Since we’re nearing the end of the year 2022, we thought why not review the past & current digital marketing trends to gain valuable insights and make your future strategies shine. Digital doesn’t just move, it booms, and as technologies continue to evolve, so do customers.Therefore, we want your marketing strategies to keep pace with the application of emerging digital technologies. This year we saw (and are still seeing) many changes in the digital marketing landscape — with the emergence of indie stores on instagram, the growing interest in metaverse marketing, the reign of voice search, an explosion in youtube advertising and growing reliance on digital marketing tools and agencies to support the marketing efforts of companies.
Therefore, when deciding on the most relevant online marketing trends in 2022, let’s not just look at what’s “hot” or “cool”, but instead focus on what made the biggest difference to marketers, from a commercial sense and user point of view.
Here are the top 10 major trends of the digital marketing world from 2022:
Social Media Platforms Became the New Shopping Apps
Social commerce as a social media marketing tactic has existed for a long time but never really caught up. . . until recently. In 2022, social media offered a well segmented, captive audience– just too lucrative an opportunity for businesses to miss out on — with 97% of Gen Z consumers stating that social media was their main point of inspiration when shopping. This explosive social commerce channel is all set to flourish on other platforms beyond instagram and tiktok.
In India, Facebook Marketplace was available before; however, Instagram Shop was not available. Instagram’s recent updates actually opened another door for the entrepreneurs of India.
Omnichannel Marketing Prevailed
With so many device types, marketing channels, browsers, and content types available to them, consumers now expect their favorite brands to maintain a presence across all parts of the digital marketing ecosystem. That’s where omnichannel marketing comes in.
Omnichannel marketing is the process of marketing across multiple platforms, such as websites, social media, apps, email, forums, and blog posts — to offer an enhanced customer experience and widen a brand’s reach.
While the phrase may now seem a little worn out, omnichannel as a marketing strategy is still as fresh and relevant as ever. This year too, consumers preferred all channels simultaneously, and marketers tried their best to keep up by tracking them down wherever they went.
Did you know that Customer retention rates are 90% higher for omnichannel marketing compared to single-channel efforts? That’s why Quikk offers integrated solutions & multi-level strategies that get your business covered across all corners of the digital world.
Little bit of Personal touch, Made a BIG Difference
It’s easy for a customer to feel like another metric lost in the jumble of today’s highly automated marketplace. That’s where digital personalization matters, as it is designed to avoid exactly this common mistake.
Customers loved personalized marketing content because it made them feel seen and appreciated. The Mckinsey & Company report reported that over 70% of consumers expect personalization and are frustrated when they don’t find it – making personalization a must-have for today’s brands. It takes one look at Netflix and Amazon, with their incredibly successful tailored recommended movies and product recommendations.
Here are some ways how businesses adopted personalized digital marketing to their benefit in 2022, and how you can too:
- Using email segmentation and mentioning customers’ names in emails and other promotional outreach
- Geographically targeting customers – as local customers may have common, specific needs
- Leveraging the ‘You May Also Like’ content to offer suggestions based on their search or purchase history
- Using predictive search
- Asking for feedback on how to best utilize products/services that they have already purchased
Quikk’s digital marketing services across all channels are personalized according to the target audience and the client’s business goals and requirements.
Youtube Ads Are Unstoppable
Although annoying at times, youtube ads didn’t fail to grab everyone’s attention in 2022.
Users were able to easily scroll past Facebook, Instagram, and Google search ads without giving them a second glance – as most ads on social platforms are skippable. But as YouTube increased the quantity of non-skippable ads, users couldn’t help sitting through some or all of them in order to watch the video they clicked on.
With millions of people visiting the platform daily, this feature made Youtube Ads a powerful marketing channel for getting in front of potential customers.
A Quikk Note:- Every social media platform changes its algorithm many times. YouTube ranking was easy 15 years back. But now they have upgraded and changed their algorithm so much, if a marketer hits the spot, the ad will be viral.
Metaverse Marketing was in Full Bloom
To sell digital products in 2022, tactics like social media or search marketing were not enough for some businesses, and they started thinking about virtual spaces as part of their marketing strategies by using avatars, virtual influencers, and interactive live events to drive their digital sales. They are on the right track too, since the metaverse is predicted to be a $1,607.12 billion industry by 2030.
Voice Search Gets Ready to be Optimized
Voice search turned out to be one of the fastest-growing digital marketing trends this year. According to data from Think with Google, more than a quarter of the online population of the world is now using voice search on mobile, with 58% of consumers using it to find local business information.
Most popular were virtual assistants (like Alexa and Siri) carrying out routine tasks such as giving weather reports, trending news, scheduling appointments, recommending movies & music, providing real-time traffic updates and accurate GPS locations. However, this feature still has untapped potential when it comes to closely associating to exact-keyword matches for the spoken query.
Influencer Marketing Hit a New High
Every year brings about new social media platforms, new forms of content, and new ways brands can engage with their potential customers. 2022 was the year of influencer marketing! We saw influencer marketing getting big, and it’s only going to get bigger — to cite the stats, the market size of global influencer marketing platform is predicted to reach $84.89 billion by 2028.
Interactives Were Preferred over Static Content
This year we saw a shift from traditional text, graphics or video based content toward dynamic, engaging content that offers users an immersive experience, such as:
- Quizzes and polls
- Augmented reality ads
- 360-degree videos
- Interactive emails & ebooks
- Brand games
91% of buyers actively search for more interactive content not just because it’s fresh and authentic, but because it makes them feel more involved in the buying process and as a result connected to the brands they purchase from.
As digital technology gets more sophisticated by the day, the scope for brands and businesses to engage with consumers will become seemingly endless, and it is going to prove even more valuable in the future of marketing.
Visual Search Gained Popularity
Visual search is the practice where users upload an image into the search bar. Among the companies leveraged it successfully this year were:
- Pinterest – with Pinterest Lens, a visual search tool that allows you to take a picture of an item to find out where to buy it online, search for similar products, or view pinboards of related items, and
- Google – with Google Lens, a now popular tool which recognizes objects (landmarks, text, products, etc.) and searches for similar ones through your camera app.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) Got Trending
Progressive Web Apps are technologies that allow users to install your website on their smartphone as an application. The main benefit is that these can be developed with a single codebase and deployed on several platforms.
Although there’s something everyone can enjoy about PWAs, there are specific reasons many businesses (including Twitter, Tinder, Uber, Starbucks, and Forbes) are picking up on the trend. PWAs have fast load times, push notifications, offline usage and much more without being limited to either Android or iOS.
With total page views on mobile increasing year-over-year by 57% worldwide, mobile is more crucial than ever to your digital marketing strategy. Therefore, this is an excellent time to get a usable and affordable option like this in the short term.
Digital marketing = Marketing?
It can be tricky to keep up with all the top digital marketing trends as the industry changes so fast. Plus, there are many working parts to a successful digital marketing strategy & campaign – and keeping up with every aspect is a real challenge.
That makes you wonder, is digital marketing just a new way of saying marketing? With an increasing amount of media consumption and media spend migrating online, some are suggesting we don’t need a separate discipline of digital marketing, nor do we need separate digital strategies but just a smart integration.
What are your thoughts on this? Which of these digital trends have you already experienced? How are you responding to them? Feel free to leave your comments and questions below! Check out how we keep up with the latest digital marketing trends through our future-proof services here!