13 TOP DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS OF 2022

Digital marketing, as we know it, has been growing and becoming increasingly complicated. A handful of people who have been able to diversify and get creative with their digital marketing approach enjoy some benefits. The ability to spot areas where others or only a few have explored provides an added advantage. There will always be the latest trends in the digital sphere that will render some trends obsolete. Knowing these latest trends early and maximizing your knowledge will surely put you ahead of the pack. With the latest trends, digital marketers could plan accordingly in line with the trends that bring their content to the consumers easily.

To guide marketers on what to latch on to in 2022 to get the most out of their digital campaigns, this article discussed some key trends to watch out for. These trends are based on expectations and projections based on how the industry has been transforming. Follow through as we discuss some trends that could sway the digital marketing industry in 2022.

Top 13 Digital Marketing Trends of 2022

1. Increase in both digital campaigns budget and expenditures:

   The explosive nature of the transformation seen in how marketers use various digital media to promote their products has always been consistent with one thing. The singular thing consistent here is the inevitable increase in the funds available to push these digital promotions. According to a report churned out by Dentsu, we can see a projected 9.2% global growth in ad spend in 2022, with the market level expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels by a whopping $117.2B. These projections are based on the impressive momentum we have seen in digital marketing in the past few years and how pivotal it has become in an organization’s product awareness strategy.

It would leave smaller marketing teams with little option but to ask for increased resources to lay claim to a considerable chunk of the market. The increase in ad spending is also because of the increase and emergence of new digital media that could easily unlock new leads and prospects for organizations. Marketing teams will evaluate and assess how to save costs by dropping off campaigns on some platforms. But it would surely be wise to cement their positions on media that have proven effective and returned an impressive return and interaction for the team. It won’t be surprising if teams and agencies ask for more, as this is a trend that will be very prominent in 2022 for better visibility.

Pros

• Organizations can endeavor to dabble in multiple strategies aimed at achieving the organization’s goals at an optimal rate.
• With more users getting involved with digital technology, more digital spending would translate to reaching more users and prospects.
• An increase in digital spending would ensure your organization remains consistent in its impressive consumer experience delivery while having the capability to take extra risks on newer means.

Cons

• Over time, increasing the digital marketing budget could make it exceedingly difficult to determine the true ROI (return over investments) from these expenditures.
• With enough funds to play around with, marketing campaigns can be overcompensating for some products.
• Increased digital marketing budgets could translate to a low focus on traditional marketing, which could be detrimental going forward due to over-reliance on digital marketing.

1. More AI Incorporation:

   With the concept of personalization continually waxing strong among users, AI (artificial intelligence) would no doubt be playing a key role. The key role is to understand consumer preferences better and have a higher conversion rate since those targeted in each campaign are likely interested beforehand. Accenture, a leading organization, is credited with a report that postulates AI has the potential to increase corporate profitability by an average of 38%. AIs have immense potential to enhance the customer experience. This would make the entire marketing campaign more productive by providing marketers with advanced insights into what users crave. With AI, your personalization for a wider enjoyable user experience is within your reach.

Which year could be deemed the year AI adoption significantly increases, if not 2022? All parameters are right to see marketing teams and agencies explore and invest more in AI-powered technologies.

Pros of using AI

• The content will be representative of the targeted audience.
• AI help make interactions between your content and users smooth with little or no hassle.
• AI will provide you with a discernible pattern of your consumers’ behavior for informed future campaigns.
• With AI, the decisions made around each marketing campaign will be more accurate and decisive.

Cons of using AI

• There are still a handful of limitations since AI isn’t human.
• You could easily overstate your expectations and projections using AI, throwing more realistic projections in the wind.
• The amount of data needed for AI to fully process and understand consumer behavior could be voluminous, and these data must be of excellent quality.

1. Increased Usage of No-Click Searches (Featured Snippets):

   When users try to get more information via search engines, the search results always include a snippet of what users want. In short, snippets make it easy for users to be shown exactly what they searched for without having to click on any of the pages shown during the search. This might be a worthy area to venture into for digital marketers looking to hop in on the latest trends. The use of snippets can be instrumental in enticing prospects to interact more with your brand. Showing prospects what they ask for makes your website and page more credible. These snippets build trust instantly in your content and would make prospective customers want to turn to your page in the hope of having answers to any other questions that haven’t been answered yet.

