Marketing trends keep on changing, and if you can stay on top of what your customers want, you will be able to stay ahead of the pack. For any business or brand to grow and build the correct audience, content marketing is essential. Increase conversions, enhance sales, create leads, expand an email list, are all much more onerous without it.

According to Statista, content marketing revenue surpassed $42 billion in 2019 and is still rising. Many companies will prioritize their content marketing approach if you don’t, and you will be left behind.

Content marketing is an extremely important area for any business and brand that wants to ensure its further growth and expand its customer base. Without content marketing, it can be challenging to drive conversions and sales, generate leads, and grow your mailing list.

If you want to achieve maximum results in your business in 2022, you need to consider all the leading trends in your content marketing strategy.

• What is Content Marketing?
• Examples of Content Marketing
• Why Content Marketing is Important For Your Business
• Best Content Marketing Tips
• Challenges Associated With Content Marketing
• Is Digital Marketing a Good Career in 2022?
• What Are The Future Trends in Marketing?
• What Will Marketing Look Like in 2025?
• 10 Digital Marketing Trends For 2022
• 10 Digital Marketing Predictions For 2022
• Branding Trends 2022
• New Product Trends 2022
• Brand Marketing Trends 2022
• Content Trends 2022
• Top Digital Marketing Trends 2022
• B2B Marketing Trends 2022
• Global Marketing Trends 2022
• What is The Future of Online Marketing?
• 5 Areas to Factor Into Your 2022 Content Marketing Planning

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the proven practice of generate interest in a business and its products/services by creating value for customers through engaging and informative content. As a marketing practice that spans traditional and digital channels, content marketing is an integral component of any successful marketing organization.

Content is the foundation of just about every type of online customer interaction. From search and discovery through consideration and on to conversion, content helps consumers make decisions. Content marketing helps brands maximize their return on investment in content by ensuring that each content asset—whether a blog post, email, article, infographic, video, or any other format—reaches the most receptive and relevant audience.

Examples of Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about using content to attract and retain visitors and eventually turn them into customers. And most people who use it know it’s effective.

Read Also: Customer Experience Trends 2022

There’s just one problem: content marketing can be seriously hard work.

If you’re running content marketing campaigns, day in, day out, it can be difficult to consistently come up with new ideas and keep the momentum going.

From blogging and social media to video and visual marketing, we’ve got a great collection of content marketing examples to inspire you.

These marketing examples from the business world will help you find new ways to get creative and create your own inspirational content marketing to win leads and sales.

1. Hootsuite And A Game of Social Thrones

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that lets you manage all of your accounts from one place. Not exactly what you’d call fun and exciting topic, right?

Well, their marketing team had different ideas. And it started with an epic viral video:

“Game of Social Thrones” was a huge hit.

It did what every marketing campaign should do. It sparked emotion.

If you’re an ardent “Game Of Thrones” fan, it’s funny, timely and makes you want to shout, “Hey, dude! Have you seen this? By the way, what the heck is Hootsuite? Let’s check it out…”

And, if you’ve never watched more than five minutes of the first episode (like me), it tells you this is an epic product that cares about its users — and, you know, more than just the hard sell.

2. Microsoft And Stories

The guys at Microsoft know how to tell a good story. And what better place to do it than a blog?

It’s aptly named “Stories.”

Enjoying a good story is in your DNA. You’re hardwired to connect with it.

Storytelling releases the feel-good hormone oxytocin. And if you can get your audience to feel emotion with your story, they’ll trust you — and they’ll buy from you.

In fact, author and entrepreneur Seth Godin’s whole marketing philosophy is based on this principle. The better stories you tell, the better you’ll connect with your audience. The better the connection, the stronger the relationship.

3. HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing

HubSpot is an innovator in marketing. So much so that they actually coined the term Inbound Marketing. You’ve probably heard of that, right?

HubSpot does it with their simple process:

1. Attracting
2. Converting
3. Closing
4. Delighting

In that order.

And, much like Buffer, they create lots and lots of valuable content to help people progress their marketing. So whether you buy from HubSpot or not, you’ll always think of them as an important resource.

Their guides are detailed, authoritative and free: e-books, marketing kits, user guides, webinars and video courses. Oh, and the odd blog or two. Is there anything this company can’t do?

Their content is high-quality, relevant and engaging, which is key for great search rankings.

4. McDonald’s Question Time

Ever wondered what is actually in a beef patty? You’re in luck. McDonald’s will tell you.

This content marketing strategy is changing public perceptions through honesty.

McDonald’s Canada decided to take on the challenge of answering customer’s questions: all of them.

Answering around 10,000 customer questions has a way of helping you build strong relationships. McDonald’s stepped out from behind the brand and shared the facts. And, people loved their transparency.

As Joel Yashinsky, chief marketing officer for McDonald’s Canada, told author Jay Baer, “If you have a good story to tell, tell it. But you have to do it in a way that’s authentic.”

This builds trust and belief. With this you can turn even the worst reputation on its head.

5. Share As Image

Another company making strides in visual content? Share As Image.

They let you create high-quality images with shareability, and Buffer recommends them as one of the best content marketing tools out there, for good reason.

On top of this, their blog churns out high-quality content, with expertise from the inside. (It’s that velvet rope effect again.)

Share As Image helps you build your own brand with premium visual content.

Why Content Marketing is Important For Your Business

As one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales, content marketing is a mission-critical growth method for most businesses.

The importance of content marketing in digital marketing relates to its ability to increase the volume of quality traffic to your website. Content is king in creating awareness and generating quality leads which sustains healthy sales growth. Strategized and properly executed content has the power to pull your audience to your business’s website, which is ultimately the place where they will convert into leads, and then sales.

The most effective way to drive traffic to your website is through the content that you develop for your blog, for SEO and for your social media marketing. While there are plenty of important elements that live under these categories, it all boils down to the quality of your content.

1. Your audience will stick around longer.

Great content is an important asset. It has the ability to create positive experiences for your potential customers and compel them to come back for more. It’s your ticket to capturing your audience’s attention and continually reinforcing a positive brand impression.

2. You’ll have better traction on social media.

It’s one thing to increase your social media followers across channels, but it’s quite another to create trendy content. If you’re one of those businesses that doesn’t see much traction despite having a huge following, it’s time to use content marketing to your advantage. Quality content can help your business gain traction on social media.

Track the performance of your content campaigns using HubSpot’s analytics software.

3. Your audience will trust you.

Creating content helps your business build a relationship with your audience. You can answer their questions and interact with customers. When you create value without taking anything in return, your audience is more likely to trust your advice and recommendations.

Ultimately, when your content shows up at the right place and at the right time with the right audience, it’ll improve your brand’s reputation. The more quality content customers see, the more likely they will have a positive association with your company.

4. You’ll generate more and better leads.

Content marketing can also generate leads. When your audience views your content, they’re more likely to purchase from you in the future. Additionally, calls-to-action (CTA) placed directly in your content can generate new leads for your sales team.

So, how can content generate leads?

According to Lindsay Kolowich, the team manager of the HubSpot Academy Acquisition Content Team, “content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information. You can include CTAs anywhere in your content — inline, bottom-of-post, in the hero, or even on the side panel. The more delighted a visitor is with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move onto your landing page.”

5. Original content can improve conversions.

The content you post influences conversions. It helps your audience connect with you and gives them the information needed to make educated purchases.

Even more, if you’re using blog content to bring in traffic, consider using original graphics rather than stock photos, as marketers report the former as least effective in helping them meet their goals. 

Additionally, your content should always include a CTA and guide your reader on what they should do next.

6. Your business will become more visible thanks to SEO.

The more consistent, high-quality content you produce, the better it’ll be for your SEO efforts.

For example, your content should help your business become visible online and build trust and authority with your audience. In addition, with a developed content strategy, such as the pillar/cluster model, your content should help you rank higher in search engines.

7. Great content can position your company as an authority in your industry.

Creating quality content will also help build your authority online. If your business is established as a credible place to get information, you’re more likely to rank higher in search engines.

Plus, your customers are more inclined to trust you if they view you as an industry expert. Your content should demonstrate your expertise in your field and provide valuable answers to your audience’s questions.

Overall, content marketing is important. But, how can you be successful at it?

One way to tell is to assess the quality of your content. One particularly beneficial assessment of quality is content scoring.

As more businesses increase their content marketing budget, there’s never been a better time to incorporate content scoring metrics into your marketing campaign.

With the help of content scoring, you can measure and improve your content marketing performance and offer great value to your audience.

8. Quality content can build brand awareness.

Sure, anything can build brand awareness, but content marketing can do it in a unique way.

Our HubSpot marketing experts have written about something called Surround Sound strategy.

In a nutshell, this content strategy does more than just rank your blog article on page one. It makes your content (and therefore your brand) appear everywhere your potential customers are looking for your product.

To execute this strategy, write about topics your customers are interested in so they begin to associate your great content with your brand.

9. You’ll cultivate loyal brand fans.

Taking brand awareness a step further, all the people who raved about your content and associated all those great feelings with your brand are very likely to become brand advocates before ever purchasing your product.

Wait, what?

It’s true; brand fans can be just as loyal and influence their friends and family’s buying decisions as potential consumers see that a business provides value to its current audience. One of the more successful ways companies can do this is through content marketing.

10. You’ll save money on your marketing strategy.

Since HubSpot first assessed the cost of content marketing ten years ago, the practice has remained the most cost-effective marketing strategy available.

Upfront costs for content appear steep, and that’s a fair point.

Estimates for blog content range from $150 a post to $3,000 for a freelance writer, but you could go the route of hiring a full-time staff writer to create content for you on a regular basis.

In the long term, when compared to paid advertisements, video marketing, and traditional marketing, content wins the battle with Frank from finance every time.

Best Content Marketing Tips

Content marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating, publishing, and distributing valuable and relevant content online with the purpose of reaching a targeted audience and incentivizing profitable customer action. Ultimately, content marketing is a critical component for long-term, sustainable growth.

And yet, despite its immense impact, many marketers don’t know how to implement a successful content marketing strategy.

To ensure you’re able to cultivate a truly valuable marketing strategy, we’ve created this round-up of content marketing tips.

1. Make sure your content has a clear, measurable business goal.

You might be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content you can create for your business — anything from Instagram Stories, to blog posts and e-books, to podcasts.

However, as Karla Cook, Senior Manager of the HubSpot Blogs, notes, “[It’s critical] every single piece of content you’re creating has a clear, measurable business goal in mind — and simply ‘getting views’ isn’t a complete business goal. Take the time to think about how content can serve your overall marketing strategy, and create pieces that tie back to that.”

For instance, let’s say you decide you want to lean heavily into a blogging strategy. Simply crafting and publishing content isn’t enough — instead, it’s important you identify your target audience and decide how your content can best serve that group. Additionally, you’ll want to use analytics to ensure your content is able to reach the right people with the appropriate search intent.

Once you identify how to serve your audience, you’ll want to ask yourself, “How does this tie back to the business?” While it’s critical you write quality content to grow your audience, it won’t attract prospects if it doesn’t tie back to your business.

