No part of an organization is unscathed by changes. Marketing fundamentals like branding, design, SEO, UX, and UI always change. On top of this, marketers must also master new social channels, regulations, and algorithms, to name a few. To anticipate the future, we created this article on top trends in digital marketing in 2022 to grow your brand.
Table of Contents
We’ll go over:
- What is a social media trend?
- How to Keep Up With Social Media Trends
- Top Trends in Digital Marketing in 2022
What is a social media trend?
Social media trends are short-term changes in the way people use social media, such as a new emoji, a spike in specific hashtags, new ways of posting content, or more interest in a particular topic.
How to Keep Up with Social Media Trends
Social media is a great way to connect with potential customers, build your brand, and drive traffic to your website. But it’s also an ever-changing landscape that can be tough to keep up with.
Here are some strategies for staying on top of the latest social media trends:
- Follow industry influencers on social media: If you want to stay abreast of what’s new in your industry, follow those who influence individuals in your space. This allows you to stay up to date with their thoughts and ideas, which can help you keep ahead of the competition.
- Connect with other businesses on social media: Learn from other entrepreneurs and grow your network by learning from those who have already been through the journey.
- Use Google Alerts to stay up-to-date on terms and influencers in your industry: Pick topics or individuals in your industry and set up Google Alerts for them. This way, you can stay apprised of any breaking news in your industry.
- Lurk social media forums and blogs. Forums keep you updated on what customers in your industry talk about and want to know about. This information can help inform everything from what products you offer to the content you create.
- Listen to podcasts from influencers in your space: Podcasts offer valuable information. Find out about industry trends, learn from influencers, and do it on the go.
These are only a few ideas to keep you up-to-date with industry knowledge. Now let’s learn about social trends that marketers must monitor.
The Future of Digital Marketing: Digital Marketing Innovations in 2022
Trend 1: Visual Commerce: The Storytelling of Tomorrow
Visual commerce uses visual content in online advertising and marketing to create a visual, engaging experience for consumers to help them understand how a product works or what it looks like.
Ecommerce businesses must do away with text-only static web pages. It is what 91% of consumers want and a part of learning psychology. When consumers hear information, they remember 10% of it three days later but add a picture, and they’ll remember 65%.
A study at Wibbitz found visual content increases:
- Website traffic (85%)
- Brand awareness (84%)
- Social media engagement (81%)
- Lead generation and sales (71%)
Effective visual commerce uses numerous visual content types like infographics, interactive photos, animations, and more, each adding value in different ways.
For example, The Good, a conversion rate optimization (CRO) company, uses multiple media content on its homepage.
They feature a static image with their unique selling proposition (USP) and call-to-action (CTA).
Further down, they feature statistics with company logos.
To further diversify their media, they add a video to showcase their features.
When adding visual content, videos are king. It is estimated that video accounts for 82% of traffic.
So, when you’re unsure, use video for sure.
The challenges of visual commerce:
Visual commerce requires a high level of design skill and sensitivity to the visual context. Anyone can take a photo with their phone, but it takes skill to create a compelling image that resonates with its target audience.
Trend 2: Securing your content with Digital asset management (DAM).
One of the hottest marketing technologies is DAM, or digital asset management. DAM is the process of maintaining, monitoring, and securing digital assets in an organization. Modern marketers produce a significant amount of content and having a secure, centralized location to keep all of this content sets some companies apart from the competition.
It works like this:
- Users receive a notification when editable templates are available.
- Users receive a notification when the templates they created have been updated.
- Templates and assets can be locked and restrictions established by the admin.
A trustworthy and reliable DAM allows marketers to collate every digital asset you may need in your company, like images, icons, and fonts. It automatically replaces license-expired imagery, compliance, and disclaimer text blocks, colors, and logos across all pre-made templates and designs.
Monday.com is a popular digital asset management application allowing teams to store, organize, and manage team assets in one place. They offer uploads from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive.
The challenges with digital asset management:
It can be challenging to keep track of the information for easy access when needed. In addition, companies should train their employees on how to use DAM tools properly to avoid any security risks or mistakes.
Trend 3: Offering subscription models to retain existing customers.
As the popularity of online shopping increases, the number of subscriptions for services and products is also increasing by $51 billion in 2022. Subscription services provide customers with a fixed amount of access to a product for an agreed-upon price.
This eliminates the need for customers to pay upfront and is often more cost-effective in the long run because 70% of businesses think obtaining new customers is costlier than retaining existing ones. With subscription models, you continue to make money from users after acquiring them.
There are 2 kinds of digital subscription models:
- Providing access to a product like video streaming services, exclusive blog content, or software as a service (SaaS).
- Providing a continual service by curating physical items.
For example, LeadDyno is a great example of the access digital subscription model.
LeadDyno is an affiliate marketing platform that helps businesses launch and grow their affiliate programs. Users pay per month or annually to access LeadDyno and its features.
Taster’s Club, an alcohol subscription company, is an example of the curation subscription model.
Every month Taster’s Club sends customers a new, curated 750ml bottle of alcohol. Depending on the club the customers are in depends on the alcohol they receive.
The challenges of digital subscriptions:
With so many customers joining and leaving, some may be priced out of the market. This could create gaps in service coverage, leaving customers feeling frustrated. However, if subscription models can be implemented to maintain quality and affordability, they could survive into the future.
Trend 4: Seriously considering getting on TikTok to market your brand.
