Digital Marketing Predictions For 2022

Digital marketers still face a landscape which has been disrupted by the pandemic. And that’s not all. Between new business models, new technological applications as well as regulatory changes, what worked for your digital marketing strategy in the past may not work today. With 2022 on the horizon, digital marketers still need to find ways to engage consumers digitally post-pandemic while harnessing the possibility of technological innovations.

Read on for our list of must-know digital marketing trends!

Voice-Powered Everything

Smart speakers and ‘assistants’ have been around for a while however they really started to take off in 2017 and 2018 as people lost the self-consciousness of talking to their phones and a range of new consumer devices – such as  Amazon Alexa and Google Home – have appeared on the market.

There’s no real reason for the trend in mobile to stop developing, and this hands-free technology will become an ever more standard way in which users elect to interact with their devices. It’s projected that over half of all search queries done using voice search.

With this increase in voice search-powered smart devices will come more opportunities to market to the individuals who own them. Amazon has already spotted this opportunity when it started offering cheaper Kindle devices in exchange for people agreeing to get marketing communications. Targeted Alexa ads are already in the works and additional devices will be sure to follow.

Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is the process of utilising AI in order to automate ad buying. Through removing humans from ad buying, companies get a more reliable and cost-effective solution to their needs.

The strength of programmatic advertising is in its optimisation scale capacity, which surpasses that of a human. Most search-driven manual advertising campaigns (even those performed with professional tools) take into account three or four targets: the keyword, time of day, and location.

Such tools like programmatic demand-side platforms can use hundreds of targeting signals to individualize the advertisement and even target according to lifestyle or behaviour habits when integrated with customer data platforms.

Hybrid Events

In the aftermath of COVID-19, virtual events became the foundation for continuing to engage with customers as well as leads. Now that individuals are starting to feel comfortable with gathering physically again, digital marketers face a choice. Should they return to events that take place only within a physical location? Or should they stay virtual in order to appease those consumers who enjoyed attending live events from the comfort of their homes?

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

The Growth of Micro-influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has already grown massively in recent years with top influencers on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube drawing in millions of followers and allowing them to make a six-figure income from their arrangements with brands.

However influencer marketing is still young and while it provides great ROI compared to more traditional advertising channels, there are some issues which need to be ironed out.

• At the moment, fake followers are a problem that’s still being resolved. There have been some remarkable incidents when brand/influencer relationships have failed in a bad way.
• Big name influencers are also beginning to lose their power as they take on more and more sponsored posts, lowering the authenticity and impact of their recommendations.
• As consumers go on to value individual recommendations as opposed to being marketed at, it’s going to make a lot of sense to invest more in “micro-influencers” – those social media users who have a much smaller but loyal following and is able to deliver truly authentic marketing messages to a trusting audience.

Influencers’ power will be determined not by the sheer number of followers they boast but by their personal relationships with each individual follower.

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