2. Know your audience.

Content marketing is all about attracting the right audience — that is, those who are most likely to engage with your brand and buy your products. But you can’t write content that attracts the right audience until you know your audience.

No need to go out and interview every customer who’s ever done business with you, although that could definitely be helpful. Sit down with your team and create a buyer persona, the ideal customer who’s best served by your products. You’ll want to take into account both psychographic and demographic information, and create a buyer persona document that your team can refer to.

Knowing your audience helps you create content that speaks to them as they go through the buyer’s journey.

3. Understand your buyer’s journey.

A good content marketer understands that their strategy needs to engage and delight readers at any stage of the buyer’s journey. While your content should initially attract new visitors to your business, it should also convince hesitant prospects to purchase, and encourage customer retention and long-term brand loyalty.

For instance, perhaps some customers are hesitant to purchase your product because they believe you need extensive video knowledge to succeed with it. To help mitigate concerns and aid your sales team, you might create a video campaign to show customers how to use video marketing.

4. Solve for the reader.

When you’re creating content, you have two primary goals: to educate and to help someone solve a problem. While the objective is to generate leads or drive readers toward a purchase, you also want to establish your brand as a trustworthy source of information first. Then, after they’ve come to trust you, readers can convert and turn into paying customers.

Every piece of content should solve for the reader by answering their questions, offering useful resources and tips, and getting them slowly acquainted with what you offer and how you can help.

For example, if your brand offers vacation rentals, your content should revolve around travel and provide important information that potential travelers need. You would write city-specific travel guides, lists of best places to visit, lists of best practices for traveling solo, and so forth. Once a reader continues to come to you as an authoritative source of information, they’ll trust you enough to make you their provider.

5. Adopt the pillar-cluster model.

If you want to create a better reading experience while improving your SEO, organize your content using the pillar-cluster model.

In this model, a pillar page covers an umbrella topic, then cluster pages support that topic. You then use internal linking to connect all the topics together and signal to Google that they’re related.

For example, if you’re a web design firm, your umbrella topic might be web design. You’d write a pillar page titled, “The Ultimate Guide to Web Design.” Then, you would write pages such as “UX Design 101” and “How to Use HTML & CSS” to support that umbrella topic.

6. Write in-depth content.

It’s been well-established that, on average, longer content performs better in search engines than shorter content. So, when writing content for your website, you should make it long — but not just for the sake of it.

As you seek to solve for the reader, you should include everything they need to know in one post about the specific topic they’re looking for. You shouldn’t write long content with paragraphs upon paragraphs of fluff. Rather, answer related questions and bring up any tips that will help them walk away with all the information they need.

To find out the types of questions people need answers to, look at the “People also ask” box when you search the keyword you’re targeting. This will tell you the types of queries Google has picked up on that are related to your search.

Keep in mind that each post or page should only cover one highly specific topic and only target one to two keywords. You’ll want to do this for various reasons:

• You’ll avoid self-cannibalization because you won’t be writing about general topics.
• You’ll strengthen topical authority by writing in-depth content on one specific keyword.
• With less keywords covered per page or post, you’ll have more keywords to target in other pages.

7. Rely on analytics to track your performance.

Quality content is important, but it doesn’t mean much for your business if your visitors and viewers don’t convert into customers. This is why analytics is so important — by carefully monitoring, tracking, watching, and reporting on the numbers, you’ll be able to gauge what’s working, what isn’t, and what could be working better.

Traffic is important, but it’s important you also focus on conversion rates. Perhaps your Instagram account has only 1,000 followers — alternatively, your blog has 7,000 readers. However, your Instagram page has a conversion rate of seven percent, and your blog only converts at about .01. This should tell you that, while your blog is important for an initial introduction to your business, your Instagram is critical for sales and shouldn’t be ignored.

Additionally, focusing on analytics will help you refine and improve your strategy for the future. For instance, let’s say you notice your blog readers are particularly interested in blog topics related to e-commerce. This can help direct your future strategy — you can choose to focus more heavily on e-commerce topics, which will increase traffic (signaling your readers are happy with your content), and ensure you’re spending time and effort where it matters.

8. Keep content consistent and up-to-date.

Victor Pan, Head of Technical SEO at HubSpot, urges content strategists to implement simple SEO tactics to ensure content remains up-to-date and relevant to search engines. He says, “You can tell if being up-to-date is important to your topic if ‘keyword+year’ shows up in the ‘related searches’ of a Google search result.”

To ensure your content remains relevant and updated, Pan recommends the following three tips:

• Exclude the year in the URL when you’re optimizing your content. Great URLs don’t change.
• Include the year in the title of your content.
• Schedule your editorial calendar to revisit this content every year so you can keep it up-to-date, which could include updating the title tag, meta description, and content itself.

It’s important to note that if you do implement an optimization strategy, it’s critical you don’t update the URL. The URL should remain the same to ensure you don’t need to re-earn backlinks. Additionally, you don’t want to create unnecessary redirects.

Overall, consistency is key. Publishing consistent content will help you rank in the SERPs, but it will also establish trust with your audience.

9. Adopt a historical optimization strategy.

A few years ago, the blogging team at HubSpot figured out the importance of adopting a historical optimization strategy. Through repurposing old (yet still high-quality) content, the team was able to double monthly leads, and increase monthly organic search views by an average of 106%.

Ultimately, you don’t want old content to go to waste. If a topic is particularly evergreen (like “how to create a blog”), it makes sense you’d put time and effort behind repurposing it.

10. Repurpose your content.

It takes time and talent to craft highly useful, engaging content — so, by finding ways to recycle existing content, you’re ensuring peak efficiency. Additionally, repurposing content allows you to reach new audiences. For instance, let’s say your podcast team published a high-performing episode. Why not turn that episode’s topic into a blog post?

Alternatively, maybe you created a blog post that performed significantly well — now, you might consider creating a YouTube video that covers a similar topic to reach an audience that prefers video over text.

Repurposing your content will also ensure your audience has more than one chance to see it. Your readers, viewers, and followers are busy. Consider simply implementing a new content promotional strategy on a piece of content that deserves to be resurfaced.

Challenges Associated With Content Marketing

However, there are numerous challenges that make content marketing difficult in today’s media environment. Unfortunately, many companies waste time and money because they don’t know how to create content that engages with and influences their target audiences.

This points to the fundamental issue that some brands struggle to overcome a number of key content marketing challenges. These are the biggest content marketing challenges marketers face today:

1. Producing high-quality content

Content is one of the most effective ways to promote a brand or business but it must be of the quality that B2B buyers want and expect to see.

This means avoiding the creation of more of the same content others are already producing and giving readers something different that’s of real value.

Researching your top competitors’ content and seeing how it performs in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) will give you a good indication of the standard your content must at least match and ideally exceed. Google uses a number of metrics to measure engagement on content hosted on these pages, such as bounce rate, time on page, and depth scrolled.

If you are in a competitive market where it’s a struggle to rank highly for relevant searches then focus on maximising these metrics is not enough. Your content must be bold and original as without a strong opinion or point of difference it is unlikely that you will interest your target audience.

It isn’t enough to create generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ content. To ensure you develop high-achieving content for your audience, find a unique angle and then develop it fully — going both deep and wide on topics that answer the questions of your audience. Aim to create content that is ten times better than anything currently in the SERPs.

2. Generating content consistently

If your brand is to be taken seriously as a thought leader you must produce content consistently. Unfortunately, for 60% of marketers, doing so is the biggest content marketing challenge that they face.

One of the main reasons content is produced erratically is that the majority of businesses don’t have any documented content strategy in place.

Having a clear content strategy will help to ensure that your content will be prioritized and its importance communicated to your stakeholders (both internal and external), not all of whom may understand its value or relevance in today’s marketing mix.

As part of your strategic planning, develop a content calendar for at least the next six months and begin monitoring your competitors’ output. This will give you a benchmark of how much content you will need to create to make an impact in your marketplace.

3. Prioritising content expertise

Creating quality content requires journalistic, design, creative and technical skills. If you are going to produce content in-house you will need to establish a team either by reallocating staff who have the skills or recruiting new talent.

Alternatively, if you lack the internal resources to create enough content to make an impact, then you could appoint an external agency to run the whole process, as increasing numbers of companies are doing.

Not only are they likely to do the job better, but you will also benefit from their expertise and up-to-date understanding of what’s most effective in content marketing.

4. Understanding different buyer personas as part of your strategy

Your buyers are not a homogenous group but a complex ecosystem of individuals who prefer to consume their content in different ways. However, you can only fully appreciate their disparate preferences when you have taken the time to go deeper than just establishing their gender, age or interests. To truly connect with individual buyer types, think about building not just one but multiple buyer personas and then creating different content types to reflect this diversity.

One of the best ways to understand your customers’ needs is simply to ask them – something that 58% of B2B marketers never do. For example, your audience may be made up of ‘skimmers’, ‘waders’ and ‘deep divers’ of content, some of whom will prefer video to a podcast, short articles to long ones, or reading at their desks rather than to listening during their morning commute. Be sure to service them all and give them every opportunity to engage.

5. Producing content in suitable formats

To accommodate a varied landscape when it comes to B2B buyers, it’s important to provide a variety of formats to reflect this diversity.

Particularly when you’ve invested time and money in creating a flagship piece of content, make sure that you use it to its fullest. Be sure that it is repurposed across multiple formats, such as infographics, blogs, and podcasts, to maximise exposure across a wide variety of channels.

Whatever the format, if you want to engage with your target audience then the emphasis must be on delivering value-added content that’s packed with insights and solutions.

6. Measuring content ROI accurately

Increasing investment in data-driven marketing means there’s an ever-greater focus on measurement and analytics. Consequently, if you aren’t monitoring and analysing metrics (such as backlinks from posts, traffic flow to and from your content, your site’s domain authority, the volume of email enquiries or social media shares) you won’t know how hard your content is working.

Consider assigning a monetary value to each website visitor and measure the number of visits each piece of content achieves. Use lead magnets, such as white papers, and give a value to the number of leads that come from the downloads. Marketing automation platforms, such as Pardot, Hubspot and Marketo, will allow end-to-end tracking from the first visit through to purchase.

Measuring content ROI accurately requires having the right analytical tools in place and ensuring they are configured correctly. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and dashboard visualization software like Databox, are the most popular analytical technologies being used by B2B organizations currently.

7. Creating buy-in among stakeholders

While a timely, well-written and carefully researched piece of content can become an overnight success, it’s rare that this happens. Generally, you need to create a foundation of content before you get traction in the marketplace. That process isn’t instantaneous. So stakeholders’ expectations must be suitably managed so they understand the long-term benefits and opportunities content marketing presents.

In the first instance, this might mean using online resources, statistics, and case studies to help stakeholders understand the potential benefits of content marketing.

We recommend setting an objective for each piece of content, such as increasing organic traffic, generating leads or building trust, and then setting up your analytics to track these goals. With a clear view on the data, you will be able to generate reports that show the effectiveness of your content and help justify the investment and overall approach to your stakeholders, showing the rewards as your content marketing gains traction.

