Introduction
Keeping track of the current digital marketing trends can help a business stay ahead of the competition. Adopting new trends in demand is a great way of distinguishing the brand from others. This helps in creating a lasting impression on target customers too. Only 58% of the marketers are successful in achieving their marketing goals. These marketers spent 40% of their budget on content marketing for better outcomes. Here are the top digital marketing trends for 2022:
Top 8 Digital Marketing Trends in 2022
1️⃣ Video marketing
The growth of technology and the internet has made it easier to stream videos on smartphones and tablets. This is the reason behind the significant rise in the popularity of video streaming platforms like YouTube and apps like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and more. People prefer watching videos rather than going through textual content. So brands intend to expand their digital strategies to start creating marketing videos for better impact.
2️⃣ Sentiment analysis in social media
Incidents of scandals involving certain Instagram celebrities have led to a decline in trust among consumers. So, influencer marketing is no longer a go-to strategy for product promotion or increasing brand awareness. In such a scenario, doing sentiment analysis with different available tools helps in learning various aspects of human communication.
It is based on Natural Language Processing, that is NLP, which helps in analyzing if a statement is made in a positive, negative, or neutral sense. The engagement rate is high on posts with negative sentiments, but no brand wants negative comments unless it happens as an outcome of a planned campaign.
3️⃣ Message personalisation
This is an amazing marketing strategy because users want to see the exact information they need in a scenario that best suits them. So, personalizing the information and delivering it at the right moment through the use of the right marketing tools can be quite helpful. This can be in the form of using Mailchimp to send a welcome mail or Google Ads for advertising a product or service. Segmenting the users while working on an email marketing strategy is an efficient way of doing this.
Advanced tools can be used for creating various subscription pop-ups and categorizing the users based on their subscriptions. Similarly, while creating social media ads, the followers can be classified based on their interests, and accordingly, ads can be tailored to match their preferences. While doing this, it must be kept in mind that some people might not like too much personalization, that is when others know more specifically about their interests.
4️⃣ Narrating a real story
The best way of brand marketing is storytelling. Some brands that are good at this are Huggies, Nike, Spotify, Airbnb, and others. People are keen to learn how the promises made to customers have been fulfilled. It doesn’t imply that brands just let the reviews do the talking. Instead, they need to shift their focus to storytelling. Firms can use testimonials and customer experience stories to explain how their products or services can address a certain issue. Storytelling doesn’t sell something directly but convinces the customer to try it.
5️⃣ Improving privacy policy to build trust
Tighter privacy restrictions are needed because excess digital advertising often makes consumers feel suspicious of the content. Better privacy restrictions can help in efficiently tracking the behavior of users. This is the reason Google has decided to curtail its third-party cookies by 2023. In the same way, other marketers and advertisers need to re-assess their strategies. This will result in a new era that will have better transparency between firms and consumers. Communicating with customers regarding the data collected from them, making it easier for them to opt-out at any point, and avoiding data collection beyond what is needed, can enhance the relationship with the customers.
6️⃣ Use of artificial intelligence
Facebook and other social media platforms are the best examples of firms using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Developments in artificial intelligence have resulted in automating different tasks such as reporting intuitively, automation of general marketing tasks, enhancing search engine optimizations, and getting organic traffic. With all these benefits at hand, we need to check how artificial intelligence affects digital marketing.
Today, AI is even capable of predicting the next move of customers by analyzing more data in less time compared with humans. Hence, large data sets are used for analyzing consumer purchase history and their behavior. After this, they suggest a specific item to be offered or the advertisements to be shown to a consumer segment. Such targeting leads to better conversion rates. Also, the brands understand the customers in a much better way without overwhelming them with irrelevant content.
7️⃣ Focusing on omnichannel marketing
This gives customers access to products and services of various channels, platforms, and devices. E-commerce platforms are the ones implementing this mostly. If we take the example of IKEA, it lets people place their order using an app, on a phone call, through the online store, or by physically visiting the store. Apart from this, it offers a live chat option where a chatbot answers the queries of the users in the process of purchasing.
The more the number of available channels, the better it is for different types of consumers, as not everyone likes the same mode of shopping. It leads to better ROI (Return on Investment). In omnichannel support, there should be more focus on customer support for a better user experience. Live chats can be used for resolving any query of consumers.
8️⃣ Using the power of word of mouth
This has an invisible force that plays a significant role in converting prospects to customers. Social media has made this invisible force tangible in the form of conversions and content sharing, consumer reviews, videos of unboxing, and images of products. Even influencers create a perception of an objection in the minds of consumers through word of mouth. To apply this technique, users are encouraged to share a short video after using the product or the product picture with a specific hashtag. Though it is easy to get distracted by news tools and technologies, the foundations of digital marketing still hold the same importance today. For example, a better return on investment can be realized by optimizing the base digital execution instead of frequently getting distracted by every new tool in the market.
Conclusion
Technological developments narrow down our window of teaching the target audience by personalizing the content they want to see on different channels. While being aware of the latest marketing trends to stand out in the competitive market, firms should not hesitate from using the new and emerging marketing tools which use artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Not all strategies work for everyone. So it is important to regularly listen & ask the customers for feedback and alter the strategies to provide them with the best marketing experience in any mode.
Tags: Digital Marketing, Digital marketing strategy, Digital Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing Trends 2022, Digital Marketing Trends in 2022