This trend would surely be a big hit in digital marketing for those who are able to make the best use of them.

Pros

• Increased website traffic since your pages provided some help already through these snippets.
• As a pathway to further search engine optimization, this could increase Keyword Ranking for your page.
• Joining the trend of employing snippets creates awareness for your brand, making your digital marketing campaigns more effective and profitable.
• Your brand will be able to enjoy more visibility with snippets from the search engine.

Cons

• Investing time and resources can be counterproductive at times since only a handful of queries and searches have an answer box.
• The number of entities working hard to get on these featured snippets could make it very discouraging and appear insurmountable.
• Despite the high conversion rate that could be derived from snippets, a handful of prospects would be satisfied with the answers they get in the answer box.

1. The Demise of Cookies:

   The recent cookieless world announced by Google will see it stop supporting third-party cookies on its Chrome browser. This decision, no doubt, will have an immense impact on the digital marketing campaigns embarked on by teams and agencies. Chrome remains a widely used browser globally, and planning digital marketing campaigns around the demise of these cookies it supports by the end of 2023 is wise. This trend will undoubtedly start gaining traction in 2022. All digital marketing decision-makers should be pragmatic enough to hop on this immense trend before they are backed into a corner. Anyone with other thoughts about this trend not coming to fruition should be careful. Consumers are increasingly wary of data collected by organizations and want more control over the data they share with organizations.

What to expect from a cookieless world are

• The extent of ad data and third-party data processing will decline.
• There will also be a decline in the quantity of data available for marketing teams to use.
• There will also be a sharp decline in the availability of this data used to target consumers.
• And lastly, the quality of this data could also easily decline.

Pros

• This would give marketing teams ample opportunity to find newer means of reaching their targeted audience.
• Trust would be easily built between organizations and consumers since consumers have a credible say in what they share.
• Organizations that start making plans around this trend would be able to make their platform more compliant with all the dynamics that could be presented by a cookieless world.
• Websites without cookies or those that give more control to consumers over the data collected would be free from issues around privacy.

Cons

• Low access to large datasets that have been previously instrumental in targeted ads.
• There would be great difficulty in understanding users’ preferences to think ahead of them.

1. Data Analysis:

   With the increasing amount of data sets available to digital marketing teams and agencies, creating a strategy can be daunting. Spotting a pattern within humongous datasets could inform a better marketing strategy that ensures the objectives and goals of marketing campaigns are met. This is where data analysis comes into play in spotting the patterns deeply lodged in the huge datasets at the disposal of marketing teams and agencies. Marketing personnel must be ready to imbibe the digital marketing trend of incorporating Data Analysis. With marketing data analysis, decision-makers will determine actionable insights and develop a workable marketing plan using all available data.

The year 2022 seems primed to see an explosion of data analysis in digital marketing. Digital marketing will go a long way in how marketers conduct their campaigns.

Pros

• Marketing data analysis will provide teams with areas they can improve on.
• Data analysis in digital marketing would allow teams to set priorities and know where their investment would be effective.
• It would also help teams to determine how well their competitors are performing.
• Marketing data analysis will provide you with strong empirical data that will allow you to present your projects to other decision-makers outside the marketing sphere and help them come to terms with whatever projections and ideas you are pushing forward.

Cons

• Embarking on marketing data analysis can be costly to teams because of the amount of data available and how the dynamics of patterns in consumer behavior vary.
• Securing a good data analyst could also significantly impact how well the datasets are analyzed.
• The quality of interpretation received from datasets is as good as the data being used in the analysis, as a bad dataset could make data analysis useless.

1. Visual Search:

   Another trend we hope to see gaining more prominence in 2022 in digital marketing is Visual Search. Organizations are striving to be well ranked on search engines because of the vital role they play in connecting consumers with organizations. But what we are noticing in the search trend of consumers is an increase in non-stereotypical search queries. Consumers are increasingly tilting towards using pictures rather than keywords for search. The ability of users to remember images and pictures should be a key player in how marketers explore the use of visual search. We are positive that this trend would play a significant role in how marketing campaigns are structured. With visual search, user experience can be further enhanced and increase how well consumers interact with various marketing campaigns.