Is Digital Marketing a Good Career in 2022?

If you’ve been asking the question, Is digital marketing a good career choice, especially in 2022, then the following points will help you decide.

1. You will earn so much as a digital marketer.

Entering the digital marketing industry can help you garner a startling income per month.

This income will however depend on your experience and talent, rather than any certification you might have from any source or institution.

Also your effort and amount of work will contribute greatly to your income or earnings in the industry.

2. Digital Marketing Will never Fade So Soon.

Digital marketing has been found to be growing at the rate of 25-30 every year. And this shows that the industry is never planning on slowing down so soon.

Big multinational companies like P&G are now spending a significant proportion of their marketing budgets on digital marketing, while unicorns like Amazon spend an even higher proportion. 

So for those who are thinking that digital marketing is a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ I want to let you know that, digital marketing is here to stay!

3. Digital Marketing Growth Is Limitless.

There are scores of digital marketing jobs that are not yet discovered! And for that reason, the possibilities of the industry still growing is really limitless.  

Moreover, your level of hard work really matters in the industry. If you are able to work long hours building campaigns and pitching for big brands, you will soon be rewarded.

Joining a digital marketing agency can also help you to expand your career in the industry.

4. You can take on multiple side jobs as a digital marketer.

If you are able to grow your brand on the industry and get noticed, you will be able to get some side jobs in some of the big agencies.

If you are knowledgeable in software design, you can land a job designing campaigns for a big digital agency.

You can enrol in online courses and learn any additional skill that might help you be hired by a big digital agency who are always on the look out for employees.

Now let’s see the qualities you need to have as a digital marketer. 

What Are The Future Trends in Marketing?

Ever-changing consumer behavior, evolution and the adoption of technology are a good indicator of any future trends in marketing. Being in Digital, you are always looking to identify media consumption patterns and changes to the landscape and opportunities to find new customers.

The ambition of what technology could achieve is much bigger than what we actually see in the market today. Accessing information will look completely different and will open up endless possibilities for human development in the distant future.

There are three emerging trends that will influence the future of digital marketing and our daily lives.

1. Augmented reality in search

Traditional search has evolved. A lot. But it still has its issues when it comes to user experience. There are a number of features that have been introduced by Google over the years, but search results are still not very interactive. Users can get overwhelmed or underwhelmed by the information available. So we need something more.

This challenge is not just limited to search engines. Retailers will have to adapt too, and quickly.

Searches are no longer just text-based. Consumers want information to be delivered in the easiest way possible and want to be able to personalize their choices.

In order to truly unlock this experience, we need better speeds. 5G, which is designed for rich media and will offer speeds up to 10Gb/s is likely to be rolled out in 2022, adding more capacity to enhance personalization and interactivity online.

An example of what this experience could look like is technology developed by Modiface. They are already testing the boundaries by using Augmented Reality to offer a personalized experience for the beauty industry.

This is an example of convenient but complex personalization. Users try makeup on from the comfort of their own homes. Allowing users to get a feel of what your products could do for them via AR is a massive opportunity.

Google also started showing 3D Augmented Reality objects in Search back in 2019/2020 and announced an early adopters’ program. This feature is currently restricted to a limited number of organizations, but we can start preparing for it. The requirements are simple:
– Add good quality 3D images
– Add AR-enabled mark-up

Your consumers have unique needs. AR provides a perfect opportunity to create a more personalized and immersive experience. A combination of new technology and high speeds will enable AR to disrupt the retail experience in the next few years.

Facebook’s recent rebrand to Meta to get ahead of the game in creating their metaverse springs to mind when discussing the future of marketing. It will definitely come into play over the next decade, with the following also playing an important part.

2. Internet of things

Search engines have plenty of data about people and their preferences. Our travel history, where we work, devices, browsing history and much more.

The next battleground is to connect the dots with what’s happening at home. Google Home and Echo dominate the speaker market already. Nest is partnering with ADT, leading the market share of the home security sector.

Household device-level targeting is already available. IP algorithms can determine IP address based on the physical address for precise digital ad targeting. This can be used for reaching new movers, venue targeting and web to home targeting.

By 2025, 75 billion devices will be online and connected. According to Google, 90% of media is consumed across a number of screens.

We can already see new interfaces popping up whether that’s in mirrors, fridges or car screens.

The future of marketing will be screen agnostic.For marketers, this means organising and feeding information to platforms in a way that accurately conveys the meaning and the context of the data about our products.

Schema, Site architecture, Taxonomy and Ontology will gain more importance in bringing your inventory to these platforms which ultimately enable you to connect your brand to consumers across all types of devices and screens.

3. Search by thought

Search engines have become a lot more intelligent in understanding the intent behind searches happening on their platforms. From word vectors to thought vectors, the capabilities and the experience has improved manifolds.

Looking back at the ambitions of Google, Larry page talked about his idea of ‘Search by thought’. You don’t have to use a laptop to type or a phone to say what you would like to search for. You can get all that information in your brain connected to billions of neurons in the cloud.

“Search will be included in people’s brains with the knowledge of the world. Google will augment the brain – Eventually, you’ll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”

The creation of a human brain/cloud interface will give people instant access to knowledge and resources through thought. Advancements in nanotechnology and AI will enable this to happen in real-time.

Imagine getting every question right in a pub quiz.

A similar system called ‘BrainNet’ has already been tested, focused on creating a thought driven information exchange between individuals. This technology works with an average accuracy of 81.25%.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to enable this on a wide scale. You can imagine the bandwidth needed to manage the flow of information and by millions of people. Having said that, with all the advancements in this area, we could be seeing a form of an internet-driven by thoughts by the end of this decade.

Although this seems far away, this era will truly change the way we consume information and will present new opportunities and challenges for reaching customers.

What Will Marketing Look Like in 2025?

Together with the advertising landscape moving Through enormous changes, it’s naive to believe that the future won’t Be substantially different from the current condition. Let’s have a look at the key trends that will shape the future of digital marketing in 2025:

1. Artificial Intelligence

According to a survey conducted by Forbes, 75% of businesses using AI and machine learning are successful in enhancing customer satisfaction by 10%.

• From Enabling Precise, real-time analytics And dimensions, optimizing product lineup and pricing approach to improving consumer experience and support, artificial intelligence and machine learning have attracted massive benefits of the area of advertising.
• According to Research and Markets investigation, around 50 percent of customer queries these days are handled through AI-based chatbots.
• AI-powered chatbots Will be the Upcoming big thing to streamline client Relationship management since they’re effective at understanding complex Requests and supply personalized answers. As technology Keeps Growing Exponentially and its intriguing uses come to light, we can definitely expect AI Approach to be the new standard of advertising by 2025.

2. Virtual Reality

The main job of marketing managers is to evaluate various tools to offer more interactive, engaging, and personal experiences to their customers. For the past few years, virtual reality has emerged as the most efficient and competent solution.

As per MarketsandMarkets research, virtual reality will become an important part of marketing campaigns by 2025 as its market continues to expand from $7.9 billion in 2018 to $53.6 billion in 2025.

• By participating in the procedure of storytelling, virtual reality enables consumers to associate using a business or brand using an emotional intensity that’s unthinkable compared to conventional modes of promotion. Various top smartphone and automobile makers are already availing the utmost benefit of virtual reality by providing 360-degree interactive adventures.

3. Voice Marketing

According to PWC 2018, 65% of 25-49-year-old people speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once a day. Also, OC&C Strategy Consultants estimates that, by 2022, $40 billion in the U.S. and $5 billion in the U.K. will be spent through voice commerce.

The Increasing use of voice Supporters by Many marketing experts are placing substantial bets on voice supporters becoming the future of advertising because it permits contextual interactions with customers and clients.

Many businesses are relying on Voice-enabled technology for a tool that may help them market personalization To a completely new level entirely. By 2020, It’s predicted that Gartner’s 30% prediction of Internet searches will probably be done with no screen.

Now, We’ve established that the Need For electronic promotion is just likely to rise in the approaching future. The simple rule of economics states ‘if there’s a need, there needs to be a suitable supply also.’ Thus, many educational institutions and platforms are presenting different degree classes in electronic advertising which have a sensible strategy.

Provides an executive application on Digital & Social Media Marketing Strategy (EPDSMMS) that targets at bettering your management abilities so you are completely prepared to completely utilize the newest emerging platform.

Designed to boost the abilities of their students and assist in the preparation, Implementing, and measuring both the electronic and social websites marketing actions To create consciousness, and drive sales.

The demand for digital marketing is on the rise and those who are aware are coming up with ideas to train the next generation for a better future.

4. Data will drive key marketing decisions

Mass, untargeted broadcasting will become passé and data will be at the heart of marketing strategy. Data is around us everywhere, which gives us key insights into customer expectations and buying patterns.

5. Blockchain’s potential will be explored

Blockchain is the latest buzzword around and is being touted as a technology that can bring dramatic transformation to a wide range of industries. Marketing is the same. With blockchain, promotion can tackle some of its most significant challenges and concerns.

Resolving privacy issues, raising transparency concerning identifying robots, and building consumer confidence are a few of the crucial regions where blockchain’s potential has been evaluated now. Like any nascent technologies, there’ll be a few challenges, learning, and pitfalls in adoption. Nevertheless, by 2025 hope to find some revolutionary use instances of blockchain.

10 Digital Marketing Trends For 2022

The latest marketing trends are closely related to artificial intelligence. 

The next important thing related to trends in digital marketing is the brand-customer relationship. Algorithms are increasingly recognizing content that is either irrelevant, offensive, or fake. Not everything can go on the internet today. 

It is for this reason that trends are changing and evolving. Digital marketing adapts to the customer by adapting to the Internet. 

Let’s see what trends await us in 2022. 

1. The Cookie Jar Will Be Empty

In 2019, Google announced that it would remove cookies in early 2022. The company has not yet officially confirmed when exactly this will happen, but it is clear to everyone that the cookies have come to an end. 

What does that mean in practice? Most important of all, companies will no longer be able to track their potential customers online. That story is brought to an end. 

As we have already said, the internet becomes subordinate to the customer. Consumer protection laws come into force. All focus is on providing privacy. However, alternatives to cookies exist.  

We’ll talk about them later. 

2. Make it simple. 

The huge amount of diverse content found on the internet has led customers to more quickly and easily identify what they need. 

No need to bother writing fairy tales about your product. A few simple, precise and clear sentences are enough. 

Simplicity is key. Stick to this and you will keep the old customers and you will get new ones very easily. 

 3. Artificial Intelligence and its presence. 

The sooner you start using artificial intelligence as a tool, the better for your business. Catch this train at the right time. And the right time is right now. 

Artificial intelligence is present in various spheres of life, from satellites to electric cars. It has also found a field of activity in digital marketing. 

One of the most well-known ways to use artificial intelligence is the chatbot. Are you closing the doors of your New York software development company at 5 p.m.? No problem. Customers can still contact you. The chatbot will provide them with all the answers they want. And the relationship between the chatbot and the customer can only grow in the future. 

