It’s the start of a new year, a time to reflect on the past 12 months and set new goals and ambitions both professionally and personally. So, what do we think will happen in the digital world? What are the new marketing trends for 2022?
I’ve read a ton of articles on what people are predicting for digital marketing and the trends seem to fit into 5 categories:
Let’s dive into each one and understand what’s behind these trends.
Online communities
Personalised content has been around for a number of years now. We want to reach out to each individual, make an impact and stand out. With the online space getting bigger and noisier we need to start looking in a different direction as well. And that is where communities come in.
Creating your own community of loyal followers is incredibly valuable but takes a lot of time and effort and doesn’t happen overnight. However, reaching out to audiences in existing communities and working with others to reach these communities could be a way forward.
Think about where your audience is, what interests them and start to join the conversation of these communities. Be careful with your message though, no hard sell, join in the community, share information and insight to be a part of the group and get noticed. When you are talking in these communities you are the face of the brand so plan how you are going to communicate and keep consistency with your tone of voice.
You want to be investing your marketing efforts in both short and long-term goals. With communities the short term goal can be interacting within existing groups and long-term creating your own community and followers.
Storytelling and entertainment
With the online space seeing rapid growth it’s easy to get lost in the noise and quality products with fantastic reviews go unnoticed. To stand out we now need to think about memorable brand stories, as stories are what stick in a user’s mind. Having a strong brand will help to grow more organic sales and earn you a place in customers minds.
Stories help people to understand a concept, they are more likely to read a story than facts on how your business was built. Go beyond the products or service you are offering and think about the emotions and values you can offer the user. Get the user to engage and interact with the brand, even before the purchase and leave them remembering the entire experience not just the product they purchased.
2021 was definitely the year for short form content. Think Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube shorts. However, these video forms have started to increase in length, TikTok expanding to 3 minutes as an example. Social selling is seeing a big increase but it needs time to explain a product and sell, so 2022 could be the year for long form content to return.
Social selling
The pandemic has accelerated the need for selling online after the months we’ve faced not being able to go out and buy those non-essential items. We’ve seen social media platforms rolling out changes such as TikTok and Pinterest partnering with Shopify, shoppable pins (my personal favourite!), shop module on Twitter and shopping ads on Instagram.
If you’ve not already looked at how you can sell your products or services through social media, then 2022 is definitely the year to start planning and taking action. More features will be released through 2022 on social media integrating them further into the eCommerce world.
Sustainability
With COP26 being a big talking point as I write this post its time for us all (personally and in business) to think about the impact we are having on the environment and being more sustainable.
We’ve seen radical changes over the last year with people spending more for the right brand. They are often looking at local companies, company values and sustainability. So don’t rule yourself out of a market based on price alone, look at what other values you can add.
Providing a sustainable choice makes people feel good about their purchase, they get that warm feeling that they’ve made an impact and often want to share that. An example of this is the Fat Face shopping bag that can be reused as Christmas wrapping paper. A highly engaging video has been created and viewed over 117,000 times on LinkedIn demonstrating how to reuse their bags and turn it into Christmas gift wrap. Not only have they produced a sustainable product here but this has increased visibility of the brand… one to think about!
User experience
User experience is big! From the design of your website to the likes of VR and AR technology we all need to look at how we can change the traditional online shopping experience to stand out. I know these things can cost a lot of money and a virtual tour around your shop may not be in the budget so let’s think of some practical changes to our websites we can all make.
Adding micro interactions to your website can be a simple yet effective way to engage users. Micro interactions are a way to communicate something to a user. The simplest one is on Facebook where you hover over the like button and a number of emojis appear. You can add these to your website to demonstrate an action or show progress is being made while the user waits.
Another UI trend for websites is Neomorphism. Neomorphism is a new design trend that makes objects look like they are standing out of the screen or inset into the page. Shadowing or floating like effects. I’m no designers but as a user I love these effects and the impact it has on the page, a real impactful feature for such a small change.
Marketing trends conclusion
These are just some of the trends I have seen for 2022 in the digital marketing area. It's always interesting to see predictions for a new year and look back at what progress has been made over the previous year. But one thing is for certain in 2022 that change is inevitable.
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