Digital marketing strategies in 2022 is an updated version of the 5 most incredible tips for success since best practices change over time. The tactics you found effective last year may need a little polishing based on changes on digital marketing platforms, such as Google Analytics moving to GA4 and Alexa’s tool for benchmarking with your competition is now gone. So are third-party cookies. With so many experts sharing their opinions on what makes for the best digital marketing strategies in 2022, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to make changes. So, read on to discover how to adapt your digital marketing strategies.
Also, it’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing trends, especially in highly competitive markets, such as the United States. Currently, the country is awash with lucrative marketing opportunities along with limited scope and resources for marketers to make their marketing strategies more customer-centric and future-proof.
If your business is based in Seattle, a Seattle marketing agency offers a partner who will work with you on all aspects of your marketing, from website design and development to social media management and email marketing with expertise in the local market. Plus, the agency can also help you grow your audience by connecting you with influencers in your industry.
If you’re new to digital marketing, here’s a great post showing just how different digital marketing is from traditional marketing. If you try to use your old tactics in this new medium, you’re destined to fail. To get you started if you work with another agency or DIY your digital marketing strategy, here are the top 5 tips for success with your digital marketing strategies in 2022.
Changes impacting digital marketing strategies in 2022
- Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2022 to reflect its emphasis on the metaverse. While VR/AR (virtual reality/ augmented reality) is still in its infancy, getting in now is a great move for e-commerce brands, especially. For instance, one of the biggest challenges in e-commerce is imagining yourself with the product. Virtual fitting rooms powered by VR reduce this challenge while VR/AR puts potential visitors in your vacation spot.
- Privacy challenges are growing. The EU has strict privacy controls that require businesses to get explicit permission from users for things like cookies and subscriptions. California followed suit. Thus, websites need to get visitors to agree to cookies and post privacy policies on their websites or face legal penalties. To help with this important issue, Google uses a website’s adherence to these standards as a minor ranking factor in its search algorithm. Third-party cookies are going in 2023, which eliminates advertising options to reach users who visited a competitor’s website.
- Speaking of the search algorithm, Google continues updating the algorithm to force websites to improve the user experience they offer. Load speed gained more prominence in the algorithm over the last year.
- Digital marketing is increasingly sophisticated as marketers employ AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to more marketing problems such as deep personalization.
- With the spread of advertising to more platforms (TikTok is now Beta testing it), engagement is more critical than ever before.
- TikTok gained users faster than any other social platform over the last year. Growing to 1 billion in just 4 years, it’s a platform you must consider, especially if your target market includes young consumers, as you can see below.
mage courtesy of Wordstream - Users still prefer Google as their search engine of choice with over 90% of searches happening on the engine. With the increase in voice search, queries are longer and more conversational, which means you need to rethink your keyword strategy.
Digital marketing strategies in 2022 you need
Master the art of storytelling
When you think of storytelling, you probably imagine a child sitting at the feet of their parent, listening intently to a summer campfire tale or tales of princes and princesses. But as it turns out, storytelling is just as effective for marketers. One key to effective storytelling is that the narrative of your brand is consistent across all platforms so that, if someone sees a piece of content on one platform, posts on other platforms they use tell the same tale by sharing messaging, images, and color palettes, etc. Storytelling must also contain value for the users by providing entertainment, information, or insights they can use. Posting content that promotes your brand explicitly doesn’t work.
To master storytelling for business purposes, start by defining what kind of story you want to tell: do you want people to feel happy? Excited? Inspired? You can choose any emotion at all. Once you decided on the type(s) of feelings you’d like people to experience when thinking about your product or service offerings (or both), let those emotions guide how things go from here onward through every step in creating content (e.g., write descriptions, so they evoke excitement) until everything comes together seamlessly at its conclusion (e.g., make sure customers were satisfied before leaving).
Humanize your brand
You can also humanize your brand by emulating the qualities of a real person rather than sounding like a robot in your content. Digital marketing isn’t a press release, do ditch the formality. Don’t feel obligated to use complete sentences or to step into vernacular language. Also, develop a personality, like the ones shown below, to help humanize your brand.
Use humor to help humanize your brand but, be careful as some humor doesn’t play well in all contexts.
Another way to humanize your brand is to show your people. Johnsonville Sausage does a great job of this, even using employees in its commercials to bring the company down to earth. Live your company values and show how you live those values in the content you share. For instance, if your people serve food at a homeless shelter or walk dogs at the ASPCA, take pictures to share on social media. Younger consumers are especially moved to make a purchase when they believe a brand shares their values; even a willingness to pay more for their products. Seventy-one percent of consumers surveyed in a recent study preferred to buy from a brand sharing their values.
Make more videos and stop depending on images
It might surprise you to find out that video is not only a great way to engage with customers, but it’s also an excellent way to tell your story. Video has so many advantages over images:
- It’s more shareable than images (and more memorable). This means that more users will discuss your brand in the future and recommend it to others based on their own experiences.
- It’s more engaging than images (and searchable). Videos are easier for search engines like Google to index and understand, which helps with SEO rankings. They also encourage engagement from viewers on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter—whereas static images don’t really do much.
Focus on experiential marketing
Experiential marketing is all about creating an improved experience for your customers.
One of the goals of experiential marketing is to create an experience that leaves a lasting impression on your customers and prospects, making them want to come back to experience your brand.
There are many different types of experiences you can create for your customers:
- Hosting events at your store or office where people can learn more about the products you have to offer and make purchases in person. Using AR/VR supplements these in-store events for those who can’t make it to your store due to distance enhances your reach. You can also store these virtual experiences to share on other platforms and allow prospective customers who have timing issues to enjoy the experience.
- Sending gifts or simple thank you notes to customers who made recent purchases (this could be anything from a bottle opener shaped like a fishhook to an embroidered blanket with their name on it depending on the value of their purchase)
- Creating videos that show how much fun it is working at your company. Recently, I received an email thank you from a non-profit I support. In the email was a video link in which the executive team thanked me personally for my support, even referring to how I supported their efforts.
Create content for all the stages of the funnel
The first and most important step is to create content for every stage of the funnel. Above, you can see examples of the different types of content that fit each stage in the conversion funnel. This means creating educational and inspirational content for those at the top of your funnel, marketing-focused content for those in the middle, and sales-focused content for those at the bottom.
Before we get into this, let’s talk about what happens if you don’t have any of these types of content on your website: You’re leaving money on the table. If someone comes to your site looking for information but doesn’t find anything that resonates with them or solves their problem, they won’t convert into paying customers. They leave without buying anything from you—and they might not even come back again.
Hence, it becomes highly crucial for you to create interactive content designed to address consumer needs at every stage of the funnel, which improves the chances of customer retention and conversion.
Wrapping Up
These trends will continue to shape the future of marketing in 2022 and beyond. Follow the right strategies, and you’ll find yourself well on your way to success in this ever-changing field.
With these tips in mind and a dash of creativity, the digital marketing strategies in 2022 will see a bigger return. As long as you don’t forget the demands and needs of customers, you can build on these strategies to meet the ever-changing needs of your market.
To sum up, we believe that the best way to approach digital marketing in 2022 is to focus on relationships and authenticity. This means creating content that humanizes your brand and helps your audience relate to it. By prioritizing people over technology and products, you can be confident that your efforts will be noticed—and appreciated.
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