Each year introduces new ideas, new platforms, and new tools that can be used by digital marketers. Before diving into 2022, it’s worth taking a look at 2020 and 2021, and how digital marketing adapted in this unprecedented time. The pandemic forced countless businesses to re-strategise in order to function remotely in an online environment. E-commerce grew and more fledgling businesses were being set up as people spent significant periods of time out of work. Because of this, digital marketing managed to not only cope, but thrive in a new digital world. As covid guidelines have eased over the past months, many companies are still using remote working and have continued to embrace their digital transformation. This has unsurprisingly benefitted digital marketing; with social media, email marketing, and online blogging becoming even more important for businesses.
2022 & foresight
This year will undoubtedly be an exciting period for digital marketing, as it’s becoming apparent that the focus towards digital will continue to grow. So, what are some trends that we may see in 2022? Of course it’s impossible to predict the entire digital marketing landscape for the next 12 months, however it’s crucial to invest time into reading and researching the latest trends. Foresight is thought to become a key approach to your marketing efforts. While hindsight is important for learning from past mistakes or replicating previous success, foresight will be how you stay competitive. Being able to stay ahead of the curve and identify opportunities for your digital marketing strategies will be highly beneficial for business.
Email marketing
One of the most common digital marketing channels is email marketing. In 2022, email marketing will become even more relevant; the number of emails being sent has increased year on year since 2017, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. Billions of emails are sent everyday, and a large portion of these are for business, with many more companies implementing online strategies. Therefore this year, even more so than ever, it’s going to become crucial for digital marketers to ensure email campaigns stand out. The competition will be tough; a focus on personalization, strong subject lines and well-designed content will be key in 2022 for keeping your marketing campaigns competitive.
Contact list decay is when people unsubscribe to no longer receive your emails. It appears as though the amount of this decay is going to continue to grow this year. Due to the high volume of emails people receive nowadays, there are more people unsubscribing from email marketing. Finding the balance between getting your content noticed and timing your emails to avoid oversaturating them will become a greater challenge. Recipients are much more reactive; if too many emails are sent in a short period of time, they won’t hesitate to unsubscribe. Even a poorly managed email campaign sent by a completely separate business may lead to frustration with the emails you’ve sent as well; we’ll call it second-hand email fatigue. Basically, people simply don’t want their inboxes filled to the brim with marketing emails.
Another development in email marketing is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The use of AI for email marketing may prove incredibly useful, especially for large corporations. AI has the potential to monitor extensive datasets, keeping track of contacts and their behaviour. It’s still early days, however we wouldn’t be surprised if an AI-based email marketing tool was introduced this year. Furthermore, the idea of new technology being used for email marketing means that in 2022 there’s likely going to be even more competition between email marketing platforms. There’ll almost certainly be even more platforms launching and therefore will give you more opportunities and choices for the platform that suits you best.
Social media
Social media for a digital marketer provides many opportunities for engaging, promoting and converting. Social media consists of many platforms, with some that should be potentially discussed as individual digital marketing platforms. More so than any other digital marketing channel, social media needs to be recognised as multiple individual channels which all offer different functions for a campaign. It’s no secret that each year social media as a whole is becoming more prevalent, with more businesses adopting to use it for promotional purposes and connecting with their customers. In 2022, it appears that this trend will only continue to rise, and it’d be a fairly safe bet to assume at some point in the next 12 months, another powerhouse social media platform will be launched.
Interestingly, TikTok has recently increased the maximum length of videos to 3 minutes, which could suggest a shift towards video content having more time to tell a story or share more detailed information. This resembles Twitter changing the maximum character count, which saw more in depth discussions taking place and businesses being able to share more information about their work. Video content for marketing purposes is difficult to get right, as it’s all about having creative engaging content that still acts as a way to gain customers with genuine intent.
In 2021, LinkedIn launched Creator Mode, and we strongly believe that this feature will continue to grow and develop in 2022. It’s quickly becoming a popular feature for many users wanting to grow their business, and as the popularity grows, it’d be easy to imagine they’ll introduce new features in 2022. LinkedIn appears to be slowly welcoming more lighthearted social engagement and creativity, in comparison to the professional-only space that it used to be known for years ago. Furthermore, LinkedIn and other social media platforms have provided groups and pages that people can join forming online communities. While this is nothing new, it’s certainly worth recognising that these communities are becoming more popular than ever, potentially driven by nationwide lockdowns pushing people to connect online. These communities can be a key aspect of digital marketing, as they can be used to communicate with customers, providing support and updating them with your new products and services.
Search engine optimisation
SEO in 2022 will without a doubt continue to be crucial for digital marketers to keep businesses competitive within search engines. As previously mentioned, there are more online businesses being launched than ever before, and the competition for organic traffic is growing exponentially. Because of this, only the highest quality content will be successful. Any website pages, articles and blogs need to tick the many boxes of well-executed SEO, using keyword research, relevant information and suitable formatting. Due to the level of sophistication that search engines now possess, your content will be meticulously scanned for relevance and quality. For digital marketers, it’s now becoming more about focussing on creating genuinely excellent content for people, because search engines can identify this. It used to be the case of search engines scanning pages for set features, whereas it’s heading in a direction of being able to derive contextual information.
Ensuring websites are optimised for fast loading times and multiple devices will become even more important after Google has introduced Core Web Vital reports that use real-time data to assess a website’s performance. Nowadays, there are many devices that people use to browse online, from the typical mobile phones and laptops to the less common devices such as gaming consoles and smart televisions. The number of devices will only continue to grow as we see an increasing number of products being introduced every year, and therefore optimisation is going to be even more essential for websites.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC), has been a staple for digital marketing and businesses wanting to promote their products or services for years. But which direction is heading? A theme that you’ll have no doubt noticed throughout this article is the evolution of technology within the online world. From search engines to social media, there are constant updates and innovations that can drastically change the digital landscape. Paid advertising is no exception; with the introduction of AI, PPC is now more sophisticated than ever before. It’s up to digital marketers to keep up to date with the developments in paid advertising to ensure it’s being used effectively as possible.
Paid social media advertising is another hugely important space for digital marketing, and there’s no signs to show this will change in the near future. Thousands of businesses are using paid social media because quite simply, it works. This year, the number of features and control in which you have over your paid campaigns will continue to grow. It’s all about identifying your audience and understanding why they would want to click your ad. Basically, put yourself in their shoes; if the advert doesn’t interest you, chances are it won’t interest your target audience.
Conclusion
Of course it’s impossible to predict the future, and there is always the chance for unexpected change or new ideas. This time last year nobody could’ve predicted the announcement of Meta and the ‘metaverse’. It is however possible to make predictions using the information currently available. If there’s one thing 2022 will have in store, it’ll be the continued evolution of technology within all aspects of business. For digital marketers, embracing this progression and harnessing it successfully will be the name of the game.
About Inflowing
Inflowing is a B2B marketing agency. We help B2B organisations do meaningful things with marketing. Whether that’s getting more leads, more visibility, or supporting their sales teams.
We’re an experienced team of marketers with an incredibly strong background in B2B. To learn more about B2B and improving your marketing, check out our other blogs or get in touch.
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