Also, one of the things that are currently in development but will be present soon is the personalized user experience. What does it mean? This means that for each user, or each group of users, your page will look different. Imagine that. The AI recognizes the behavior of your customer and gives it a personalized web page.  

These are just some of the benefits of artificial intelligence. As we said, apply it as soon as possible. The time of artificial intelligence has come. 

4. The Mobile Phone plays a Major Role. 

This is one of the crucial trends for 2022. 

The mobile phone has become like a continuation of the human body. On average, we use it between 4 and 6 hours a day, either through correspondence or through staying on social networks. 

Some people do not own a computer or laptop at all. They do everything over the phone. And they are the majority. 

This is how digital marketing adapts to phone users. They put the user experience on the mobile device at the top of their web design priorities. 

5. CRM tools, surveys, and interactive content. 

As we have already pointed out, cookies will soon disappear from the internet. Some of the alternatives are CRM, surveys, and interactive content. All these alternatives serve to bring you closer to the thoughts and wishes of your customers. When you know their wills, it will be easier for you to develop your digital marketing strategy and approach them. 

Also, email marketing is becoming more and more popular because a more personal relationship with the customer is achieved through email. 

6. Crypto is King. 

Yes, you heard it right. By 2021, cryptocurrencies have taken their place in the market and they will not be removed from there for a long time. Both young and old began to trade cryptocurrencies. That’s enough of a sign. 

Another thing closely related to crypto is NFTs. NFT can, as same as crypto, be sold or traded. 

What you should do is enable crypto payments on your website. With this move, you gain the trust of a large group of users. These users will recognize you as an open-minded person who is forward-looking. 

7. Make SEO Local ditto. 

The main advantage of SEO localization is precisely in better targeting. If, for example, you are the owner of the best New York website design company, of course, you will pay attention to New Yorkers first and only then to the rest of the world. 

Many companies still make that mistake. They optimize their SEO globally but nowhere do they include the exact location where they are located. As a result, they lose a large number of potential users. 

8. Search by Voice 

This is also related to artificial intelligence. People are sometimes simply lazy to write and search about some product they want. It’s easier for them to dictate it all into a microphone. Artificial intelligence will do the rest of the work. 

That’s why you need the right keywords. 

9. Search by Visual Content. 

Google Lens, for example, has had this application for several years. Let’s say a customer has seen a bag on the internet that they like but doesn’t have enough money to buy it. He then simply does a screenshot of that bag and gives it a search. The search then finds either the same bag or similar to the one the customer was looking for. 

That’s why you need photos of your products from various angles. 

10. Take advantage of Influencer Marketing. 

Influencers have become so common today that internet marketing would not be the same without them. People often live in the delusion that influencers are some people who have hundreds of thousands of companions. That is not true at all. An influencer can sometimes be a local guy if you are advertising a local product.  

Or that person can be a professional in the IT sector, recognized in that industry, who can place an advertisement for your product even though he is not followed by more than 2 thousand people. 

10 Digital Marketing Predictions For 2022

Coming from the digital evolution that happened in 2020 due to the pandemic, 2022 is also bound to bring drastic changes in the digital marketing space. The death of the third-party cookie is inevitable, and as marketers, we need to adapt to the changing times and rethink our digital marketing strategies.

As 2022 approaches, we expect that these ten digital marketing trends will dominate in the upcoming year.

1. Adopt a Mobile-First Marketing Strategy

Mobile-first marketing is poised to be one of the top digital marketing trends in 2022.

Although many marketers interpret the term ‘mobile first’ to mean mobile apps and responsive website designs for your website, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

A solid mobile-first marketing strategy entails your company critically strategizing its website and digital communications around a positive mobile experience. Your sole aim should be utilizing the latest innovative mobile marketing strategies to provide a superior customer experience.

It is essential to note that millennials, now the most economically valuable generation in the US, have been digitally wired since childhood. They rely on their mobile devices more than ever, so if there was ever a time when you needed to put mobile experience at the core of your marketing strategy, it should be now.

2. Featured Snippets

Also known as no-click searches, featured Snippets are short excerpts of text that appear at the top of Google’s search results to answer a searcher’s query quickly.

Google’s algorithm determines whether your page would make for an excellent featured snippet to appear on Google’s search results to answer a user’s question quickly. Earning a featured snippet means you rank for position zero, the highest-ranking spot you can attain without advertising.

While that sounds great, you might observe a lower traffic flow to your site since Google is handing a quick resource to your potential customers. That, however, is a blessing in disguise, as earning a featured snippet gives your voice authority over the subject, and that will help you guide people along the buyer’s journey faster. Now, all you have to focus on is attracting the reader’s attention and having them click on your site for more information.

3. The Rise of AI in Digital Marketing

Currently, it is safe to say that Artificial Intelligence is the future of digital marketing.

Did you know that 55 percent of companies say they are currently implementing or experimenting with AI strategies with their marketing efforts? Through massive data computing, AI allows companies to develop crisp and precise insights, making it possible to keep up with the ever-growing customer demand and expectations.

Some of the applications of AI for digital marketing include:

• Customer service chatbots
• Personalized website browsing
• Dynamic pricing
• Predictive analysis
• Email Marketing

Essentially, AI marketing automation allows marketers to develop personalized content and increase customer interaction by understanding, processing, and gaining insights from vast customer data. This way, your human analysts can optimize the customer data and run your data-driven marketing strategy while exposing your business to fewer risks.

4. Voice Search

Did you know that 71% of consumers would preferably use a voice search to search for something online instead of physically searching for something?

Efficiency is the main reason why people utilize smart speakers such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Also, as the use of mobile digital assistants such as Siri and Bixby increases, even more people perform online searches online. The advancement of artificial intelligence via machine learning will significantly accelerate the adoption of voice search.

So, what does this mean for marketers? As voice search usage increases, marketers should pay attention to how websites perform in voice-driven search results. If your web content is not optimized for voice search, you’re missing out on tons of valuable traffic and leads. Fix that with our tailor-made SEO strategies that maximize the reach to voice searchers.

5. Google Verified Listings for Local SEO

Google My Business is a free, insightful, and simple-to-use tool for businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps.

If you have a local business, such as an HVAC, plumbing, or roofing company, verifying and optimizing your Google My Business listing is paramount.

So, why verify your GMB listing?

Well, you won’t be able to manage your business information in Search, Maps, and other Google properties unless you verify it. You’ll also appear more trustworthy and safeguard your business from imposters.

Some of the benefits of Google My Business include:

• Improved visibility and search rankings
• Enhanced customer support and engagement
• Boost in sales and traffic
• Reach a wider audience
• Establish your brand as a business authority

Google My Business is no longer optional. It is essential for the online presence of your business. It often is the first place where clients seek up-to-date information about your company.

6. Reviews

Did you know that for nearly 9 out of 10 consumers, an online review is just as influential as a personal recommendation?

With that in mind, why are reviews so substantial in digital marketing? Why do online reviews have the potential to make your business gain or lose customers?

Today, online reviews are the number one source of social proof. People are more willing to buy if others agree that it is a good decision. In addition to influencing consumer decisions, reviews can also strengthen the credibility of your business and help you expand your brand’s reach.

Yes! Reviews matter. But how many reviews do you need?

Most people read ten or fewer reviews before deciding, so you should aim to get at least ten new reviews on each of your review sites every three months.

7. Video Marketing is Here to Stay

Video marketing is a compelling way to interact with modern customers in the digital space.

While video marketing has been around for a while, merely producing video after video isn’t enough. You need to understand the emerging video trends to create more compelling videos.

Tendencies such as audio-less features, live video streaming, animated explainer videos, shoppable videos, 360-degree videos, augmented reality, user-generated content, and vlogging coupled with influencer marketing will soon dominate our screens.

In 2022, companies can use the power of video marketing to drive audience engagement and increase conversions. We can share insights into these top video trends to help you approach your video marketing strategy with maximum ROI going forward.

8. Content Marketing

Planning, generating, and distributing valuable and relevant content helps connect, build and retain a relationship with your target audiences.

Did you know that the American adult is exposed to somewhere between 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each day? So, suppose you need to create brand awareness for your company or services. In that case, you’ll need to utilize best practices such as semantic keyword research, split testing, and Google’s EAT principle – Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

A good content marketing strategy is vital for both B2B and B2C marketers looking to drive valuable search traffic and social engagement in 2022. Google will keep prioritizing well-written content and useful links when ranking how sites appear in the search results.

Maybe it’s time to rethink your content marketing strategy, incorporate new trends, and enjoy how they will work in the new year.

9. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) uses digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli delivered via technology to overlay helpful visual content and information in your real world.

Great use of AR can is visible in IKEA’s augmented reality app. Not sure how the furniture you like would look in your living room? Upload a photo of your space to the IKEA app, and you will be able to view virtual true-to-scale 3D model furnishings in your room.

Industries that can leverage the power of augmented reality include:

• Education
• Gaming
• Healthcare
• Industrial
• Retail
• Design and modeling
• Repair and maintenance

As people get more used to VR and AR, the companies that realize and utilize AR’s possibilities will indeed gain a massive edge over the competition.

So, AR isn’t that useful in your industry? We will work with you to develop web and android software that suits your unique needs. We have you covered with our programming geniuses who are well versed in HTML, CSS, Python, JavaScript, and Java.

10. Smart Bidding in Google Ads

Google smart bidding is a series of automated bid strategies in Google Ads that use machine learning to maximize conversions by tracking and analyzing data signals from each click and search.

By analyzing data such as a user’s device, the time of day, and the location from where they are searching, Google can automatically set bid amounts based on the odds that your ad will lead to a click or conversion.

Some of the essential automated-bid strategies in 2022 include:

• Enhanced CPC
• Target CPA
• Target ROAS
• Maximize Conversions
• Target search page location

Branding Trends 2022

An important and useful way of bettering your brand is to keep a tab on the latest branding trends. Unlike previous times, these trends change quite quickly now. Therefore, all firms need to stay on top of these trends and make the most out of them.

The brands that cannot follow these trends may get an obsolete feel to them and garner negative perception of users. Hence they should take up rebranding exercises from time to time. To help you in this, we have compiled the list of expected branding trends for 2022:

1. Logo Adaptability:

Many brands have realized the importance of having a logo that can be easily scaled up or down and used in a variety of ways. Gone are the days when logo’s used to have fancy imagery and detailed graphics. With digital media being the prominent marketing medium, brands want to ensure that the logo looks neat and clean even when scaled down to use in a social media post. Another trend in logos that we can expect is shape-shifting logos.

For this, companies will create one master logo and then have different versions of it depending on the application of the logo. So for a print ad, we might see the whole logo, while for Instagram stories, we may just see a logo version stripped down to a simple brand element. This also provides a variety to the brand’s visual identity. Many big firms have already started taking steps towards such shape-shifting logos.

