Top 10 Marketing Trends You Need To Adopt To Stay Afloat In 2022 And Beyond

There’s only about a month left before 2021 comes to a close.  It’s now or never to make full use of your surplus end-of-year marketing budget to boost your brand’s presence. You should have drafted your marketing strategy plan for 2022 by now. If you haven’t yet, there’s no need to fret because you’ve still got a bit of time left.

By knowing the most promising marketing trends, you’ll be able to keep up with the changes in the search engine optimization (SEO) world in 2022 and beyond.

After the global pandemic affected all kinds and sizes of businesses since 2020 and possibly continuing through 2022 and beyond, a lot of the current trends are because of COVID-19. These include the dramatic increase in online shopping, decrease in marketing spending, changes in advertising visual imagery, and the rapid growth of social media as a primary marketing channel.

These trends are showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. This is why marketing experts have already predicted new trends in the foreseeable future.

Most effective marketing trends to adopt in 2022

Change is the only constant thing in the world – including the digital marketing world. To help your business prepare for the year ahead, you need to know what are the most effective digital marketing trends to adopt in 2022 and beyond.

1. Online shopping isn’t going to stop or slow down anytime soon.

Since the pandemic broke out early last year, e-commerce is increasingly booming. In fact, online sales are predicted to reach a staggering 5.6 trillion SGD by the end of 2021. This is based on the fact that there are 2.14 billion people around the world that are expected to buy online.

Even before the pandemic, shopping for goods and services online has become commonplace. For one, it’s convenient. For another, the prices of products and services are relatively cheaper when bought online. Plus, paying for online purchases has been made easier, thanks to numerous payment gateways, including PayPal, DBS PayLah!, hoolah, WorldPay, eWay, GrabPay, and more.

2. Online events are becoming increasingly popular nowadays.

Webinars, seminars, live streaming of product launches, and other online events have become the norm since the global health crisis hit. Because people were prohibited to go out in public places, businesses have adopted such change and brought brand events to their customers instead. Since then, more and more businesses have participated and even launched their own online events as a way of spreading the word about their brands without the need to go anywhere.

These events provide businesses with opportunities to directly gather data on people attending their events. The data can then be used to build customer profiles and personalize marketing messages. This eliminates the need to use third-party information, which can save a lot of precious marketing budgets.

3. A majority of consumers expect free shipping and speedy delivery.

A lot of people may be doing their shopping online, but they still want their purchases to be delivered to them as soon as possible. Unfortunately, COVID caused a huge shipping crisis worldwide. There had been delays in delivery due to various restrictions and protocols that need to be followed to ensure that parcels get to their destinations as safe and as clean as possible.

As a large part of the global population has moved away from lockdowns due to the pandemic, people are now expecting their purchases to be expedited. However, protocols are still in place. This is why free shipping is quite the deal-breakers for those who prefer shopping online. In fact, 90% of online shoppers say they will shop more often from shops that offer free shipping or shipping discounts. Additionally, 24% of them claim that they are willing to spend more to qualify for free shipping. This means that companies with free or discounted shipping have a 20% higher conversion rate.

4. Social media channels as a sales channel.

As of this writing, social media platforms have billions of followers around the globe. An estimated 54% of users use social media to research products they are interested in. These channels have users spending millions of dollars each year. This is why, the biggest social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, have gone out of their way to turn social media channels into sales channels.

Instagram, for example, introduced the Shopping tab in 2020 to allow users to check out new products they see on their feeds. Facebook also has a built-in storefront to simplify the process of uploading products, while Pinterest has buyable pins to promote items. Indeed, social media has become a central part of life, which is why brands should bank on this and use it to their advantage. With live shopping on Instagram and Facebook, brands can directly link the products they’re showing.

5. People choose to buy from local businesses.

Consumers are witness to local businesses struggling due to the pandemic. They can feel the brunt of local economies going down. This is why, as a way of helping out, more and more people are choosing to buy locally.

At least 65% of consumers are saying that they will buy from local shops, specifically those that advocate sustainability. This means that brands that adopt environmentally friendly practices will dominate the market from hereon. This gives independent retailers and smaller enterprises a competitive edge.

6. Visual commerce is becoming more and more popular.

Visual commerce is about using a number of ways to employ photos, videos, and even virtual and augmented reality to help educate customers and connect with brands and products. It takes marketing to a whole new level. Instead of simply showing photos of products, visual commerce takes it one step further by using other types of content, including interactive videos, user-generated content, interactive content, and augmented reality. In other words, it uses content to guide people through the entire shopping experience.

This is a powerful marketing strategy because humans are made to process visual information. In fact, it can process visuals 60,000x faster than text. What makes visual commerce effective is that pictures and videos are no longer just eye candy. They have become excellent tools for storytelling. Moreover, they help bridge the gap between consumers and products and between in-store and online experiences.

7. Conversational marketing is proven effective in improving customer experience.

Conversational marketing is used in online marketing campaigns to allow users to interact with brands through voice assistants and chatbots, which are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Recent studies show that 70% of users want their questions and queries to be answered instantaneously. This is why using conversational marketing in your campaigns is an excellent way to boost engagement, which will, in turn, increase conversion rates and ROI. Aside from that, it also helps your sales strategy to move pretty quickly because chatbots and voice assistants can pre-screen users and send only qualified leads to your sales team. This means that conversational marketing can help businesses collect a broader range of audience information that can, in turn, be used to improve your overall marketing strategy.

8. A highly personalized content experience is expected.

As the name suggests, it’s about providing a content experience that’s tailor-made to each user. Facebook, Netflix, and Spotify are some of the biggest brands that use highly personalized content experiences. The moment you open your Spotify or Netflix app, for example, they will display songs, playlists, movies, or series that will most likely interest you based on your previous browsing history. Similarly, Facebook uses an algorithm to determine the kinds of content to show on your newsfeed.

What makes this marketing trend is effective is that online users expect to get content that is useful and relevant to them. Experts say that since the COVID-19 lockdowns started, people were left with nothing else to do but browse all kinds of content for days on end. This has made society almost “immune” to content. So, by offering content that’s interesting and relevant to each of your audiences, you’re making your brand stand out.

9. Influencer marketing looks like it’s here to stay forever.

Brands have been partnering with bloggers and vloggers to create content for brands for many years now. The first-ever influencer marketing platform, PayPerPost, which was built by Ted Murphy, founder and CEO of BlogStar Network, was launched in 2006. It was created to become a marketplace where brands can directly and easily reach out to bloggers to promote their products and services.

Since then, brands from around the world have been reaching out to content creators to help them market their products and services. What makes influencer marketing better than traditional celebrity endorsements is that people tend to interact more with influencers, which means that they are more likely to react more to their campaigns. Aside from that, consumers trust personal recommendations than traditional advertising.

10. More social media trends.

Video content and live selling are the most popular new features on social media platforms nowadays. But, they’re definitely here to stay in 2022 and beyond.

With the unstoppable popularity of TikTok and video live streams on Facebook and Instagram, brands are now able to maximize the power of social media. And if that’s not enough, businesses can also upload products directly on their social media profiles so consumers can directly purchase through the different platforms. This makes it easier for businesses to streamline the customer journey, which in turn boosts conversions in the end.

Getting ahead in 2022

The goal of every business is to make as many revenues as possible. But to achieve that, you need to get ahead of the competition, not just in 2022 but also in the years to come.