Your guide to marketing trends for 2022

The marketing world moves at the speed of light, and in 2021, we’ve seen just how quickly the marketing industry has evolved. Last year (2020), marketers accepted and even embraced digital transformation more than ever before as they adapted to the changing virtual and hybrid business environment during the pandemic.

Then, as countries cautiously reopened — and more consumers were able to spend time offline — some businesses saw a decline in the virtual, online engagement and online traffic they had recently relied on.

Keeping up with these changes isn’t always easy for marketers of all experience levels, but staying ahead of your audience is essential to succeed in the fast-paced world of marketing and remain relevant.

Referencing this guide can help companies develop cutting-edge and competitive marketing strategies in 2022.

1. Marketing trends in 2022

1. Influencer marketing will evolve from a trend to a common marketing strategy.
2. Video marketers will keep their content short.
3. Mobile optimization will become even more important.
4. Permanent social media posts may replace ephemeral content.
5. Businesses will prioritize social responsibility.
6. Experiential marketing may be making a comeback.
7. More businesses will use SEO to gain search traffic.
8. Virtual events will continue, but some brands will reduce their investments.
9. More consumers will hear your audio content.
10. Inbound marketing will continue to be a best practice for growing brands.
11. Consumers will enter virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences.
12. ABM will unite more sales and marketing teams.

1. Influencer marketing will evolve from a trend to a common marketing strategy

HubSpot conducted a survey on the trends in corporate marketing investment plans in 2022. Among the global marketing professionals participating in the survey, 34% said they would put influencer marketing at the top of their marketing plan list - higher than other trends such as mobile web design and short video marketing.

While only 57% of marketing professionals currently utilizing influencer marketing say it is effective, 46% still plan to increase their budget investment in this area in 2022.

Additionally, 11% said it was a marketing strategy with the highest ROI they had tested.

How and why did influencer marketing go from an interesting marketing trend to a commonly used marketing strategy?

Influencers are usually opinion leaders on the platforms they use and in the areas or topics they speak about, and they already have an audience that is engaged, interested in their content, and influenced by the information they provide.

When marketers partner with influencers and industry thought leaders in their industry, they can expand brand awareness and gain followers from the influencer’s own audience.

Don’t have enough budget to hire a celebrity influencer with millions of followers? That’s okay; in fact, more than 56% of marketers who plan to invest in influencer marketing prefer to work with micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers are social media promoters with a small following (usually thousands to tens of thousands of followers-fans).

Even though they have fewer followers, their posts tend to have more impact due to higher engagement.

These influencers have also found a niche in their industry – which is why they are starting to play a bigger role in converting leads, connecting with their audience, and increasing brand awareness.

Because micro-influencers are still viewed as “everyday” people (unlike hard-to-reach celebrities), their audiences are actually more likely to trust their opinions and recommendations.

2. Video marketers will keep their content short

In HubSpot’s survey, we learned that the use of short-form content is the second most effective trend marketers are currently leveraging.

Currently, more than 31% of global marketers invest in short-form video content, with 46% believing the strategy is effective in terms of performance and engagement, and 89% plan to continue or increase their investment by 2022.

While long-form videos can provide viewers with depth and more comprehensive, rich information about a product, brand, or service, both B2C and B2B marketers know that it’s actually more effective to get to the point with shorter videos.

Not only does creating short videos require less bandwidth, but this type of format is well suited to the fast-paced reality of a variety of online audiences. This is likely why platforms like Douyin, Weishi, and Kuaishou have seen rapid growth and captured marketing interest.

3. Mobile optimization will become more important

It’s no surprise that consumers are spending more and more time on their mobile devices. In fact, more than half of all online website traffic each year comes from mobile devices, including tablets.

And, as the purchasing power of millennial and Gen Z audiences continues to grow, mobile-optimized digital experiences will become even more important for business owners marketing to these fast-paced, hyper-connected generations.