2. Keeping it Simple:

Minimalism is a designing trend of the decade, and we can see its effects on branding, be it the visual identity or the messaging. Users want direct communication and want to put it in minimum effort to understand a brand. On the other hand, the brands need to adhere to these customer trends and make sure that they do not beat around the bush and communicate with clarity.

This is why we are seeing the visual identity of so many firms going very bland. They are shunning cursive font types or other visual elements. Instead, the logos are becoming increasingly simple wordmark logos with a strong and simple typeface. This makes the application of the logo easy and eases the effort customers have to make to engage with your brand.

3. Getting Nostalgic:

While one prevailing trend of branding in 2021 will be about being modem and sleek, one more trend that we will see is about brands going nostalgic. This will be especially in the case of brands having decades of market presence. This is a subtle way of reminding the users that they have been there for ages. One brand that has already started doing it is Burger King. It has modified its present logo, which had bright colors and a shine, and changed it to a flat not so bright colors logo.

Through this, they are instilling a notion of the brand being natural and evoking the nostalgic feeling of the brand. By the next year, we will see more brands, especially in the B2C sector, shifting to their old branding styles for a while as this will generate a strong emotional response in the users, and they will feel a tighter bond with the brand.

4. Importance of Visual Content:

A picture says a thousand words and when thousands of such pictures move at a speed of 24 frames per second to make a lovely video, imagine the amount of content you can communicate. The attention span of users is quickly depleting, and they do not prefer to read long texts. With the advent of high-speed-powered mobile devices, users have started consuming content on these devices. Given their size, it is increasingly difficult for users to read long articles on them.

But if the same content is presented in an image or infographic or even a video, the users will be happy to spend a minute or so and gather the information. Hence, brands need to realign their content generation and marketing strategies to churn out more visually appealing content with subtle marketing. This would work better on all digital mediums, including social media.

5. Synchronized Social Media Effort:

Social media marketing is not something new, but we can expect to see brands trying to exploit the most out of social media platforms. After the initial apprehensions, many social media channels have got prominence, be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, and even TikTok. Given the amount of time people spend on social media daily, it has become a hotspot to attract leads or customers.

Initially, brands would have just one strategy for all social media handles. But now, with social media saturation, they need to have a separate strategy for all mediums. But at the same time, they should also not be random. Hence the trend of a synchronized social media plan and execution will be on the rise in 2022.

Content, posting frequency, audience engagement, and even paid ads plan will vary for each social media. Having official hashtags, exclusive online communities, or message boards are some strategies that brands need to work on. Smarter brands will also start deploying nodes to attract customers directly to their sales funnel from social media.

6. Topical Marketing:

A trend that is on the rise, Topical Marketing will soon reach its maturity by next year. Already we are seeing smart brands pick up current affair topics and using them for branding. Such a form of branding has a lot of advantages. It helps the brand look lively and fresh. It also provides avenues for users to engage with the brand.

The marketing team does not have to go around looking for content as they can get it from their Twitter feed or latest news. However, they need to be smart about utilizing it as there have been cases where topical marketing has created a controversy for the brand. A good way to avoid this can be setting out guidelines and having a set tone and values for the brand. Based on this, the team can utilize the latest topics for enriching their branding.

7. Being Inclusive:

In today’s age, no brand can make the mistake of not being inclusive. Over the years, so many brands have received backlash for missing out on inclusivity, and then they had to reform themselves to brand themselves as an open and caring brand. Inclusivity can be in the form of color, religion, race, sexuality, or anything that can offend people. With social media, any bad campaign can go viral in no time. People’s tolerance levels have also decreased a lot, and they take offense very quickly.

Hence you need to deep root inclusivity to the foundation of your branding strategy. Use images that have a variety of people. For the sake of exclusivity or targeting a specific audience, do not make the mistake of ignoring inclusivity. Victoria’s Secret, a colossal brand, also had to give in to the pressure and rebrand themselves by going for models representing body positivity.

8. Represent a Cause:

The woke audience of social media is on the rise. Riding on the prevailing trend of being inclusive, we can witness in 2022 is about brands taking up social issues. This is not something unheard of. All major brands have their foundations or other tie-ups through which they execute noble deeds.

But now, the age is going to come where marketing teams will devise branding strategies that make the brand look like a champion in a particular cause and at the same time attract customers based on that. We will see big campaigns, some with subtle marketing and some with direct marketing, about how a particular brand cares for an issue and is helping make the world a better place.

Sustainable and eco-friendly products are an entire market sector that will see a huge push due to this trend. Even now, brands are working for causes like climate change, saving biodiversity, afforestation, or black lives matter.

9. Make Brands Human:

There is a difference between brand communication and brand talking. Users now prefer when the brand talks to them rather than throwing out marketing messages. Hence the conversational style of messaging is on the rise. Brands want to become as human as possible and establish a strong connection with the users.

For this, the marketing teams are coming up with dedicated campaigns, especially on social media. User engagement is a critical aspect of this. Gone are the days when you posted something on social media and did not care about the comments it received. Now brands have started responding to almost every comment on their post and engaging with users.

This helps in portraying the humane aspect of the brand and connecting with customers like peers. If you can throw in a dash of humor, it can quickly break the ice and make your brand more approachable. While some smart brands have already started doing this, we will see this trend spiraling by early 2022.

10. Leverage Technology:

In 2022, you can ignore technology at your own peril. This is true even in the case of branding. Technology has been shaping branding for many years, but in some time, we will see how brands are using technology to stand out from the competition. We are witnessing an explosion of mobile phone applications. Every other B2C brand will now have a mobile app to sell its products.

Voice assistants, chatbots, and data analytics are some other technologies that brands are starting to use. The developments of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are going to be disruptive to branding and marketing exercises.

Brands are now working to offer real-life experiences to people sitting at home. Be it home walkthroughs, apparel, furniture, or even wall paints; users are now given the option to shop without moving out. As a brand, you need to figure out which technologies work best for you and exploit them to the maximum.

New Product Trends 2022

It is very important to carry out a preventive market analysis, for example through Google Trends, a free tool provided by Google that shows the most popular searches made by users. By knowing the most sought-after products, you can choose what products to sell in your online store starting from the needs of potential customers. 

1. Home decor items

Home decor items confirmed their trend during 2020 with a market value of $641.4 Billion and, although these products have become trending during the pandemic period, this growth is not destined to slow down. The forecast is of constant growth of 4,8% between 2021 and 2026.

We know that during covid-19 working from boosted the will to create a comfortable atmosphere and so the demand for home decor but it’s not the only reason right now. Real estate is recovering fast and there are plenty of new householders every month looking for this kind of thing.

2. Hair styling and beauty trending products

If you are looking for a successful trending product to sell in the beauty industry, you should know that hair styling tools and accessories are more and more searched on Oberlo, Google, and AliExpress. 

3. Eco-sustainable & biodegradable trending products

This is a fairly new trend that is supposed to last for the next 30 years at least, based on the path many governments are taking. If you look at all countries in the European Union, for example, they are moving into the ecological transition that is a process that will finish around 2055.

Even if most of the planned activities concern the reduction of emissions and dependence on fossil energy sources, the topic of environmental sustainability and biodegradability has never assumed such an important character as now. Moreover, consumers are aware of the consequences of climate change, and many are looking on their own how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Tech products and accessories built with environmentally friendly materials, for this reason, are something to evaluate when it comes to launching a new business since it can be the right time to create a solid brand for the years to come.

4. Healthcare trending products 

As you can imagine, due to the pandemic, the interest of people in self-care and health products has been increasing during 2021 and this growth will continue also in 2022.

5. Hi-tech products & accessories

Technology is an evergreen category that includes lots of trending products to sell online responding to the needs of different target groups.

6. Pet products

The pet supplies market is one of the most stable: establishing yourself within this segment can guarantee you lasting success. Online stores selling products for four-legged friends (dog and cat kennels, fur care accessories, canned food, games, etc.) are enjoying some success.

7. Fashion and jewelry trending products

Fashion always has a great appeal to women and men who care about their appearance, and it’s also a sales segment suitable for e-commerces. For this reason, you can find hundreds of trending products to sell online in the fashion and jewelry market

8. Sports trending products

Another way to self-care that has spread during the pandemic is sport: at home, at the gym or outdoor. It’s not surprising, then, that sports items are trending products in 2022. What can you sell online in this category? If you use the dropshipping method, you can potentially cover any need, from clothing to accessories up to sports equipment (weights, exercise bikes, rackets, balls, etc.). Otherwise, you can choose to specialize in a specific sport and offer articles related to that discipline.

9. Green powder

it’s a supplement extracted from vegetables, seaweed, and probiotics that boosts the immune system and helps reduce chronic disease risk; it also contains tons of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. The consistent worldwide trend of this product proves that it is a stable trending product to sell online, especially in this historical period where people are very concerned about their health.

10. Towels

Based on IMARC group research, kitchen towels will reach a market value of US$ 20.9 Billion by 2026 with moderate growth during the next years. With new technology introduced by manufacturers, there’s plenty of choice in materials and performances for this kind of items used mostly to dry and clean home surfaces, especially in the kitchen. They are trending products to sell and you should consider to add them in your catalog if you didn’t yet.

Brand Marketing Trends 2022

In 2022, 51% of B2C marketers plan to increase their marketing budget. The question is where is that budget going? Will marketers reinvest in the same strategies or try new trends?

From influencer marketing to virtual events, there are so many efforts brands can focus on. Let’s see what our latest research says about what worked well for B2C marketers this year and where they plan to invest in 2022.

1. Short-form video will be a priority.

Short-form video took off in early 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down.

Back then, TikTok was the number one place to go for short-form content. Today, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are also competing for users’ attention.

This is good news for brands, as the short-form video trend content offered the second-highest ROI for B2C marketers in 2021, behind influencer marketing.

Despite coming in second for ROI, it’s the trend marketers plan to invest in the most in 2022. Roughly 33% of B2C marketers already invest in short-form content, while one-third of those who haven’t will do so for the first time in 2022.

Why now? Well, short-form video is such a key feature in social media today. And according to the data, social media takes the lead in marketing investments for businesses.

That’s likely because three key goals B2C brands will have when running marketing campaigns in 2022, will be increasing brand awareness (49%), advertising products (44%). and increasing revenue (43%). 

With social media, you can accomplish at least two out of three. Brand awareness was always the main benefit of using social media but things have evolved.

Today, with so many platforms offering in-app shopping experiences and advanced ad formats, brands can meet more of their marketing goals.

2. Influencer marketing will still be a key lead/revenue driver.

For most B2C marketers, the power of influencers is clear.

In 2022, 61% of B2C marketers surveyed in the study plan to leverage it. In fact, it’s the third-highest trend they plan to prioritize, behind short-form video content and inbound marketing.

This is because in 2021, it offered B2C brands the best returns. When asked to select their top ROI driver from a list of 27 tactics and strategies, 11% of B2C marketers chose influencer marketing. 

What might be different in the future is the type of influencer brands focus on. Historically, brands have focused on the biggest and most popular influencers to partner with.

However, some data suggest that micro-influencers with under 100K followers may be more effective.

