With 2021 coming to a close, now is the time to start looking forward to the new year and the new marketing trends/strategies that come along with it. You’ll need to formulate a short-term plan that keeps the long-term plan in focus, even though the trends might evolve or change in years to come.
2020 left in its wake a lot of discarded marketing strategies as the world and its needs were turned on its head. This however brought one thing in focus, the future of marketing and business is customer need centric.
Moving into the new year and formulating plans we need to keep a few things in mind. “Marketing” as a whole, is becoming broader, more diverse, multicultural, and inclusive. That means widening audiences and appearances in your material.
When people look at advertising, they try to look for people that look like them. It has also moved past simply being branding and advertising and instead focuses on helping sales, and other departments engage customers long-term and making that customer experiences great.
So, with that in mind, here are 7 digital marketing strategies for 2022:
Valuable Customer Experience
Higher Logic recently did a survey that stated that Australian consumers not only value but expect:
- speed (62%),
- a person to speak to (57%),
- convenience (56%),
- a feeling of appreciation during the experience (51%), and
- a self-service option (42%).
This means your customer service needs to be quick, with options for the consumer that make them want to stick around. Customers like sales staff to act like the consumer does. Your customer-facing staff should be friendly and efficient and listen to the needs in order to fulfill them.
Content Should be Story-Driven
People prefer visual content over plain text every day of the week. This has been proven time and time again through marketing psychology and platforms such as TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram. People respond to imagery and movement more than black-and-white text on a page. They also remember visuals more than plain words, which means they will remember your product/service better.
Make your brand into a Cult
People, especially young people, respond to brand culture. Take Bunnings, for example. Bunnings has evolved from a big hardware corporation to a part of Australia’s identity by creating a friendly culture that uses its staff in its ads. The advertising gives you the same experience as in-store, creating consistency across the brand. This means people prefer it even though it’s a billion-dollar corporation over Mitre 10, which speaks about family but then uses a celebrity spokesperson. Mitre 10 contradicts its goal, whereas Bunnings does not.
Bunnings even hit the diversity mark by using their normal staff, allowing them to customise for each viewer. They feel normal and friendly. Talking up the staff to make them feel important in the ads is a benefit because staff go home and boast about how good it is to work there, and consumers like to shop at places where staff are happy. Bunnings has become the most trusted brand in Australia because of this humanness.
They have even created an icon in the ordinary sausage sizzle. Mitre 10 does the same sausage sizzles, but most people don’t even notice, let alone talk about it because Bunnings’ consistent “ordinary human” message influences its consumers. The brand also includes the whole family by using the playground and cafe, which appeals to every household member. Bunnings feels comfortable for everybody creating a culture. If you want to be a trusted, successful business, think about creating a positive brand culture.
Conversational Marketing
We need to move away from traditional, formal ways of marketing. If the last few years have taught us anything, people like to know they are on equal standing with the seller. They like to feel like the seller isn’t following a script but cares about what the customer wants. Humans like Humans. They don’t want to feel like they are talking to a robot or close to it, and that’s what script reading feels like. They want a real, immediate, and thoughtful response. Instant messaging is a great way to give this to your customers.
Video Marketing
Based on the last few years, Cisco has found that by 2022, video content will account for around 82% of online traffic and is currently 53x more likely to appear as a front-page search than other SEO tactics. Of today’s video content, 84% of consumers have bought the product once the video is over. This is why YouTube advertising/sponsors are so popular and successful. If you aren’t producing video content, 2022 is the year you need to get on board.
Featured Snippets on search platforms
SEO is still important to digital marketing, especially as we move into the new year. After all, if they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. In saying that, SEO as we know it is undergoing a major change because people are changing the way they search. Ranking high on search engines, like Google, is no longer the primary goal. Featured snippets are at the very top of the page.
The SERP (Search Engine Results Page) information slot you want to aim for is above the organic listings near the advertisement slots, called ‘position zero’.
Research has shown that over 60% of results that consumers click on is the featured snippets. This featured snippet-centred SEO service will start to be offered over the next year, so best practices for optimising content will start to pop up. You must pay attention when this happens to take advantage and get your featured snippet spot.
Millennials are no longer the ‘it’ age group
For the past 20 years, marketing has heavily focused on marketing for the millennials. Until now they have been the avocado toast generation, portrayed as entitled 20 somethings that will never afford houses due to their expensive tastes in food. However, those 20-somethings are now starting to reach their 40s and no longer fit this portrayal. As a result, millennials are no longer setting the trends or excessively buying, and Generation Z is.
Over the next 5 years, Gen Z will take over the market as we know it and change it to fit their wants and needs. We can already see this happening with TikTok adapting how we advertise to young people. Gen Z is also more diverse than we have seen, meaning our advertising must follow suit. We can no longer have a single ad for everyone, but we now need multiple ads for the same product or service to appeal to everyone. Now is the time to adapt your marketing strategy to fit the digital age this generation expects, or you will risk losing over 30% of the market.
So, with that said, when formulating your marketing plans for 2022, consider these strategies. This means optimising your chances of marketing success into the new year.
