There’s no question that digital marketing is evolving faster than we could have ever imagined – social media platforms are booming, more and more people are becoming masters of SEO and paid advertising is on a new level of competitiveness. With all this going on, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to next year’s trends – or risk drowning in a sea of competitors!
In this article, we’re going to be diving in what experts are revealing to be the most stand-out digital marketing trends for the coming year. Stay ahead with these and you’ll be sure to see success in 2022 and beyond.
Trend #1: Conversational marketing messages
In this day and age, it’s all about getting personal with your potential customers. Research has shown that people respond better to marketing messages when they are more conversational and less corporate and salesy. Of course, a lot of how you choose to style your messaging will be based on your business model and overall marketing strategy, but you can certainly get a lot out of reviewing what might be an outdated messaging approach.
Companies have been said to see far more sales conversations after implementing conversational marketing strategies, so why not explore some of the ways you could use this trending technique to boost your conversions?
Trend #2: Video marketing
Video is becoming increasingly popular alongside what seems to be its counterpart, social media. As we begin to see more short, creative videos online (such as social media stories, reels and TikToks), marketers are using similar techniques to enhance brand awareness. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms are already seeing an influx of branded content being created and shared, and for many companies this strategy is proving to be quite effective. Video marketing is certainly going to be one of the biggest trends in 2022 – there’s no doubt about it.
Trend #3: Interactive content
On a similar wavelength to this is interactive content. Users love to feel engaged and part of something bigger than themselves, and since videos are already engaging on a visual level, ensuring we have fewer words to read on the page, interactivity is the next sensible step from a user experience perspective. To create a more dynamic experience for your prospects, you might want to explore quizzes, games, infographics, embedded calculators or augmented reality ads. Whatever you decide to try, be sure that you are monitoring engagement so that you can take learnings from what your customers respond well to.
Trend #4: Position zero
Position Zero, or the ‘Featured Snippet’ section of the SERPs is the ultimate jackpot when it comes to SEO. But since the feature has been around for several years already, why is it a recurring digital marketing trend? The answer is not simply that the competition for the featured snippet position is accelerating, but that savvy marketers are beginning to understand more about the challenges that this promised land can actually pose.
Since users can be satisfied instantly with a position zero response (such is Google’s goal), having this position may actually generate no traffic to your site at all. The key when it comes to getting position zero in 2022 is learning how to understand Google’s featured snippet criteria – if your primary keyword could easily be digested in a snippet, it’s definitely worth optimising for position zero. If not, you might benefit more from sticking to traditional SEO.
Trend #5: Privacy and security
If users don’t feel safe upon landing on your website, the chances are they will click off it within seconds. Users are becoming increasingly savvy about privacy, cookies and general security online, and if you haven’t established trust in the first few seconds, you’ll likely see a decrease in your traffic and your rankings. See this post on Core Web Vitals to get you started.
Hopefully this article has given you some valuable insights into what we think will be dominating the marketing sphere in 2022. Get ahead, update your campaigns and prepare for yet another year of enormous change.
