more about reels marketing?

3. Modern Advertising & First Party Cookies

Digital Marketing trends - first party cookies

Data privacy is one of the major concerns of the 21st century. Google understood this concern and had brought in some privacy regulations. The regulations included restrictions (effective from 2023) on third-party cookies that tracked the online activities of the customer and provided these data to the brands. The customers were unaware of what the brands were doing with these data.

The new privacy restrictions on third-party cookies have accentuated the need to restrategize targeted advertising. The shift in focus should be on first-party cookies where only enough data is collected from users directly by the websites. It begins a new age of trust and transparency between consumers and brands.

4. Algorithm trends & Audiences

Digital Marketing trends - Algorithms & Audiences

The audience wants content that is interesting, entertaining, valuable, and educational. And the algorithms want you to create such content. All algorithms aim for the best user experience and that is exactly what a marketer should be focusing on. 

Social media platforms are undergoing major transformations. All social media platforms tweak their algorithms to decide and prioritize what content gets seen and what gets buried. This is to focus on what the users want more and stay for more. The business owners and marketers who use social media for their business growth need to understand the impact of such algorithms.

The key is to stay ahead of these algorithms, follow the trends, watch for patterns, and pivot your social media strategies accordingly. If you fail to do so, you just become another collateral damage in the face change of social media.

5. Niching Down

Digital Marketing trends - Niching down

Digital marketing is a vast topic, and it is easy for marketers to get lost in the many marketing channels across the digital world. How can then one do optimum things in this explosive market?

Staying simple with a focused approach is the new marketing trend. The marketing field needs more ‘T-shaped marketers’ who have a basic understanding of multiple marketing disciplines but specializes in one or two. However, niching down is not simply narrowing your specializations but also about becoming the best at it.

More and more marketers are acquiring niche expertise and building their private niche communities. You need to target the right segment for your business with your unique process.

6. Load speed is paramount

Digital Marketing trends - Load speed

Google came up with core web vitals in 2020 to measure a website for its performance. It is intended to optimize customer experience while using a website over mobile and desktop. Google introduced First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to assess the overall responsiveness and visual stability of sites.

These core web vitals would be vital to increasing your website’s SEO ranking, usability, and loading speed. This would in turn convert into sales and help grow your business. With the user attention span and consumer patience on the decline, loading performance becomes a major marketing factor. 

Mobile-friendliness is also a factor that lies aligned with loading speed. According to Google, it predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking.

7. Email Marketing consistently delivers

Digital Marketing trends - Email Marketing

We saw earlier that Google is moving away from third-party cookies, and that marketers need to adapt to new marketing strategies. However, that may not be entirely true. This is an opportunity to understand the power of Email marketing. Email addresses are the primary first-party data and building and maintaining a great Email marketing list is the crucial strategy that you may need.

With probably the highest ROI among all marketing channels, Email marketing is still one of the most preferred channels for businesses to communicate with their consumers. It is one of the marketer’s favorites since your mail listing is only yours. 

You also need to follow the trends in Email marketing. Hyper-personalized content, automation, and dynamic & interactive email content are some of the Email marketing trends to watch out for in 2022 and beyond.

8. Freedom of Location – Digital Nomads

Digital Marketing trends - Digital Nomads

The desire for travel has people looking into remote working opportunities and digital marketing is one such area that offers such an opportunity. With worldwide internet accessibility, we can connect and work from anywhere in the world. 

You will be able to define the direction of your career, even when you are wandering in directions. This will ultimately give you the satisfaction and contentment from living your life to your dreams. You will also be able to build a sustainable lifestyle.

The prime attraction of freedom and flexibility along with governments promoting digital nomad visas is a push for such a trend in the coming years.

9. From Automation to AI-driven Marketing

Digital Marketing trends - AI

The next big step in Digital Marketing is the use of artificial intelligence. There will be a transition from automated marketing campaigns to AI-driven campaigns. These campaigns can predict what the consumer wants. AI can analyze a large amount of data giving us more opportunities to target the audience with the right product or services at the right time.

When it comes to data privacy, artificial intelligence is possibly one of the biggest problems as well as one of its most effective solutions. People’s data are being collected through algorithms without their knowledge. At the same time, companies can use AI to protect sensitive data.

Does this arrival of AI into digital marketing push humans out of jobs? Digital marketers should undergo a complete strategic marketing transformation to augment artificial intelligence systems. The digital marketing field will continue to grow, and the human element drives this growth. 

10. Metaverse of Marketing

Digital Marketing trends - Metaverse

The metaverse is a network of virtual worlds, where people connect through augmented, virtual, and mixed realities. People can have avatars, own things, and can even buy property. In this shared 3D universe, any business or brand can build its world, create digital products and reach a larger set of potential young customers. 

So what does this mean to marketers across the world? They need to tap into this unique opportunity of creating a virtual experience for the customer, that can build as much emotional connection as the real-world physical experience. Those who can adapt to the new ways of this marketing world can thrive in it.

How do one plan the metaverse marketing campaigns? Well, it’s a little early to predict the future of every brand in the metaverse. Some of the brand types like fashion, luxury goods, art, etc have already started brand awareness campaigns in the metaverse. While some are still confused as to how to effectively utilize the limitless imagination in this world.

Digital Marketing trends - Conclusion

In this continuously changing digital landscape, it is much more difficult than before to predict the future of marketing. However, two things are going to remain constant. One, focus on your audience with regular engagement so that those most interested in your work always find you. Two, your fundamentals are always going to matter and will provide better ROI than the new trends.

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