These are just some of the reasons:

• 33% of global marketers invest in mobile web design,
• 84% of marketers focused on mobile web design plan to continue investing the same or more in 2022.
• 64% of SEO marketers say mobile optimization is a valid investment.

And, mobile experiences aren’t just important on brand websites; they’re also important in other key marketing strategies. For example, 56% of marketers who use email are focused on delivering a mobile email experience to their subscribers.

4. Permanent social media posts may replace ephemeral content

While ephemeral content — meaning content that typically disappears 24 hours after it’s posted unless saved or archived — isn’t going away anytime soon, businesses have seen that permanent social media content, such as standard posts, videos, and live events that appear on a platform’s feed and can be viewed again days later, can be more effective in their marketing campaigns.

The survey results show that 44% of global marketers plan to increase their investment in permanent social media content, while 8% say it generates the highest ROI compared to other marketing strategies they leverage. At the same time, 25% of respondents called ephemeral content the "least effective" strategy they invest in, and 37% of marketers said they plan to reduce their investment in temporary content.

5. Companies will prioritize social responsibility

Although 31% of marketers say social responsibility has little impact on corporate marketing activities and performance, 45% still plan to invest in it throughout the next year.

Why? Because in the current scenario, social responsibility, ethics and transparency are important to modern consumers.

Across many global events in 2020 and 2021, there has been an increase in purchasing interest in socially responsible brands.

Additionally, early research from organizations such as McKinsey predicts that customers will be more supportive of brands that demonstrate care for all customers, employees, and shared causes.

With all of this in mind, companies have begun to adjust their social media strategies to focus more on inclusivity initiatives, promotions, and products while also highlighting the causes or missions they support.

While this may not result in an immediate contribution to sales, demonstrating social responsibility is still thoughtful and effective in inspiring trust in your audience.

6. Experiential marketing may make a comeback

Experiential marketing campaigns allow audiences to enter an immersive experience, which is usually conducted in a physical location or through an AR/VR platform.

While immersive experiences like these are fun, effective, and highly shareable on social media, they hit a roadblock in 2020 and 2021 as businesses, public spaces, and entire countries were forced to shut down many public operations amid the global pandemic.

And, because creating a branded AR/VR experience is a high-budget bet, fewer small brands will invest in digital experiential marketing.

So it’s not surprising that only 29% of people in the survey invested in experiential marketing in 2021, and only 14% invested in AR/VR, considering the context of the past two or three years.

But now, or in the near future, as public areas begin to reopen and digital immersive platforms continue to become more accessible to larger audiences, 58% of marketers currently using experiential marketing believe it is an effective tactic, while 48% of this group plan to increase experiential investments in 2022. Additionally, 9% of marketers plan to start investing in experiential marketing for the first time.

7. More and more businesses will use SEO to obtain search traffic

As marketers, we must ensure that our websites and content are as discoverable as possible – especially on search engines – this can provide both long-term and short-term traffic returns, and, while SEO is not new, its tactics are becoming more ingrained in modern marketing strategies.

While SEO is the sixth strategy trend utilized by respondents, 28% of marketers say they are currently using it, and of those marketers, 49% believe it is effective, while 84% continue to invest the same or more in the strategy in 2022.

As interest and demand for SEO strategies grows, so do all search optimization opportunities.

As search engine algorithms evolve, SEO is more than just churning out basic posts that answer simple search queries.

Now, brands are investing in SEO experts who can help them with everything from search insights reporting to multimedia optimization.

8. Virtual/online events will continue, but some brands will reduce investment

In 2022, we expect to see more hybrid marketing strategies that still allow audiences to embrace virtual events and conferences. In 2021, 51% of marketers invested in virtual/online events, however, 17% of these marketers plan to reduce their investment in 2022.

Despite shrinking virtual event budgets, marketers aren’t going away from the online events space anytime soon. In fact, a whopping 80% of marketers plan to invest the same or more budget into online campaigns in 2022.

