Digital Marketing Trends 2022: Top 10

We can’t predict the future, but we can talk about the top digital marketing trends of 2022! It’s high time to talk about what is yet to come and how to adjust your marketing activities to the upcoming changes.

Constant change is the beauty and the curse of digital marketing.

As a marketer, your job is never dull, as you have to rethink and adjust your tactics on a regular basis. The trends change and so should your work.

On the other hand, it’s hard to distinguish real trends that will change the digital marketing landscape in a few years from long-term development of existing marketing strategies. 

Is the supremacy of Instagram a new digital marketing trend or just a natural course of things? I would argue it’s a result of a long-planned marketing tactics, not an emerging trend. 

What are the real new digital marketing trends that will set you apart from your competitors and which are just an attempt to write a well-positioned SEO blog post?

Here’s what we’ll cover today:

• What are the emerging digital marketing trends?
  • 1. Focus on video marketing
  • 2. Analyse the social media sentiment
  • 3. Voice search might finally catch on
  • 4. Personalize your message
  • 5. Make use of micro-moments
  • 6. Zero-click searches
  • 7. Influencer marketing
  • 8. Metaverse and VR/AR
  • 9. Digital skills will be highly in-demand
  • 10. Engage in CSR and non-profit activities
• Key digital marketing trends for 2022 – a quick recap

What are the emerging digital marketing trends?

I’ve chosen 9 emerging digital marketing trends for 2022 that will help you put your business in front of the competition and will help to boost your business. 

Mind you, these are predictions based on what’s already happening in marketing. You should never forget about the golden rules that are timeless and were proven to work every time.

The new trends, however, are a great opportunity to distinguish your brand and put you forward of the competition. The earlier you catch on, the better chance to get discovered.

Ready? Let’s take a look at the latest digital marketing trends:

1. Focus on video marketing

I’m sure you are aware of the “mobile first” notion that is present for a few years now. And now, with the 5G and better mobile data plans, video streaming is easier than ever on smartphones and tablets.

That’s why the popularity of TikTok was possible in the first place. You can record your video anywhere, but also watch it anytime you want. Something that was much more expensive when the mobile data plans were limited to megabytes of Internet, instead of gigabytes.

And people love to consume video content.

Video marketing will be one of the biggest digital marketing trends of 2022, no doubt. If you aren’t creating marketing videos yet, you should definitely consider expanding your digital strategy.

2. Analyse the social media sentiment

Have you noticed the decline in trust in social media influencers? 

For a long time, influencer marketing has been the go-to strategy when it comes to promoting a specific product or raising brand awareness. 

That started to change a few years ago and reached its height at the end of 2021.

All the scandals caused by many Instagram celebrities caused a trust crisis. People are becoming more sceptical when it comes to influencers endorsements. 

That doesn’t mean, however, that an influencer marketing tactics are useless. 

A game changer in 2022 will be sentiment analysis. Many tools, including Brand24, offer such an option, and the demand for sentiment analysis will only grow in the future. 

Sentiment analysis is based on the NLP, which stands for Natural Language Processing. The process entails AI learning the ins and outs of human communication and analysing whether a statement made online is positive, negative or neutral. 

A few years ago, the technology had a problem with detecting sarcasm or irony, but the technology has evolved since then. Many tools can correctly recognize ironic statements and label them as comments with negative sentiment. 

Posts with negative sentiment usually generate high engagement rates, but you don’t want negative comments around your brand. And if you do, it has to be a part of the planned campaign and you need to have control over the situation, e.g. monitor the number of mentions or the social media reach of your campaign. 

3. Voice search might finally catch on

Many marketing gurus predicted that the voice search will be a digital marketing trend back in 2019. It wasn’t as popular as we thought, though.

This year, however, you might want to rethink your marketing strategy and include optimization for voice search. And don’t worry, it’s easier than you might thing.

For years now we, marketers, were focusing on content marketing and SEO, tweaking and optimizing blog posts to be the number 1 in SERPs. Optimizing for voice search is no different, because search engines like Google still use written content to present results for verbal queries.

The downside is that it generates so-called zero click searches that might be frustrating for digital marketers.

Unfortunately there’s no way yet to analize traffic from voice search with tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console. In case it ever happens, it will be a breakthrough for digital marketers.

4. Personalise your message

We leave a tremendous amount of information online. In return, many of us look for hyper-targeted personalization. While talking about digital marketing trends, we can’t omit this marketing strategy.

We want to see exactly the content we desire at the exact time we need it. That means you have to personalise your digital marketing message and deliver it at the right moment. 

The good news is that it is possible to prepare extra tailored messaging. And it is easy, too. Lots of marketing tools allow automatized personalization whether it’s advertising with Google Ads or sending welcome mails via Mailchimp.

So, when working on your e-mail marketing strategy, don’t forget to segment the users. With advanced tools you can create different subscription pop-ups, and divide users into categories based on when and where they subscribed.

When creating social media ads, don’t just target all your followers. Think of different customer types that might be interested in your product, and create ad sets tailored to their preferences. Your CTR will skyrocket.

But be careful. Don’t be too specific while creating your personalized messages. People like relevant ads, but might be creeped out if you show them how much you know about their interests.