Pros

• Visual search would transform the digital experience of consumers. Younger generations have shown preferences for visual search, with a whopping 69% of them preferring visual search as per this report.
• Visual Search can aid the SEO goals of the organization.
• Visual would trigger more consumer interactions, leading to more sales and revenue being generated along the line.
• Visual Search will provide users with an increasingly amazing new feature that makes finding items extremely easy for them in a way they didn’t envisage.

Cons

• There are still concerns in some quarters about searches not returning exactly what consumers searched for.
• If not effectively managed, the relative imperfections seen using visual search could lead to distrust and low consumer satisfaction.

1. Augmented Reality (AR):

   Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging marketing and sales strategies trend. It allows brands and marketing agencies to provide consumers with a unique experience accessible from the comfort of their homes via their mobile devices. Before the pandemic, augmented reality became a key tool and trend in digital marketing. However, it reached a credible height during the pandemic due to its options for consumers. It allows users to try out and evaluate products just as if they were right before them. Hopping on the AR trend could help brands drive sales and enhance the value of their brand. With a wider range of people adopting AR devices, position the brand’s digital marketing campaigns around enhancements that make them viable for Augmented Reality (AR). Deploying Augmented Reality makes your brand, and its campaigns stand out from the rest with disruptive technology like this.

Pros

• Augmented Reality is an emerging trend in digital marketing that allows brands to create a unique user experience for consumers
• Augmented Reality allows consumers to try out products digitally before they make any commitment.
• This is another tool that could potentially drive sales and interaction with your brand.
• Augmented Reality makes your brand very engaging to consumers and visitors.

Cons

• Usage and interaction are limited to consumers who possess devices that can create this shopping experience.
• The relative newness of this trend could translate into quite a few hits and misses that could affect stability and consistency.
• Developing and maintaining AR technology-based projects can be expensive.

1. Voice Search Optimization:

   Voice searches are rather more conversational and natural to many users. It allows them to make their search queries in a language and method they are comfortable with. As a result, marketing decision-makers are wary of these new developments and optimize their projects accordingly to fit into voice-related searches to ensure they are not missing this.

If the statistics here are anything to go by, the trend of voice searches for digital marketers should be a priority.

Pros

• This would allow you to invest more in understanding the keywords being searched by consumers.
• A website optimized for voice search would have an increased ranking regarding how well ranked it is on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
• A well-optimized web page could easily translate to content that understands users’ behaviors.

Cons

• There are still some users who still have big concerns about privacy issues that surround using voice searches.
• Language support can really limit how beneficial investing in voice search could be for your brand.
• There are still issues around frustrations that arise from the voice technology misunderstanding what the speaker is saying.

1. Google Verified Listings:

   The Google Verified listing affords your business to be more visible to people who have enquiries about what time you are open and closed for business. It also provides users with contact information and information about where your operations are conducted. Google Verified listings are a trend we envisage should become widely used in 2022. It would provide your business with a reliable infrastructure that people can fall back on to seek information about questions they might have. Verifying your business increases its trust and visibility. Optimizing your web pages to be visible for contact information should be a trend digital marketing teams are working towards in 2022.

Pros

• Increased visibility due to traffic that comes from Google searches via Google maps and other local searches.
• It is a free service but with enormous potential to propel your business forward
• It is a service that is relatively easy to use.
• You can use this tool to collect reviews from users and share reviews with users.

Cons

• There could be instances where competitor ads land on your business page, but Google is offering a way out by going premium.

1. Influencers will remain key: Social media influencers command a huge followers base for the content they create. A lot of marketing teams have always turned to these influencers when they are trying to get their products across to users digitally. We can say that this is a trend that has been around for a while, but we foresee more communications between these influencers and digital marketers. In 2022, these influencers would-be recipients of various allotments from the digital marketing budgets of agencies and teams. This is because of the continued attraction of online consumers to content that they find very appealing. The content churned out by these influencers would allow marketing teams to form a realistic idea about what their followers would be interested in. This would be even more prominent since we would usher in a cookieless world soon.