9. More consumers will listen to corporate audio content

Now, as audio content becomes more common in the online world, marketers may be wondering if this format can benefit their business.

According to the research, 53% of companies believe that “podcasts or other types of audio content” are effective in terms of increasing engagement and brand awareness.

Yet, only 1% of marketers leveraging audio content say it generates ROI. Despite this, 80% still plan to invest the same or more budget on audio content and podcasts in 2022.

While audio platforms may not have great monetization features or conversion paths, this data suggests they still provide the engagement and brand awareness companies need from them in order to continue investing.

10. Inbound marketing will continue to be a best practice for growing brands

While inbound marketing has been around for years, 27% of marketers say they will leverage it for the first time in 2022. And 11% of marketers said it will be their biggest investment in the next year.

In the era of digital transformation, adopting inbound marketing is a very smart move.

Over the past two years, the world has faced unprecedented changes, and outbound marketing strategies have become more ineffective in reaching and converting potential customers.

While inbound marketing can be a valuable asset in creating brand awareness and building trust digitally by realigning your strategy to drive customers to seek out your content, the process of inbound marketing requires you to tailor your product quality and valuable content to your target audience and buyer personas and their needs.

The marketing funnel is old, the marketing flywheel has replaced the one-way nature of the funnel and has become the centerpiece of many inbound marketing strategies.

In the world of the marketing funnel, the customer is an afterthought. Once they become paying customers, the business considers their nurturing complete—unless, of course, the customer repurchases.

In contrast, the marketing flywheel puts the customer at the center, and word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies in this process, so it is wise to not only serve your customers but also make them advocates and promoters of your brand. The flywheel illustrates the process of using service excellence as your marketing strategy.

It pays to keep the flywheel at the heart of your marketing efforts, delight and empower your customers, place a high priority on customer service and train your team to handle customer requests and issues.

11. Consumers will step into virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences

In 2021, 35% of marketers utilized AR or VR. Of these marketers, 42% plan to increase investments in 2022.

And, of marketers who didn’t leverage AR or VR in 2021, 9% will try it for the first time in 2022.

Virtual reality is the use of computers to generate realistic scenes, and augmented reality is viewing the real world enhanced by visual, tactile, olfactory or visual additions. VR and AR offer different experiences, but both are making waves in the marketing world today.

VR and AR are used to supplement and improve the customer experience both online and at events.

Generally, marketers have been slow to adopt this trend due to expensive equipment and bulky headsets.

However, as VR glasses and AR applications become more accessible, it will be easier for businesses to add this technology to their marketing strategies.

12. ABM will integrate more sales and marketing teams

In 2021, 62% of marketers leverage account-based marketing, or ABM, to acquire customers. And, by 2022, 33% of marketers who aren’t using it plan to invest in it for the first time.

While ABM (Account-Based Marketing) is not new, both startups and large companies are becoming more aware of and implementing this marketing theory. ABM is a marketing (or sales and marketing) technique where marketers can use the information provided by the sales team about prospects and customers to meet their marketing needs.

13. More companies will test native advertising

In 2021, 24% of global marketers surveyed by HubSpot are currently investing in native advertising.

Heading into 2022, 23% of those who have not yet taken advantage of it plan to do so for the first time in 2022.

Why are companies increasingly interested in this strategy? Because it works. Among marketers who use native advertising, more than 36% say it is effective, while nearly 5% say it is their top strategy for generating ROI.

When your business pays to have featured content published on a third-party website, you are investing in native advertising.

Unlike traditional advertising, which is designed to interrupt and stand out, native advertising is designed to blend in with your brand and promote it to new audiences who might never know about you.

Because native ads don’t “feel” like traditional ads, consumers are more likely to consume them — in fact, consumers watch native ads 50% more than banner ads.

