Trends very often define a new year for digital marketers across industries. While the past 18 months have been far too uncertain for brands to predict, the coming year looks set to settle down and bring with it a whole new raft of trends to follow.
By staying ahead of the game and preparing for new trends now, you give yourself the best chance to set yourself apart from your competitors. With that comes increased reach, better sales, and boosted profits, all of which could help make for a killer year for your company.
That said, here are five key digital marketing trends to help secure your brand’s success in the new year.
1. New search trends
SEO will remain one of the essential marketing tools in 2022, although the approaches you need to take to come out on top of popular SERPs have shifted. For one thing, voice search is becoming the hot new way to find new content and brands, with more than 50% of all searches currently being voice-activated.
For another, semantic search results allow companies to move away from web pages bursting with stilted keywords. In 2022, as long as your content meets the intentions of a consumer’s search terms, it will rank. So, ensure you always answer the big questions and write your content to offer value rather than force search terms.
2. Stronger branding
According to our Wikipedia consultant, consumers are far more willing to do business with brands they feel they understand. As such, more vital branding will be a must moving forwards. However, this doesn’t simply mean introducing bolder brand colors or altering a logo, and this means sharing values and mission statements with ideal audiences.
Marketers can better connect with their target demographics and build a more personal connection with a brand film. They can also show consumers why, exactly, their brand ethos (and not just their product) is right for them.
3. Targeted advertising
Irrelevant ads are many consumers’ worst nightmare, mainly because they’re everywhere. Many publishers prefer native ads.
There is, after all, a reason why ad-blocking apps have taken off as the internet has become more and more saturated, and it’s because people don’t like advertising.
As cookies begin to get phased out at the start of 2022, it will be up to digital marketers to find new ways to create relevant ads.
4. Social media
Almost 54% of the global population uses social media these days, so if your brand doesn’t have a profile, you’re missing out on significant opportunities to reach new and engaged customers. Still, the chances are that the levels of social media use will never again quite reach the heights that they did during the pandemic.
People don’t have the same amount of time to kill now that restrictions have eased off. So, you’ll need to find new ways of keeping active users interested in the content you share while they’re still online.
Video marketing (video testimonials for social media advertising are viral as 54% of marketing professionals use them and convert 25% more) and staying informed on the current events your consumers care about could be great ways to do precisely that.
5. The problem of privacy
You may have noticed that many of these points are contingent on how well you know your audience. However, as privacy concerns become more pronounced, brands will need to put confidentiality before personalization in the new year.
Tailoring services to your ideal audiences will have to come from communicating better on social media, reaching well-matched consumers through quality SEO, and forging stronger customer relationships using well-branded content.
In summary
Knowing these critical digital marketing trends before diving headfirst into the new year can help you adjust your strategy ahead of time. Doing so will allow you to prepare for any changes and maximize opportunities to generate revenue.
With 2022 set to bring with it a complete overhaul of Google’s longstanding cookies policy and continued shifts in consumer behavior, good preparation and a forward-thinking approach will be critical to success.