While the verdict is still out on that, one thing is clear: Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere.

3. Audio content will take a front seat.

Data suggests that video is the leader when it comes to content marketing. However, audio is slowly creeping up into the mix.

According to the survey, only 19.1% of B2C marketers use podcasts or other audio content in their marketing. Of those who do use it, 37.4% find it to be one of their most effective trends.

Even though adoption was seemingly low in 2021, the data suggests that more B2C marketers will add audio content to their marketing efforts in the new year.

Roughly 43% of B2C marketers plan to increase their investment in podcasts in 2022 while 38.4 plan to keep it the same. Another interesting fun fact is that this particular piece of data is virtually the same for B2B marketers.

This suggests that across all industries, brands recognize the power of audio content.

4. Social responsibility will be more important.

Now more than ever, consumers want and expect brands to be more transparent and take a stand on social media.

In fact, a 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer survey revealed that many consumers see trust as a leading factor in their purchasing decisions.

In the past two years, particularly in the height of the COVID-19 crisis and calls for social justice, consumers have started holding brands more accountable. In 2022, brands will be addressing that demand.

Currently, only a third of B2C marketers surveyed find social responsibility to be an effective marketing trend. Despite that fact, 45% plan to increase their investment in 2022.

5. Brands will continue to apply inbound marketing strategies.

Inbound marketing is all about meeting consumers where they are. Instead of marketing efforts that push messaging out to consumers, this focuses on attracting them toward you.

Behind short-form video, inbound marketing is the top trend marketers will invest in next year.

In fact, over 80% of marketers plan to keep the same budget or add more for this strategy.

This is done by following the “Attract, Delight, Engage” model that leverages content marketing, SEO, marketing automation, social media, and more to nurture consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Content Trends 2022

1. Get to the Point—Your Audience’s Time is Valuable. 

When you Google a recipe, do you want to first read the author’s entire “culinary journey,” from his first measured spoonful to his love for sourdough? Of course not. In that moment, you just want to know how much baking soda to put in your cookies. 

The same concept goes for website and blog content. If you deliver an eye-catching digital ad or social media teaser, only to drag readers through a six-paragraph intro, you’re going to frustrate your reader and tank your site relevancy scores over time. 

That’s not to say readers and search engines don’t value long-form content. They do, but your content must prove its worth right away. According to Julian Shapiro of Demand Curve, readers don’t have short attention spans—they actually have short “consideration spans.” Time is valuable, and if they’re spending it on your content, it better be worth the attention they’ve invested.  

Plus, Google and other search engines value relevant content higher than drawn out narratives. Give your reader the hook in the first few sentences, then elaborate with data and details.  

2. Self-Service Buying Experiences Aren’t Going Away. In Fact, They’re Growing. 

Marcus Sheridan covered this phenomenon, which is the basis of his successful business endeavors, River Pools and Marcus Sheridan International. Years before the pandemic, Sheridan practiced the “They Ask, You Answer” model of content marketing and buyer experiences. 

Sheridan stated that 33% of buyers want a self-service solution to work with you. And Whatever your industry, empowering your audience with tools to contact you on their own timeline can increase sales because these tools speed up the conversion experience.  

River Pools feeds prospective pool owners need-to-know information, entertaining and educational blogs, videos, and downloads; and even interactive tools that help their audience decide what type of pool they want and when it’s time to contact a salesperson. Users can get all the information they need without talking to a salesperson, that is, unless they want to. And if they do, Sheridan’s team is at the ready. 

Your organization can capitalize on this model, too, even if your business is services-based. Allow your audience to: 

Self-Schedule

Make a health appointment. Ask a sales associate to contact you. Schedule time with Admissions. You can do this with easy, online tools, such as Acuity or Calendly (which UNM Department of Neurology uses), or through simple click-to-call or email links. 

Self-Select

What department, product, or area of study interests you? What do you need right now to get you to the next level of conversions? Quizzing tools such as Outgrow allow you to ask these questions seamlessly on your site. Like Sheridan, you can provide the user’s answer and a short description of why, then give a full report in exchange for the user’s email address. 

Self-Price

In many service and product industries, users have options for a low-to-high high investment. In more fixed industries such as healthcare or higher education, self-pricing might translate to, “What scholarships, grants, or financial aid services could reduce barriers to your care or education?” Banno is a tool that can help you do this. 

3. Capitalize on “Owned” Channels. 

Social media is excellent for distribution, but make sure your stories are housed on owned platforms (like your blog) for the longest-term impacts and “safekeeping” of your information. The content world held its collective breath on October 4, when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down for several hours.  

Companies that rely on non-owned platforms such as social media to store content, sell products, or place ads were handcuffed, whereas organizations that use social as a complement to a deeper content strategy were merely annoyed. 

To paraphrase the point of the presentation by Joe Pulizzi, the Godfather of content marketing, don’t build on borrowed land. Put videos on your own site and YouTube. Put images and stories on your own site and Instagram. Put blog content on your site and on LinkedIn. 

4. Watch What You Say and How You Say It. 

Use the language your audience speaks, not the language you want to use as a subject matter expert or brand. This is not a new idea. However, there are exceptions, and these were the subject of my co-presentation with Marcia Francis of The University of Kansas Health System. 

Marcia and I presented on how to communicate with Gen Z—individuals born in 1997 or after. These people are not kids or youngsters—they’re colleagues, entrepreneurs, business leaders, parents, doctors…you get the idea.  

As with every generation, Gen Z has a vernacular all their own. However, that doesn’t mean you should use every word they use. If your ads and videos are chock full of “sheesh,” “Pog champ,” and other Gen Z slang, you risk coming off as a try-hard at best and, at worst, alienating Gen Z and their older counterparts who might otherwise have been interested in your product or service.  

5. Align Your Brand with Your Audience’s Values, if You Can Do So Genuinely. 

Your story is not your products or services. Your story is your “why.” But remember: Your “why” only matters to your audience if it fills a need for them, a point reiterated by Ann Handley, Head of Content at MarketingProfs.  

Sashaying across the fine line between marketing content and personal engagement is the importance, challenge, and art of storytelling. Yes, talking about yourself is important—but you need to do so in a way that touches and resonates with your audience. 

For example, according to Marketing Dive, approximately 66% of Gen Zers are more likely to spend money with a brand that donates to a charity that they support. And today’s audiences are savvy—they can see through brand bologna, so avoid virtue-signaling (disingenuous value representation) at all costs. 

6. SEO is Your Golden Ticket for the Next Wave of Search Ranking. 

No fewer than 10 SEO-focused groups staffed booths at Content Marketing World 2021. We’ve always known strong search engine optimization is crucial—but with the strong trend toward self-service and hands-off sales, SEO is your golden ticket to getting found, relevantly capturing mindshare, and converting users the moment they are ready. 

SEO is deeper than backlinking and interlinking processes—it requires comprehensive content strategy to develop useful, governed site content that answers users’ questions and provides the detail they need to make informed decisions.

Top Digital Marketing Trends 2022

As we enter the fall season, marketing departments around the world are prepping for a successful 2022. With this goal in mind, here are 7 trends your team should implement into your digital marketing strategy:

1. The Rise of AI – Companies in industries like retail, banking, and healthcare are already starting to use artificial intelligence in their marketing efforts. While AI is most often used in marketing automation to automate basic tasks like reporting on website traffic and recommending keywords that can optimize a company’s organic search results, marketers are also exploring AI applications that can predict what customers are likely to buy in the future based on their past purchases and browsing history.

In 2022, look into ways to use AI in combination with SEO and other digital marketing strategies. You’ll be surprised at what AI can accomplish!

2. AI-Powered Influencer Marketing – Valued at $9.7 billion in 2020, the influencer market is estimated to reach $15 billion by 2022, with the majority of marketers reporting that they budget more than 20 percent of their spend on influencer content.

The next phase of influencer marketing will involve the widespread adoption of AI in everything from influencer identification (with AI watching and assessing millions of influencer videos faster and more efficiently than humans can) to performance influencer marketing. In this predictive AI-powered model, you only pay for the conversions and sales influencers produce, which looks good for your ROI!

3. Virtual Assistants – Along with AI comes the increasingly popular virtual assistant. It’s been estimated that the market value of voice search shopping will hit $40 billion by 2022, while consumer spending via voice assistants will reach 18 percent.

Odds are, your business already uses a virtual assistant to automate customer service needs through applications like efficiently handling customer inquiries on social media channels, email marketing, and other online platforms. There are a multitude of benefits associated with virtual assistants or “chatbots;” they include:

• Chatbots can answer consumer questions without company interventions.
• The AI powering the chatbot gives it a distinct personality, which livens up the customer experience.
• Chatbots increase customer interactions by providing a personalized and enjoyable experience.

4. Hybrid Events – in the wake of COVID-19, virtual events became the mainstay for continuing to engage with customers and leads. Now that people are starting to feel comfortable with gathering physically again, marketers face a choice. Should we return to events that take place only within a physical location? Or, should we stay virtual to appease those consumers who enjoyed attending live events from the comfort of their homes?

The answer, it seems, is to implement a hybrid approach. When planning events for 2022, make sure your live events have a strong digital component and utilize technologies like AR and VR to create an immersive experience for those who wish to attend digitally. 

5. Content Marketing – Do you want to stand out in your industry? Then you need to align your PR, leadership, and SEO. By aligning these three key areas, your company will enjoy boosted visibility, credibility, and authority. How does this kind of strategy work?

Let’s start with the B2B content on your site. Once you get a solid base of authority on different topics, then add the PR element to gain credibility, where others are quoting or mentioning your high quality content. Finally, make sure that people are linking to your generated content under certain topics that you can own.

6. Mobile–First Marketing – People today spend a significant amount of time online. Unsurprisingly, according to Pew Research, “constant” internet usage among adults increased by five percent in the last few years. What does this mean? Well, in the world of marketing, the way people buy and shop has changed along with the uptick in internet usage – and this includes how people are accessing the internet.

As more people are using smartphones and tablets instead of desktops to browse products or services on the web, businesses need to create mobile-friendly content that will rank higher in search engines. One simple strategy involves optimizing your website’s design so that it automatically adjusts for smaller screens. AMP (accelerated mobile pages) also make content load faster on smartphones and tablets.

7. Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies – consumers are demanding greater privacy protections and control over their data. At the same time, Google recently announced its plan to phase out support for third-party cookies. What should today’s marketers do? To start, increase your efforts to gather and fully exploit first-party data.

You can also use tools like Google’s Privacy Sandbox or FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) to achieve personalization and consumer targeting without encroaching upon user privacy. Regardless, CRM tools, surveys, and interactive content will become increasingly necessary for marketing success.

B2B Marketing Trends 2022

Are your B2B business’s sales and marketing strategies still stuck in 1993? Are your appointment setting and digital marketing efforts outdated and not following the B2B marketing trends of today? Before you say “cold calling is extinct,” we’re going to stop you in your tracks because that’s simply not true.

