Getting a head start on your digital marketing tactics for 2022 is all about understanding the most crucial impending trends that can keep you ahead of the schedule. The digital world is highly dynamic and changing as is your target audience. When it comes to trends, successful digital marketing refers to staying in the know.
The current situation shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitization of activities and is calling for new generation trends. During the pandemic outbreak, physical stores were forced to bring their operations to halt and most of the businesses adopted digital marketing as an alternative way to continue with their sales. Hence, the pandemic has transformed the way establishments operate and paved a more vibrant path for the new era of marketing known as digital marketing.
Your wait is over because we are going to unfold the top 10 digital marketing trends to follow in 2022 that must be considered by businesses to get on with achieving more conversions.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is the #1 Digital Marketing Trend that will be going to rule in 2022. AI has been prevailing globally for the past years and little do we realize it has taken over every aspect of our lives in the present and will continue to do so in the future also.
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AI has become the heart of businesses today, utilizing it for processes as well as marketing. AI benefits businesses by improving communication, analyzing data, predicting consumer behavior, and making quick decisions.
AI is transforming the digital marketing landscape at a faster rate. It critically impacts the way brands connect with customers and manage marketing tactics. AI is efficiently employed by most of the business giants like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Spotify, etc. Most of the content that we witness on social media platforms is finely tuned by AI to engage the audience for longer!
Chatbots for Customer Interaction
You may be familiar with chatbots, the live chat interfaces that interact with persons like in real conversations. Chatbots can be successfully used to drive sales in business by resolving customer queries. These AI tools are developed to ease the human load and are now the inevitable part of any business. Studies show that 60% of internet users are interacting and comfortable with chatbots for solving queries across various websites and apps. Aapki Sarkar is a chatbot launched by the Government of Maharashtra, allowing people to access public services information in Marathi or Hindi. Ixibaba is another chatbot used by Ixigo to answer travel queries more quickly than a human could reducing the delays in conversations.
Voice Search Optimization
As we have already seen, AI is the technology that will be taking over 2022 and the future years, it has revolutionized the digital world by introducing more and more innovations like the virtual assistants used in voice search. It is reported that almost 50% of the overall searches are done using voice search by people worldwide, which has brought in more significance to conversational AI. Just like chatbots, these voice assistants answer your queries where you can personalize them to get answers faster in real-time. The most popular voice assistants include Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Apple’s Siri.
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We are not digging in deep on Voice Search here as we have already written a detailed blog on Voice Search and the changing digital marketing landscape. So if you want to know more on the topic, we insist to refer our previous blog first.
Augmented and Virtual Reality
Augmented and Virtual Reality has been buzzword nowadays. In virtual reality, a person interacts with an artificial environment employing electronic devices. Augmented Reality can be referred to as experiencing another version of the real world using digital components like sound and sensors. Brands are implementing AR and VR to customize their marketing strategies to boost sales. For instance, IKEA has its own app that allows users to try furniture in their rooms before buying it, just by clicking the picture of their rooms on their smartphones. Hence they can analyze how it looks from different angles. Gucci, the famous luxury brand recently added an AR feature to its app that enables its users to try on Sneakers, take photos, and share them on any digital media platform.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is an ongoing trend and is familiar to everyone who uses various social media platforms. It is a kind of word-of-mouth marketing where a person called an influencer brings the brand message to a larger market. Influencers usually include celebrities, YouTubers, or Instagram personalities with millions of followers who can spread the brand word through their social channels.
One of the best examples includes Adidas which focuses mainly on the young generation to sell their products as 70% of the Instagram users are under 35 years of age. Collaborating with celebrities like Selena Gomez and Iga Wysocka to run campaigns has created a big impact on their sales and the number of followers to their Instagram accounts.
Influencer marketing is more reliable and interactive than the usual corporate ads. 75% of the businesses now highly dedicate a pretty budget to influencer marketing as 90% of the surveys responded that influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing of this age.
Shoppable Content
Shoppable content simply means any content like a picture, video, or article that includes a direct link to the shopping portal so that people could instantly buy their desired product.
Instagram introduced multiple features allowing brands to showcase their products and their details as interactive content so that users can buy them directly from a story or a post.
Modern customers expect a fast and smooth user experience for shopping online. Shoppable content makes the association of social media and eCommerce even more powerful. 90% of Instagram users follow the shopping brands that provide ample opportunities for marketers. The brands can also make use of interactive shopping ads where users can click and shop with ease at once.
Also Read : The Evolving Landscape of Voice Search in Digital Marketing
Social Media Stories
It was Snapchat that introduced the idea of stories in 2013 with a 24 hours life-span. Later in 2016, Instagram adopted Snapchat’s success stories and came up with ‘my stories’. Facebook adopted the idea in 2017.
Social media stories are more than a digital marketing trend. It is a cost-effective way to reach and engage with the audience, thereby increasing website traffic and brand awareness. While posting stories, brands can add location tags, geofilters, mention other brands and their audience, include polls within the stories, create stories with live videos, powerful call to action can be used to invite customers to explore more.
Video Marketing
You are already aware of the significance played by video marketing as it has been reigning in the arena for years and is likely to be at the top for more years to come.
Based on the research conducted by Impactplus, 52% of consumers are more confident to make online shopping decisions after watching the product videos and 72% of businesses conveyed that the video content of their products has amplified the conversion rates. It simply implies that if you include video content on your website, it is 50 times more likely to fetch organic traffic compared to plain text content. This is because people find a video more attractive to present any info rather than using long-form text on mobile screens that seem like boring and take too much time to read.
Simply creating any kind of video is not enough to engage the audience, make sure that you are updated with the ongoing video marketing trends such as Livestreaming on mobile, user-generated videos, shoppable videos, video ads, short-form videos, interactive AR content, etc.
WhatsApp Marketing
WhatsApp marketing has evolved the way businesses reach and engage with their customers. Also, it is the most used messaging platform on a global scale by persons falling under all age groups. Ease of use, powerful and secured features are definitely making the application popular.
These reasons are enough to understand why WhatsApp Marketing is considered one of the biggest and inevitable digital marketing trends to follow in 2022 and beyond. Within a short period, you can take orders from customers, update them with the order status, make and receive payments, and inform them about the special deals and prices effortlessly. Reaching and interacting with your customer via WhatsApp Business Account ensures your business credibility and makes people trust you.
Geofencing
Geofencing is the best example of how location-based marketing is providing innovative methods for marketing that are expected to grow incredibly in 2022 with the expanding mobile technologies.
Geofencing makes use of an app or a software program that utilizes GPs, Wi-Fi, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), or cellular data to call a targeted marketing action like a text message, an app notification, email, or social media ad when the mobile device enters or exit a physical boundary called Geofence.
Starbucks is brilliantly using this technology for sending push notifications while the interested customers walk by their shops or are in a nearby area. They also let know the customers about the great and special deals offered to get consumers in the door.
Recent reports state that 92% of smartphones are adaptable to Geofencing and 53% of shoppers are visiting the venders after receiving the location-based notifications.
The Digital marketing landscape is evolving as new trends keep on coming and change the marketing methods. You must keep an eye on the updates of these trends and new technologies to stay relevant in the competition and get the best value to your clients.
Now you know the top 10 digital marketing trends of 2022. It’s time to put together your research, planning, and strategy to stay ahead of the game and grab the results you wish for the year to come.
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