What Should You Be Doing in Digital Marketing in 2022?

How will digital marketing change in 2022? Will it change at all?

If you’ve asked this question of yourself and your marketing team, you’re no doubt eager to stay ahead of the curve. Of course, there is no way we can predict exactly what’s coming in terms of tech or economics; those are fast-moving ships that could shoot off in any direction at any given time.

But that doesn’t mean that we must simply wait for things to happen before we react. 

We’re taking a subjective look at digital marketing in 2022 and what we feel we should be doing to take advantage of the opportunities on the horizon. 

If you’re looking to get more out of your current digital marketing efforts we’re certain that you’ll find these thoughts helpful.

Exciting Digital Marketing Trends

If you’ve ever tried to stay on top of the constantly shifting landscape of online marketing, you’ll know that things are moving at a breakneck pace. And if you take a week’s leave you might miss an entire trend. 

Which of these innovative trends could work for your business in the months to come?

TikTok

Nobody could have seen this one coming, and the immense popularity of this app caught many by surprise. Who knew that a platform allowing users to create short 15-second videos for no apparent reason would achieve 800 million downloads in just four years?

This highly subscribed and engaging app is not just for teens and tweens though. Fleet-footed businesses are using bite-sized videos to get their message across to a growing audience of 16 – 24-year-olds.

The best thing is that they’re having fun with it! 

We’re hoping that the days of corporate jargon and subliminal messaging are on their way out, ready to be replaced by interesting, fun, and engaging content. 

Social Commerce

Social commerce was a logical next step for vigilant businesses. It allows users to make purchases without leaving the social channel where they found the product. The word seamless comes to mind. 

One of the key reasons that social commerce works (besides its simplicity) is that it opens the door for fast two-way communication between you and your customers. This enhanced service and brilliant user experience are exactly what the modern consumer wants. 

When you dive into your analytics, can you see where the bottle necks are in your sales flow? Are you guilty of making it too hard for your customers to do business with you? Social commerce has a neat way of ironing out these niggles that lose us customers and is well worth investigating.

Artificial Intelligence

In all its forms, AI has seeped deep into the digital space over the past few years. AI-driven software is taking the load off busy customer service teams, enhancing security and surveillance, and rewriting the script for manufacturing and production.

AI in digital marketing is revolutionising the industry, managing and making sense of the big data that drives the best marketing decisions, especially in PPC management. 

Certainly, it has never been so important for marketers to be innovative and agile as it is now. And thankfully, this frantic pace is matched by some incredible marketing tools that we now have at our disposal.  

Digital Experience Will Matter More Than Ever

As we move forward into digital marketing in 2022, two things will matter more than ever:

• Consumer experience
• Quality content

If you’re not staying abreast of how consumers want to be treated by brands, you won’t be able to compete with those who do. That means doing everything you can now to facilitate a positive consumer experience. Whether that’s clear calls to action on your website or top-notch customer service via chat or phone. 

Additionally, if you don’t have high-quality content (or don’t know what high-quality content looks like), you could lose out on opportunities for links from other sites and valuable ranking signals. In digital marketing in 2022, great content remains critical! 

The Shift From Consumerism to Humanism

For decades, most businesses have relied on pushing products to their audience. While that may have worked well when we were a nation of consumers, there’s a good chance it may stop working. The slow, quiet shift from consumerism to humanism should certainly be something that we explore as responsible businesses. 

As attention changes from selling products to helping people feel emotionally and mentally well, we will see more marketing geared toward improving self-esteem than toward creating dependence upon brands. 

Brands will still be important, but they won’t be everything. This is where digital marketing can really shine. It allows us to create experiences that help people feel better about themselves without making them dependent upon us or our products. It gives us an opportunity to make positive changes in people’s lives without getting them hooked on something else first.

And that’s a good thing.

The Winners Will Surprise Us All

What will digital marketing look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Nobody knows for sure, but we can all make some pretty reasonable predictions based on current trends. 

The reality is that digital marketing in 2022 is all about the consumer. 

So ask yourself, how can you best give them what they need, when they need it, and as fast as possible? How can you unpack what these needs are in the first instance? And how will this impact your digital decisions in the months to come?