With every brick and mortar store vying to go digital these days to keep in pace with the Digital Darwinism, which means ‘survival of the fittest in the online space’, there is no dearth for digital marketing trends and techniques that emerge each and every year. The present pandemic has made the online presence for the companies all the more inevitable. In fact, the advent of Artificial Intelligence and data-driven marketing have changed the way businesses promote themselves today. Let’s take a glimpse of the top digital marketing trends that are going to take the year 2022 over by storm.
1. The technique of Content Visualization
It is a fact that 93% of all our communication is visual. And 85% of the customers are likely to buy the product after watching the videos of it. So content is still the king, but it is the visual form of content that’s going to rule. Visual search is going to be all the rage in future. Videos, infographics, data visualizations and images not only make the content attractive but also make them memorable.
2. Power of Artificial Intelligence – AI
Artificial intelligence has found its way in today’s world in various forms ranging from digital assistants, marketing communication, chatbots etc. AI is used for providing personalized user experience in digital marketing. By which we mean, AI powered technology is capable of providing the visitors with a personalized web page after recognizing their past behaviour.
There is a lot of data available on the internet and with the help of massive data computing, AI can provide you with precise insights on customer behaviour. So we can confidently say that AI is the future of Digital Marketing.
3. Mobile Optimization – The Key Strategy
Mobile phones play an invaluable role in our everyday life. Many people do not have laptops or PCs, but they manage to enjoy almost every aspect of the digital world through their mobile phones. So it has become an utmost priority for the businesses to optimize the user experience of their website for mobile phones. There is an urgent need for innovative mobile marketing strategy for a unique and superior customer experience.
4. The Advantage of Featured Snippets
There is a difference between Rich snippets and Featured snippets. While Rich snippets are organic search results that contain additional information, featured snippets provide answers to specific queries of the user & they occupy the ‘Position zero’, that is right above all the top ranking websites in SERP. Thus, it drives high organic traffic and enhances website authority that could be used for conversions and generating leads.
5. The Influence of Voice Search
Voice search uses the technology of Artificial Intelligence to look for well-optimized websites with the right keywords. People sometimes are too lazy to key in the words and wait for the search results; Instead they use the microphone to search using their voice. When the website is optimized for voice search, people find it easy to ask their queries and get the results instantly. Additionally it increases the brand visibility and awareness too.
6. Tapping the Influencer Marketing Potential
Influencers, especially the micro-influencers, have become more potent and powerful even in the B2B space as they have built a strong credibility for themselves in a particular niche, and most of their followers trust them completely. So, when such influencers vouch for a brand, the authenticity of the product increases exponentially in the minds of the public. So going forward, cultivating a good relationship with influencers from their field would augur well for all businesses.
7. A/B Testing in SEO
It is estimated that 90% of the marketing content doesn’t receive the right kind of web traffic from Google. So A/B testing in SEO comes handy here, to gain useful insights for driving organic traffic to your website. A/B testing is nothing but testing two versions of your website content to know which performs better. It is done on a third party testing platform which gives you the metrics, so that you can post the content which is most likely to send more traffic to your website thereby increasing conversions.
8. Ephemeral & Short-form Video Content
Ephemeral content is a type of content that is available only for a short duration of time and will disappear afterward. Facebook–My Day, Snapchat–Snaps and Instagram– Stories, are all examples of popular ephemeral contents.
It has been found out that the attention span of today’s consumer has been reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds, and hence businesses have started to create a lot of short-form video content that lasts anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds. Keeping the content crisp & captivating is important to capture the attention of your target audience.
9. The Magic of Social Commerce
Social commerce is nothing but brands selling their products and services in Social Media. A recent study conducted by Hootsuite says 73% of the clients use social media for customer acquisition, 64% for brand awareness and 46% for conversions. Social commerce would become as essential as a website or an offline store in 2022.
Shoppable posts and Instagram storefronts are some of the pro-selling features in social media that aid social commerce. Brands are prone to incorporate these features in their marketing strategy to increase sales.
10.Tech – Intake
Marketers observe that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality elevate the user experience and can give the companies using them an edge over their competitors. Design, Repair and maintenance, Education, Gaming, Healthcare are some of the industries that can make use of these technologies. In social media, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are the pioneers in using AR and VR.
These are the top 10 Digital Marketing trends that we predict could be the game changers in 2022, but there could be many more like these as well. So, keep yourselves informed about the emerging digital marketing trends to stay ahead of the competition in the year 2022.