Instead, cold calling has evolved and become much more effective with the integration of digital marketing efforts. Here are some ways that businesses are approaching sales efforts and B2B marketing trends in 2022:

Increased Brand Personalization

As the growth of B2B businesses continues to rise, having a unique brand voice is more crucial now than ever before. Brand personalization enables your business to stand out in the sea of competitors and is a major B2B marketing trend for the year.

When personalizing your brand, it must reflect the voice of your target audience. By reflecting the voice of your target audience, you have a greater opportunity to catch their attention and relate with them on a deeper level. A brand voice humanizes the interaction between you and your target audience. Rather than just having a name and a logo, a brand voice helps B2B businesses relate with potential customers on a more personal level. 

Learning your target market’s brand persona is essential to closing business opportunities. When developing a brand voice, make sure you understand how they talk and what they value in a B2B partner. For example, pitching for an HVAC company may differ from pitching for an MSP company because the personas are incredibly different.

When pitching for an HVAC company, a sales development representative (SDR) may need to be more casual, calm, and collected. On the other hand, when working on MSP lead generation, IT managers may want in-depth, network-focused, and jargon-heavy discussions with SDRs, so they know that your business is knowledgeable about what they are promoting.

Most importantly, your brand voice should be implemented across each sales and marketing channel. This includes your B2B appointment setting efforts like cold calling along with your website, blog posts, social media profiles, and marketing collateral. Brand voice consistency is crucial to gaining and maintaining the trust of potential and current customers, and without it, you risk losing company credibility. 

Enhanced Video Marketing Measures

As individual attention spans continue to decrease due to the amount of new content readily available, video marketing efforts are ideal for capturing users’ attention. According to a Cisco report, video will account for 82% of all online traffic by 2022.

In addition, 84% of users say that they are more likely to invest in a product or service after watching a video. As visual content marketing trends continue to advance, your business must stay in tune with best practices to drive more sales. This B2B marketing trend is here to stay.

Customer-Focused Content Marketing

A common mistake that B2B businesses make with content marketing is not putting the customers at the forefront when creating content. In 2022, following customer-focused digital content marketing trends will be crucial because it addresses their wants and needs when finding a solution that works best for them. 

Greater Customer Experiences

While the content you create is important for your B2B lead generation efforts, so is the experience users have with your company and the content you provide for them. Another B2B marketing trend to expect is that users will put a greater emphasis on their experiences with your business.

Analyzing the data of each of your digital platforms allows you to understand where users make it to your site and where they decide to end their sessions.

Advanced CRM Platforms

In 2022, having an advanced customer relationship management (CRM) platform is crucial to stay aligned with competitors and keep up with B2B marketing trends. Remember how we mentioned that email marketing automation thing? Email automation can be achieved through the power of advanced CRM platforms. Interesting how all these trending sales and marketing strategies intertwine, right? 

While CRM platforms are engineered to boost customer retention, they’re also great for generating new leads for your marketing and sales efforts. CRM platforms like Salesforce offer various cloud solutions to help you and your B2B lead generation team optimize how you communicate with prospects and meet project deadlines.

Global Marketing Trends 2022

According to Deloitte’s survey, business leaders need to refine their approach to deliver a more holistic experience to their customers, employees and society.

Speaking about the evolution of customer engagement strategies, Ajit Kumar, Leader, Customer and Marketing – Consulting, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP, said, “The marketing trends endorse the view that customer centricity needs to be at the core of all our strategy and innovation. Businesses will thrive and stay relevant by understanding customer expectations and creating exceptional customer experiences.

Moving away from cookies to designing human-first data experiences in a hybrid world supercharged with AI is the way forward. The conscious and conscientious Indian consumer demands the best of service and quality, and purpose builds credibility.”

The survey lists down the following trends for businesses of the future:

1. Purpose — a beacon for growth: Many businesses are redefining their value proposition and how they make an impact beyond profit through “purpose,” as consumers are prioritizing price and quality in purchasing. For high-growth brands purpose not only inspires product and service delivery, but also guides employee decision-making and corporate social responsibility investment strategy. The survey indicates that with 79% of people switching to remote work, new talent pools emerge for companies that were once confined by geographic limitations.
2. Authentically inclusive marketing: Consumers want to support brands that represent them and their values; high-growth brands are more frequently establishing key performance metrics for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) objectives than their lower-growth competitors. Simultaneously, the highest-growing brands are reducing the cultural and demographic distance between the makeup of their teams and the markets they aspire to reach.
3. Building the intelligent creative engine: Due to pandemic, most of the workforce shifted to remote working. With the growing remote workforce, collaboration should be a priority in helping ensure these new voices and skills are fully embedded within the organization and marketers can create pods of various skill sets, such as data scientists, programmers, graphic designers, and creatives, to work on strategic objectives.
4. Meeting the customer in a cookieless world: Growth leaders are rethinking customer marketing and data strategy in a rapidly changing digital world. Marketers should look to strengthening the relationships with partners, such as tech giants and media publishers, to gain access to their walled gardens and corresponding data insights.
5. Designing a human-first data experience: Consumers are increasingly wary of brands that seem to follow their every move and there is a fine line between helpfulness and intrusiveness when it comes to consumer data. The abundance of customer data available can lead to a paradox within organizations, with marketers seeking to use that data to create better customer experiences and chief information security officers (CISO) working to adhere to privacy regulations. The CMO should work with the CISO to cultivate customer trust through better data practices, designing experiences that create value, provide transparency, and empower customers to control their own data journey.
6. Elevating the hybrid experience: Now that brands are more adept at digital delivery, the next challenge is providing the best integrated physical and digital, or hybrid, experiences. Businesses can elevate their hybrid experiences by expanding choices, integrating feedback, and investing in the technological infrastructure that can bring these design principles to life.
7. Supercharging customer service with AI: A dynamic experience for customers means delivering the assistance and information they need, when, where and how they want it. By designing and deploying an AI strategy that helps brands meet customers in their moment of need, marketers and customer service leaders can create an end-to-end customer experience that seamlessly blends AI and human service — ultimately, to better serve their customers and their bottom line.

What is The Future of Online Marketing?

For many entrepreneurs and small businesses, digital marketing has become an opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the market. But to venture into the new age of digital marketing, small businesses and entrepreneurs have to be broadminded.

Gen Z and Expanding Reach

More Gen Z users will reach the age of maturity, which means businesses and entrepreneurs will have to redirect their digital marketing efforts. Companies don’t have to make drastic changes, but the tactics catered to Gen X or boomers will ultimately become redundant. 

Gen Z wants a memorable experience, which means digital marketing efforts will have to be more precise and effective. Professional digital marketers believe that Gen Z and millennials will become “the” target audience for most businesses and require a highly responsive and modified approach.

Globalized Shared Mission

The collective efforts in digital marketing have already become quintessential. But more businesses will adopt a shared and global perspective before using new digital marketing tools or executing ad campaigns.  In short, a global perspective will allow businesses of all sizes to expand their reach and simplify various processes.

Moreover, marketing messages across various digital channels would allow entrepreneurs and small businesses to build trust with the targeted audience. It will also help enterprises to thwart market skepticism and reestablish their value proposition in the market.

SEO, Data Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence

SEO, data analytics, and AI have become part of the digital marketing landscape. As AI evolves, businesses will automate more digital processes and make informed business decisions based on data analytics insights.

One report highlights that the execution of more than 85% of digital ads will be done through automation in the foreseeable future. But “how” you collect and render insights from a data analytics tool will also change. More businesses would focus on smart technologies to categorize audiences and configure ad space through extensive data analysis with automated programmatic advertising in play. 

Heightened Personalization

When it comes to personalized targeting, tracking KPIs and other digital marketing tools will continue to play an integral role. Personalized targeting has become a secret ingredient in rolling out effective ad campaigns and communicating with the target audience. Each element of an ad is essential and allows businesses to deliver value via storytelling.

In the new age of digital marketing, entrepreneurs and small businesses will need to be more critical and reflect on previous efforts. For instance, the more precise language of an ad shows the intent and confidence of the brand. And users will opt for brands that are not reluctant about their core message.

The Use of Augmented Reality

When it comes to the tech tools that make it easier for small businesses to communicate with the audience, AR tools are at the top. Many startups already use augmented reality technologies to achieve significant growth in the coming years. Most digital marketing experts believe that augmented reality will play a crucial role in the future and help eCommerce businesses set a new path.

Voice Optimization

More dependence on automated digital assistant solutions will allow more categorical and objective digital marketing efforts. Whether it’s Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri, voice search continues to gain more popularity. More users want the freedom to speak to a dedicated digital assistant directly rather than type manually.

What’s interesting is that optimization of keywords for voice-based search is entirely different. And that’s because when people want to adapt and start using their digital voice assistance, they use keywords and phrases that are more realistic and practical. As the voice recognition capabilities of digital assistants improve, digital marketers will focus on a more different SEO approach to optimize business sites based on voice search.

You may not be aware of it, but more than 70% of people with one or more activated digital assistants prefer to use voice commands rather than type the task. The fundamental approach of SEO is identical to voice recognition.

But the spotlight will be on a new style of keywords and phrases that people use in their day-to-day routine. The rise in voice recognition technologies means digital marketers will be able to target more accurate voice search results for ad campaigns and boost SEO efforts.

Google concurs that voice recognition of digital assistants is close to 95% accurate. But more precise voice recognition search results mean digital marketers will use more natural long-tail keywords than generic text-oriented ones.

Omnichannel and Integrated Approach

Small businesses and entrepreneurs no longer need to restrict their online presence to a single Facebook page. With more market expectations and consumer needs, businesses to be active on various digital channels and platforms.

Fortunately, there are already tools like Hootsuite that allow businesses to maintain a unified omnipresence. In the coming years, businesses will be able to integrate their core message and value proposition for the specific target audience on various channels. A unified omnichannel digital marketing strategy will allow more businesses to understand their customers’ changing behavior, location, and preferences.

Expect More Awareness

You need a massive target audience, whether you use digital marketing for lead generation, conversion, or brand awareness. The future of digital marketing is bright because now there is more market and consumer awareness.

Businesses can also use a wide range of smart tools to collect an ocean of data and make in-depth analyses about their target audience. It’s a completely new way to approach the audience. In fact, extensive market and consumer research allow businesses to leverage untapped opportunities.

Businesses don’t need to understand every facet of new technology. Of course, the mechanics of a smart tool matter, but businesses that plan to broaden their digital marketing approach will see the most positive results. It is the main reason innovation will become vital for B2C and B2B players.

5 Areas to Factor Into Your 2022 Content Marketing Planning

Five elements have an outsized impact on content marketing strategy and outcomes. So before finalizing your 2022 content strategy, understand their evolving role and learn how to avoid common mistakes.

1. Martech Technology

Technology helps marketers create, manage, deliver and scale content more efficiently and effectively. But the tech landscape is more confusing than ever, and the pressure is mounting to get the right tech to execute content that’s consistent with the rest of the digital experience.

Optimize existing technology features first. Much of content marketing is automated, from creation to distribution, amplification and measurement. As a result, most content marketing strategies will include requests for new technology platforms or solutions. To serve these needs (and grab those budgets!), new martech solutions emerge every day.