5. Make use of micro-moments

The rise of smartphones shortened our attention span. We decide in an instant – what to eat, where to go or what to buy. Remember about that while working on your digital marketing strategy.

Google calls these instants micro-moments and distinguishes 4 types:

• I want to know moments
• I want to go moments
• I want to do moments
• I want to buy moments

To meet this new, speedy decision-making process brands need to capture readers attention within seconds. 

A recent study by Microsoft found out that our attention span fell from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds. We are worse than a goldfish.

Micro-moments are closely related to personalization and targeting advertising. You have to be present on precisely the platforms where your customers are present and invest in short ads, that meet exactly the question asked in that precise moment. 

What does it mean for digital marketing? You cannot ever be dull. You should always think about intriguing your audience first. Nobody will have the time, nor interest in checking your ad if it’s too vague.

One of the most common mistakes I see in social media marketing are discount ads with nothing but a logo and info like “-50% discount”. If you target with your ads outside of your followers base, at least show what products are you selling. Don’t make the potential buyer guess.

6. Zero-click searches

We all like to optimize for Google but as you probably see, search queries now have more and more featured snippets.

That might be a problem for some digital marketers, because they always want to rank #1 with their content, and that also means Google will probably use some chunk of the content and place it directly in the SERP. If that part of the text is crucial to the user, they will most likely just read the important information and never visit your site.

There’s no remedy for that. You might want to reevaluate your content and focus more on subjects that need further explaining. Observe how different search queries look in Google and decide if it’s substantial to get that featured snippet.

7. Influencer marketing

Yes, we did say earlier that the ending of 2021 put a little distrust in influencer marketing, but that doesn’t mean this branch is closing.

Influencer marketing is still relevant in 2022. What’s more, it’s a great way brands can bond with their potential audience and appear more humane.

In 2022 there are thousands of ways you can implement influencers in your digital marketing strategies. Look at the amount of social media channels you can use – not only you can switch between Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but also you can choose various ways you can market within the chosen app. For example, Instagram offers regular posts, Stories, and more recently – Reels.

Just be careful which influencers you choose to convert digital users. Part of the influencer marketing strategy includes a thorough audience research. There are various tools that might help you to identify the right influencers.

You can try Brand24 for identifying influencers in your marketing niche. Focus on the right keyword and the app will show you most influential social media profiles.

Read more: how about a thorough guide on influencer marketing?

8. Metaverse and VR/AR

In October 2021 Mark Zuckerberg announced the transformation of Facebook into Meta. The company revealed they are working on “Metaverse”, a next generation of social media or perhaps even the Internet.

Will it change the way we consume content on social media and alter our vision of the Internet social life? We are yet to find out.

You can start with planning Metaverse strategies already. There’s plenty of information on how will it look like.

But you don’t need to wait for Metaverse to explore the possibilities of VR and AR marketing. There are tons of apps that already work in the augmented reality available through your smartphone camera.

As the mobile devices are getting more advanced and VR sets more accessible, VR and AR marketing will be an emerging digital marketing trend in 2022. We are yet to see how it will play out.

9. Digital skills will be highly in-demand

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work and speeded up the process of transferring into digial media for those, who were yet to do so.

No doubt, one of the biggest digital marketing trends will be focusing on online strategies and interactions.

There are thousands of opportunities for e-commerces to grow while people in isolation switched to online shopping instead of going to stores. Digital marketing has to be aware of that process and incorporate the post-pandemic behaviours into strategies.

Each business owner who wants to pursue digital advertising will be looking for people with advanced digital marketing skills.

What’s more, with the raise of popularity of remote work, digital marketers are not restricted to their area anymore. We will see people from Europe working more for the US companies, and the other way round. It’s easier than ever to work for the favorite brand.

10. Engage in CSR and non-profit activities

In 2022 it’s high time we realize about the marketing impact on environment.

Fortunately, CSR campaigns are becoming a standard in the marketing industry. Not only this tactic is beneficial to the society, but also brands can appear more humane in front of their target audience.

People can be crazy for “good” companies. They like to identify with their love brands, and will share all the great deeds businesses are doing.

2022 marketers should once and for all discover that non-profit activities have a huge positive feedback on brand awareness and how people see the company.

For example, we organized a tree-planting event for our 10 year anniversary. We planted more than 3000 trees, and that’s not our final word for 2022. You can read about it more here.

Key digital marketing trends for 2022 – a quick recap

Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and further development of social media algorithms will make our marketing experience even more personalised. Your window of opportunity to reach your targeted audience is becoming narrower, and the audience is growing more particular about the content they want to see. 

To restore the trust in social media and social media influencers, investigate the social media sentiment around the celebrities you want to cooperate with. 

Be aware of the latest digital marketing trends to stay at the top of your game and ahead of competitors.

Don’t be afraid to use the new and emerging marketing tools that use machine learning. As a digital marketer you should always pursue the latest trends and decide if they are right for your brand.

Now that you know the top digital marketing trends for 2022, why don’t you read our other related articles?

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• Digital Marketing for Beginners
• 10 Best Social Media Tools for 2022