Examples of native advertising can be found on social media, in search engine results, on content recommendation platforms (links to various other content where you can click at the bottom of the page to read more about or related to the topic), or at events.

2. Content Marketing Trends

At least 47% of buyers will view three to five pieces of content from a business before engaging with a sales representative, and most of them expect businesses to create content to capture their interest. That’s why brands around the world are only increasing their investments in content marketing.

In fact, in 2022, the top three roles marketing leaders will prioritize hiring for are content creator, content marketing manager, and content strategist.

1. Video will remain the most popular marketing content format

According to HubSpot, video marketing is the most effective form of marketing.

The survey found that 59% of survey participants use video in their content marketing strategy, while 76% of marketers who utilize video call it the most effective content format.

Not to mention, a quarter (or 27%) of marketers who use video say it’s the type of video that has the highest ROI.

2. Blogs are still available

Blogging has been a popular marketing strategy for as long as businesses have been building their own websites.

Although this strategy has been around for a long time, it never seems to be outdated. The fact that blogs have been used for so long suggests that they must be effective.

48% of companies have a content marketing strategy blog, 56% of marketers who utilize blogging say it is effective, and 10% say it is the type of content that generates the greatest ROI.

These statistics aren’t too shocking, as a recent poll of consumer audiences found that the majority of consumers read blogs multiple times a week and have purchased something from a brand after reading that company’s blog.

In addition to providing consumer engagement and potential conversions, blogging offers one major primary benefit to your website or online page: search discoverability.

Ultimately, a website with a strong blog has greater search potential and can implement SEO strategies more easily than a website without a blog.

Think of it this way, if a potential client is looking to hire a virtual accountant, and your company’s website has a blog post that highlights tax tips or strategies your accountants use, that person might find your post or website through a Google search, read your post and browse your website, and then decide that they want to contact you for a consultation or accounting assistance.

3. Case studies will continue to drive lead conversion and brand credibility

Case studies provide potential clients with incredibly in-depth and unique insights into how peers or other businesses have benefited from a product, service, or strategy.

And some businesses put them openly on their web pages to convince potential buyers as quickly as possible. Others may offer them as free PDF documents that need to be downloaded for lead conversion.

Although many marketers (such as those in the B2C industry) do not utilize case studies, there is no denying that they are effective.

In the survey, 64% of marketers who originate case studies believe they are effective, and 15% say that of the content formats they utilize, casebooks deliver the greatest ROI.

Additionally, the use of case studies in content marketing is growing, with 37% of marketers surveyed planning to use case studies in their marketing strategy for the first time in 2022.

Among marketers who frequently use infographics in their content strategy, 56% say they are the most effective type of content.

Solid data can help marketers, bloggers, and content creators tell compelling and persuasive stories.

3. Social Media Marketing Trends

Globally, there are more than 3.7 billion social media users.

That’s why social media marketing is a popular channel that has become a part of almost every business’s larger marketing strategy.

Social media marketing allows you to make authentic connections with your audience on a personal level, which humanizes your brand.

1. Live content will become the leading form of social media

Of the social media marketers surveyed in the Marketing Strategies survey, 68% said audio chatrooms were the most effective social media content, while 59% said they worked just as well for live video.

And, while 9% of respondents said live video content delivered the greatest ROI of all the social media content types they use, 96% of those who invested in live audio content plan to spend the same or more throughout 2022.

Today, consumers are increasingly looking for relevant and authentic content — especially from businesses, and live video streaming and audio enable businesses to connect more with this audience while discussing their brand, products, expertise or mission. In addition to being able to see experts in a more authentic, down-to-earth environment, live audio or video streams often have interactive features, such as commentary, engagement, or phone-raising opportunities, allowing viewers to interact directly with the person hosting the stream.

2. TikTok will continue to gain corporate interest

Ever since TikTok started to gain popularity three years ago, brands have been trying to tap into its true power. Now, with more than 1 billion global users, TikTok has positioned itself as an app for a variety of audiences and marketers. It’s also starting to roll out a number of new advertising and marketing features for businesses of all sizes.