Pros

• Influencers present marketers with a readily available market that can be reached.
• Content created by influencers will allow teams and agencies to determine if they are the right fit to push their marketing campaigns.
• Influencers with huge followership could translate into reaching many audiences, depending on the size of the followership.
• Influencers also offer digital marketing teams an ample opportunity to create content that can be used for recurring digital marketing campaigns over one platform.
• We can easily measure ROI and other key indicators and metrics through affiliate marketing.

Cons

• It can be expensive to secure influencers that tick all the boxes.
• Finding the right influencers that fit the brand’s values and those of their customers can be challenging.

 

1. Chatbots:

   The breakthrough AI technology has brought about in marketing has been immense, and it will offer more in the future. Chatbots are essential AI that facilitates conversation between users and your platform, answering key questions and queries while you are unavailable. Chatbots keep users engaged in a manner that appears very human-like instantly, albeit with pre-set answers.

This is a trend that brands will probably employ to save time and human resources that could have erstwhile been deployed for the function performed by chatbots.

Pros

• They are effective in answering questions that are less demanding, saving you some resources.
• They make your pages quite engaging and interactive for users.
• It is always available for interaction with users.
• It can also analyze what users and visitors to your pages want. This data can be used to improve your chatbot and the web pages overall further.

Cons

• Chatbot technology still has some time before it nears perfection.
• Chats with chatbots don’t feel very human-like.
• Pre-set answers can mean users interacting with the chatbot get repetitive answers that keep going in circles without getting answers for what they seek. These chatbots can only be offered answers already pre-set in them.

1. Personalized Email Marketing Automation: The imminent demise of cookies has been key to how digital marketers target their audiences. More people will be turning to improving the automation of their personalized email marketing capabilities. Sending out authentic, relevant automated emails could be a way to stay ahead of the curve. You must be looking at how your marketing automation platform can be further improved. This trend could be a game-changer for marketing teams going forward.

Pros

• It is a workflow designed to automatically generate recipients based on specific criteria, making it more like a targeted marketing
• It always involves emails that are rich in context, highly relevant, and critically accurate.
• It is a very flexible tool aimed at generating revenue.
• This allows you to personalize your communications at scale.

Cons

• You would have been initiative-taking with due diligence to ensure your emails don’t land in the spam folder.
• Messages in the email can be over-generalized, making it somewhat irrelevant for the number of people who receive the emails.

1. Online Reviews:

   Businesses aiming to have a good grip over customer behavior consistently must be wary of their online reviews. Online review is crucial, especially when the business is local. It helps to shape the orientation consumers have about your brand. In 2022 you must continually find a way for your customers to post reviews about your products and services online. This is crucial because a lot of people trust reviews provided by past users to make their purchasing decisions. Including and targeting reviews as a wider digital marketing trend could bring you closer to your users and help you identify areas where you should improve your products or services.

Pros

• It practically cost you nothing, just a little more persuasion from your end.
• Online reviews would allow you to identify areas where improvements are needed about what you offer.
• Reviews also provide you with a means of studying, observing and understanding the behavioral pattern of your customers to make more informed decisions.

Cons

• Online reviews would demand you to be active, active enough to address issues and concerns raised by customers
• A negative review could easily trigger a wave of other negative reviews that could be detrimental if not contained and addressed with real urgency.

Finally, these are some of the trends we expect to gain prominence in the digital marketing world in 2022, not as a conclusive list. All decision-makers and key stakeholders in digital marketing should be on the lookout for how these trends can be incorporated into their systems while remaining open to other trends not listed here that might show up.

 

General Digital Marketing Trends FAQ

What is the current digital trends?

A major digital trend at the moment is augmented reality. Augmented Reality is a technology that allows users to interact with digital content in a more immersive way. It has been used in gaming for years but is now starting to be used in other industries, like retail and e-commerce.

Future of digital marketing

What will the future of digital marketing look like? Below are some of the digital marketing trends that are meant to grow stronger from 2022 onwards.

• The rise of AI and machine learning
• The continued growth of social media
• The rise of voice search
• The increasing importance of data privacy
• The growth of e-commerce

What are the 4 types of digital marketing?

The four main types of digital marketing are;

• Search engine optimization
• Social Media
• Content Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)