We’re sorry to say but gone are the days when companies could shy away from using TikTok. Tiktok is a popular social media platform allowing users to create and share digital content. It was founded in 2012 by Ted Livingston and Kiko Argumedo and quickly grew in popularity due to its highly engaging interface, fast-paced content, and social features.
Not only are there 1 billion monthly active users, but the app has been downloaded 3 billion times and was the most downloaded non-game app in the first quarter of 2021.
Marvin Russell, Portfolio Director at SureSwift Capital, believes that brands should start taking TikTok seriously and says that SureSwift Capital is incorporating it into their new content marketing strategy in the coming year.
A successful example of a brand properly using TikTok is Duolingo, the language learning application. Zaria Parvez, Social Media Manager at Duolingo, has grown Duolingo’s TikTok from 50,000 to over 4.2 million followers in a little over a year.
In Duolingo’s first month with Parvez’s new strategy, there was a 1,900% increase in follows in just over a month.
@duolingo This is an SOS #DuolingoEmployee #owltok #livelaughlove #helpme #imscared
Above is Duolingo’s first video marking its new content strategy efforts.
If you’re not sure how to use TikTok to your brand’s advantage, read our beginner’s guide.
The challenges of TikTok:
TikTok presents editing and production challenges. For example, if you want your video to stand out from a sea of tens of thousands of videos on the platform, it must look well-edited and professionally produced.
Another challenge is using hashtags correctly. Users either follow specific hashtags or search by hashtags, so to increase exposure, you must use hashtags strategically to increase exposure.
Trend 5: Connecting with customers through SMS marketing conversations.
SMS messages have an open rate of 98%, making texts the superior marketing channel. In addition, text messages are fast, with 95% of texts being read within 3 minutes of being sent with an average response time of 90 seconds. On the other hand, emails severely lag behind with an average response time of 16 minutes.
So, knowing how powerful SMS marketing efforts are, how will companies leverage this channel? By having customer conversations through text messages.
66.5% of consumers opted to receive texts in 2021, and 70% of consumers want to connect with brands in real-time.
Companies can use SMS text messaging to:
- Alert customers of discounts on products
- Recover abandoned carts
- Send product updates
- And more
For example, Cartloop, an abandoned cart recovery company, offers SMS conversation services to help Shopify stores.
Cartloop employs customer service agents to send real-time text messages to customers who abandoned their carts. This is a step beyond chatbots because customers receive real human-to-human interaction.
The challenge of real-time customer conversations:
SMS messaging efforts require customer research as it may be difficult to know what type of customer engagement messages your customers want to receive. This helps determine which messages are most likely to be successful for each type of customer.
Next, you must consider the time and location constraints when sending these messages. Ideally, your customers should receive your messages in real-time, within their preferred locations and time.
Trend 6: Investing in social commerce.
During the pandemic, brands rushed to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to provide online shops in place of their physical stores. As a result, social commerce is taking the commerce world by storm, projected to grow from $89.4 billion to $604.5 billion in the next seven years.
Social commerce is the process of selling products and services from social media platforms. And with more and more social media platforms enabling customers to pay without leaving the app, this creates a seamless customer experience unmatched by any other.
Clothier Modcloth advertises its clothing on Instagram.
The challenge of social commerce:
Social commerce is an evolving field with new trends and technologies constantly emerging. Social media marketing is also changing, so businesses need to stay on top of recent trends and technologies. Without the support of consumers and influencers, it’s challenging to succeed. While social commerce can be exciting, it’s a challenging field requiring dedication and patience.
Parting Tip: Keep the momentum going as regularly to capture multiple segments across multiple time zones
Consumers increasingly turn to social media channels like Facebook and Instagram to make purchases directly, with more than two-thirds (68%) of consumers have done so, and nearly all (98%) consumers are planning to do so in 2022.
With these factors in mind, it’s paramount to keep your social media channels updated and engaging. This will help you reach new audiences and expand your reach.
One of the most effective ways to engage with your audience is to consistently update your social media feed to ensure you capture multiple segments across multiple time zones.
You can do this with a tool like MeetEdgar. MeetEdgar is your social media’s best friend and helps you monitor multiple social media channels in one place.
You can track which times of day users are most active on your page and what content they respond best to. You can also see what time zones users are most active, especially important if you have a global presence.
Every time you post something, Edgar records historical and performance data, so you’ll know what your audience responds to best and can adjust your posting schedule to capture more engagement. A/B testing options, link tracking, and advanced analytics are all included with your MeetEdgar subscription.
The challenge of consistently updating your social media feed:
There are two main obstacles that can get in the way of consistently updating your social media feed:
- Time
- Motivation
If you don’t have enough time to manage your social media accounts, it can be difficult to keep up with the current trends happening in your industry. In addition, if you don’t feel motivated to update your account regularly, then you could become discouraged and stop posting altogether. To consistently keep up with your social media feed, it’s easiest to use an app like MeetEdgar to help you stay on top of your game.
A Parting Thought
They say that the future is a combination of technologies that people didn’t know existed just 5 years ago. Digital marketing is constantly shifting, and it’s difficult to predict the next digital marketing innovation. Still, if you want your brand to stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to anticipate future digital marketing trends. In this article, we outlined some of the top trends in digital marketing that we expect to see in 2022. We hope that this information will help you plan for the future and continue to grow your brand. Are there any other digital marketing trends you think will become popular in the next few years? Let us know in the comments below.
The post 6 Surprising Top Trends in Digital Marketing in 2022 appeared first on Meet Edgar.