A whopping 67% of marketers plan to increase their investment in TikTok in 2022, while 10% of marketers who use social media say TikTok will be the platform they invest the most in throughout next year.

3. Most marketers only focus on three to five social media platforms

When it comes to the number of social media platforms you should use, every business has their own sweet spot, with only 11% of the survey using one or two platforms and only 7% using seven or more, but 64% currently using three to five platforms.

Managing three to five platforms is a realistic strategy that allows brands of all sizes to expand their reach to different audiences, while also providing social media marketers with a manageable, realistic list of platforms to focus on.

Here are a few questions to help you determine how many platforms you should really use:

• How many social media marketers do you have on your team?
• Which social media platforms have audiences that best match your goals?
• How long does it take to master a strategy on each platform you target?
• Are there any platforms out there right now that won’t benefit your overall marketing strategy?
• Are there any platforms that make it easy to repurpose engaging content?

By asking some of the questions above, you can determine and prioritize how much time your social team and business needs to invest in developing an effective and engaging strategy on each platform.

4. SEO Marketing Trends

61% of marketers say improving search engine optimization (SEO) to increase visibility is their top inbound marketing priority.

Are you one of these marketers? If so, have you figured out how you plan to improve your SEO and visibility?

1. Keyword optimization will be a key priority

47% of marketing professionals who utilize SEO say their company uses search insights reports in their strategy.

If you don’t have a large content team, lots of extra time, or an SEO expert to create large-scale search insights reports, don’t worry, 55% of people still say they at least try to optimize their content using keywords for search engines. Moreover, this strategy is not too expensive or time-consuming.

For example, you can use SEO tools to do some quick SEO keyword research related to your business, products, or upcoming content to see where you can boost your content with keyword-optimized titles, subheadings, body copy, or descriptions.

2. SEO of videos and images is also very important

SEO is not just about changing the text on a page, it’s also about choosing and optimizing the right video or image for your page to help it rank in the Google image or search engine video carousel.

Optimizing images, which involves compressing files to increase page speed and adding keyword-optimized alt text to images, and video optimization strategies, which involve embedding videos with similar topics or keywords into blog posts.

Currently, 53% of marketers who utilize SEO have a strategy for optimizing videos and images. Of these marketers, 49% said image and video optimization was their most effective SEO strategy.

3. Link building will help your brand improve its authority — and search rankings

When reliable ranking sites start linking to yours, search engine crawlers will notice that your site may also be trustworthy, which can induce a rise in your search rankings. This is the goal and purpose of building external links.

While it can be time-consuming and challenging to write highly original content, share it with other sites, or ensure your posts receive links, research shows that the time and effort is well worth it. Of the 48% of SEO marketers who use backlinks and link building, 63% say it’s the most effective SEO strategy for their brand.

4. Historical optimization will help old web pages gain new traffic

In SEO, keeping your content up to date and full of rich, engaging content beats content that lacks keyword relevance and has stale anchor text. Not only that, taking existing content and replacing podcasts, posts, or blog posts that have already been published and indexed by search engines is also an effective way to stay relevant in the search engines.

One in four SEO marketers utilize historical optimization in their strategy, with 29% saying it is an effective SEO tactic.

5. Voice search strategy will also be part of SEO

While only 12% of marketers in the survey currently leverage voice search tactics in their strategy, 34% of them say voice search is the most effective trend they are using in 2021, and 41% plan to increase investment in 2022. By now, you’ve probably used one of the many virtual assistants out there, like Siri, Xiao Ai, or Baidu Voice’s virtual assistant.

Not only can these digital assistants answer short information queries like “Who stars in Spiderman?” or “What’s the weather like in Nanjing today?”, but they are also starting to handle more local, conversational, and customized searches like “Where is the nearest coffee shop?”, “What time does McDonald’s open?”, “Does Starbucks serve iced coffee?”, etc.