Existing vendors are also pushing hard to evolve their offerings and enhance features. These new offerings can overwhelm marketers, at times causing them to miss out on what their already-deployed platforms can do for them.

Brody Dorland, co-founder of content marketing platform provider DivvyHQ, said he sees this with his customers. “Despite various product marketing efforts, users tend to ignore product update emails/webinars, either because the platform is serving their original needs smoothly or they are just stretched for time.”

He suggested marketers spend more time with their vendor’s customer success teams to keep up to date on new features or improvements. “Many of those new features may be game changers sitting right under your fingertips.”

Camille Trent, head of content at Dooly, a connected workspace for revenue teams, recommended putting on the brakes before adding another piece of technology to already over-stuffed tech stacks. “One of the biggest mistakes managers make is over-investing in tech without buy-in from the people who will be using it.”

Content is almost all digital. Get the tech to support it. Independent brand consultant and content strategist Sonali Karande Brahma said many traditional brick-and-mortar organizations, SMBs or organizations who relied heavily on ‘face-to-face’ meetings for sales still need to digitize their customer-facing pre- and post-sale processes. “Giving technology a miss to execute and scale content is obviously a huge mistake, but not planning content based on new-age technology, or not connecting that technology to consumer journeys is even worse.”

2. Data Informed Content

Data is central to every marketing process and content marketing is no different. Where should content marketers be focusing their attention and what data-related investments should they be considering in 2022?

Data analysis, not gathering, should be the top priority. The volume of data and the tech that is gathering and crunching it is always evolving, but for 2022, the focus should be on getting better at analyzing it, said Dorland. “Each year, marketers should make a goal of connecting more systems and connecting more dots to tell a better and more complete story. We work with content marketers every day and data maturity levels vary widely.”

Planning for 2022 should be heavily rooted in an understanding of what the data tells us, which means content marketers should be more than conversant with analyzing their data. “Leaving the analysis up to data geeks on the analytics team, ignoring it altogether, or over-investing in data collection is a mistake,” he cautioned.

Data + Human Intelligence is a valuable combination. Validating or testing what the data suggests by running it past human intelligence is a crucial element that is often missed, said Brahma. For example, data may indicate millennials love a certain product because of high purchasing numbers, but human intelligence will tell us they are buying it for an older family member. “Content will need to be planned keeping both the buyer and the user in mind.”

She added that dark data — the data a company collects but doesn’t use for any specific purpose — could be a source of breakthrough insights that could lead to competitive advantage or missed opportunities in content strategy.  

No data is no excuse. While everyone wants a sure thing based on data analysis, many early-stage companies don’t have much historical data. Trent said using the lack of data as an excuse to avoid executing on high-quality content is a mistake. There is always enough to start with. Andrew Dennis, senior content marketing manager at Shopify Retail agreed. He cautioned marketers not to make the mistake of assuming they’re too small to access and leverage original data to inform strategy.

“Even small businesses/brands have solid pools of customers and customer data to pull from. You don’t need to publish a giant, original study on your entire industry — start small by gathering data from existing customers and I guarantee you will find insights that would benefit and be interesting to your target audience,” he said. 

Content builds trust and credibility in the privacy-first age. Even as the marketing world continues to struggle with new data privacy regulations, consumer technology companies from Apple (with its new “opt in” model for app tracking), to Google [which pushed off eliminating third-party cookies from Chrome until 2023] are leveraging privacy as a consumer proposition. In the privacy-first world, consumer trust and brand credibility are critical, and contextual content will play a key role in establishing both.

2022 planning should focus on the “content-for-data” proposition. Content can build trust and transparency among audiences and inspire them to share their data by providing clear and differentiated value, said Alicia Esposito, director of content and new media for retail focused publisher network Retail TouchPoints.

3. Search, SERPs and New Formats

Search keywords have been a great way to gauge the pulse of customers: what they are looking for, what they need clarity on, etc. Creating relevant content based on insights from keywords and search strings will remain central to content marketers. But the role and scope of search is expanding beyond that.

Google is redefining the relationship between search, discovery and shopping, which will have a significant impact on marketers. Marketers should address the triangular relationship of search, shopping and content as we move into 2022.

Create content based on the role search plays in your industry. Search is highly dependent on the industry you’re in. Every marketer needs to understand the role it currently plays, and plan for how to optimize and improve upon it in 2022, said Dorland.

In most cases he recommends allocating more budget to strategic content creation around core keywords that are not sitting in ideal SERPs today. “I don’t think enough content marketers are regularly analyzing keyword data (specifically SERPs for core keywords) and using it to inform content/editorial planning efforts. So if not today, make it a priority in 2022.”

Search format will be as key as search content. Consumers are increasingly turning to voice and visual search to discover content via services such as Google Lens and others on their mobile devices. Search engines are increasingly serving up multi-format content in response to keywords — not just text, but also videos, podcasts, images and shopping recommendations. The guiding principle for content marketers should be easy discovery and efficient interactions, regardless of format. Part of this is ensuring all content is search-optimized for the relevant formats.

Data and search are inseparable. Marketing teams are having more strategic conversations around search, its role in the content discovery process, and how that impacts not just keywords used, but the entire content experience, said Esposito. “The most effective marketing teams have the SEO team at the content strategy table, and they will use keyword research and audience insights to drive every decision — from keyword selection, to topical focus and content tactics and channels.”

Dennis said his experience at Shopify suggests data and search will only become more closely intertwined in 2022. “Data is increasingly becoming a key differentiator for content. There are likely already thousands of posts on the topic you want to cover — so if you want your page to rank in search, you’ll need to find a unique angle, and what better way to do that than with original research that other pages can’t replicate?”

4. Social Media’s Expanding Role

Social media has been indispensable to amplify brand content and build engaged communities. But social media is changing, and content marketers need to keep a step ahead of what it will take to win with social content in 2022.

Organic social media promotion is not a viable plan. Marketers need to factor in that, at least in the context of content marketing, there is little hope in extracting any value from organic promotion on social media platforms, according to Dorland. “It’s 100% a paid advertising channel now. So treat it as such and leverage the superior targeting and conversion tracking it affords, to boost reach on appropriate campaigns.”

He suggested marketers looking to take it a step further can leverage paid social media as an effective A/B testing platform. “Spin up a small-budget test campaign to see which headlines/graphics/etc. in your content arsenal get the most clicks prior to full launch of a campaign.”

Factor in audience ebbs and flows. Heightened awareness of data privacy and cybercrimes are leading more young people to leave social media, even as the presence of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers increases, said Brahma. Think about your social media content in that context, build in the agility to be responsive to fast-changing audience demographics and preferences, and find ways to co-create audience-centric content.

Create content for shopping, not just sharing. Social media is growing fast as a post-sales customer service platform, a community space for brand loyalists, as well as a virtual showroom. As a result, no one team can be exclusively responsible for social media. Every team across the organization should be involved in optimizing outcomes and amplifying content depending on the context in which social media is being deployed.

As Brahma said, “Not getting the entire marketing and sales team trained in social media and content — especially on how to use it in the pre- and post-sales stages of the buying journey” is an avoidable mistake in 2022. As you explore what expanded roles social media can play in your CX strategy, create content in formats that are relevant for the expanding scope of social media.

Experimentation is key to balancing ‘shiny new syndrome’ with ‘missing the boat.’ “A few months ago, everyone thought Clubhouse was the next big thing. Now? Not so much. I’d say TikTok is the hottest, especially for DTC. For B2B, I’d continue investing in LinkedIn and get active on Twitter. As always, avoid shiny object syndrome,” said Trent. Marketers will continue to struggle with balancing what’s hot and what’s not as the social media firmament continues to expand. Build experimentation on a range of new platforms into your budget moving forward.

Esposito shared how her team struggles with determining how much time and how many resources to place on new and emerging platforms. “The impact of visual storytelling platforms like TikTok is undeniable, but your industry and target audience may not be there yet. As marketers, think about their 2022 content marketing strategy, they should think through which networks will be ‘core’ to their plans and integrate net-new content creation and promotion through these channels.

Then, narrow down a list of new apps and channels to test, and allocate a certain amount of ‘experiment time’ towards these networks to see whether they hold any weight. After all, you don’t know unless you try!”

Not experimenting enough can lead you to miss the boat on some exciting new platforms. Dennis said marketers need to be aware of how the social media landscape is constantly changing. “If TikTok is not part of your content strategy, then you’re already (very) late to the party!” Being too safe, he argued, is a mistake to avoid when it comes to social media.

“Obviously, things can go very wrong very quickly for brands on social media without appropriate guidelines and precautions, but the brands that I see having the most success on social media are those that take a bold, human approach. Don’t be afraid to infuse some humor, or self-deprecation into your brand’s social presence to engage followers on a more human level.”

5. Interactive Content (Audio, Video, Text, AR/VR, Gamification) Ascends, With Some Caveats

Recent reports suggest pandemic-induced shifts in consumer behavior will accelerate the acceptance of immersive tech such as AR and VR in the near-term. The term ‘interactive’ covers a wide spectrum of formats and content types: think surveys and quizzes, instant price quotes, AR and VR applications to help customers visualize outcomes of a purchase, gamification to drive engagement and product usage, etc.

As with all good content, the primary intent should be to help the customer make a more informed choice or solve a specific problem rather than a sales-led call to action. The possibilities are endless.

Experiment! Dorland said this should be the year of trying and piloting new interactive formats to drive audience engagement. But keep the following caution Trent offered in mind: “Interactive plays can get expensive, fast. Always ship an MVP model first before investing too much in one experiment.”

Read Also: Using Customer Analytics To Impact Your Business Profit

While gauging how to measure success of interactive formats is hard, the trend is to focus on engagement metrics such as time spent, number of times shared and similar, rather than vanity metrics such as click-throughs. Brahma recommended pushing the boundaries with human-machine interactions as interactive content driven marketing evolves and matures. “Gamification, AR and VR will all play a key role in experiential marketing,” she said.

Engaging, immersive and experiential content are key to creating the content-led customer experiences of the future. But avoid the interactive rabbit hole. While interactive content helps engage audiences in more personal ways, resonates on a deeper level and helps brands be more present in everyday lives, thinking through the intention (and potential impact) of interactive content is vital.

“As we go into 2022 planning mode, I encourage everyone to think through, first and foremost, what they want to say, what they want to change, what they hope to inspire and most of all, what they want their audience to do. Then, you’ll be able to determine what tech, platforms or experiences will best support this mission, helping you uncover new ideas and opportunities for content innovation,” said Esposito.

Like social media, AR seems to have the most potential for B2B and B2C brands alike. The use of AR and VR content has already found traction in verticals such as clothing, retail, travel and home improvement.

With customers now wanting to experience and purchase products without having to go into a physical store or interacting in person with a salesperson, the trend will soon become table stakes. The same holds true for B2B verticals as well, where it would be even easier to drive adoption of AR experiences of products and solutions for business buyers for everything from office supplies to software.