Because of this emerging behavior, businesses need to respond and change the way they structure their information. Instead of catering to the manual search algorithms of search engines, optimize your content around questions.

5. AI and Automation Trends

A whopping 70% of marketing professionals are currently using automation. Meanwhile, 33% of marketers who don’t use automation plan to start implementing it in 2022. Here are a few ways they plan to start or continue leveraging automation in the next year.

1. Brands will invest more in automation and AI

Artificial intelligence is a subset of computer science that teaches machines to do things that require human intelligence, such as learning, seeing, talking, socializing, reasoning or problem solving. When tasks are done by computers, they are considered artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has completely penetrated into our daily lives and work.

When music app recommends a song, Alipay recognizes and tags a person, or you use Siri to send a text message to a friend, you are using artificial intelligence.

As we use AI more and more (especially as consumers), marketers and businesses will need to respond.

The point of AI is not to replace humans or require human interaction, but to enhance and expand our ability to connect with our audiences and help them solve problems faster and more thoroughly. AI is also very useful when it comes to collecting and analyzing data and making data-driven decisions.

Here are a few ways we think companies are adopting AI today:

• Chatbots and virtual assistants: Bots provide quick, simple solutions to problems of varying complexity. No more live chat or one-on-one digital conversations.
• AI content creation and curation: While you can’t count on robots to write great marketing content just yet, you can use them to handle the writing of simple, short pieces of content, such as tweets, basic web articles, or automated emails.
• Predictive Lead Scoring: Automated lead scoring tools allow marketers and sales teams to focus more time on selling and closing deals.
• Predictive Marketing: Want to know if your audience will engage with your campaign, ad, or content? Predictive marketing uses historical analytics, such as audience behavior data, to help brands estimate which strategies will provide the best engagement.

2. Chatbots will continue to simplify conversational marketing

More than half of consumers expect a response to all marketing, sales or customer service inquiries within 10 minutes? Imagine if this could be achieved manually? That’s probably why 40% of marketers who use automation leverage chatbots.

Bots are powered by computer programs that automatically perform certain tasks, usually by chatting with users through a conversational interface. The bot is made possible by artificial intelligence, which helps it understand complex requests, personalize responses, and improve interactions over time.

Bots provide the perception and dedication of a 1:1 service experience while working with hundreds of customers — something a customer service representative or team could never achieve.

For consumers who hate repeating themselves to multiple sales or service representatives (33% to be exact), chatbots are and will continue to make your communications much easier. When used properly, they can manage conversations at scale and aggregate data from multiple data sources, from calendars to knowledge bases to blog posts and videos.

6. Privacy Marketing Trends

1. Companies need to give customers more control over their data

In the world of marketing, data is highly valuable—and not just to you as a marketer or business owner. Whether it’s an email address, credit card information or smartphone location, consumers view their data as a private privilege – and it’s your responsibility to take care of it.

Whether it’s a software company, bank, government agency or street vendor, every business uses data to operate. It is the lifeblood of everything from marketing to sales to service. But when valuable information is misused or falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to deep distrust of businesses and potentially exploited consumers.

This is why the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was created.

GDPR, which aims to give consumers more control over their data. Under GDPR, organizations must ensure that their data is collected lawfully and securely, and that those collecting and managing said data will protect it and respect consumers’ rights.

Brands and regulators are increasingly looking to give users more choice when publishing data. And, while this is great for consumers, businesses that leverage personal data for their activities will need to develop alternative strategies and adjust plans in case they lose access to key data points.

2. Leverage marketing trends to grow better

With the above in mind, you are now up to date with the latest trends in marketing. As long as you keep your finger on the pulse of marketing trends—and always be open to change—your business will never fall behind.

If you have different thoughts on all of these insights, feel free to talk to us!

Author: Operation Quick Attack

Source: Operation Quick Attack