Key marketing trends in 2022

Since shifting into the digital era, marketing as a discipline has evolved at a rapid rate. Gone are the days where you can print a marketing textbook with the "four p's" in it and expect it to be valid a few years later.

Todays marketers are multi-disciplined folk with an insatiable appetite for continual learning. Quite frankly, if you don't have a zest for learning new marketing concepts every few months, then you're likely to fall behind as a marketer. Traditional marketing may still have its place in "dinosaur" corporates, but in startup land you'll need to have a broad set of internet marketing skills that encompass growth marketing, growth hacking, data science, UI and UX design if you're going to make an impact.

As we move into the new year that is 2022, what trends can we expect to gain salience within marketing?

Machine learning in PPC

Like with mortgage rates Atlanta, AI and machine learning will continue to improve the way ad campaigns perform and minimise human optimisation. This may result in ad operation teams being downsized, but the upside is that company marketing budgets will be spent more wisely with improved ROI's.

An example of this is Google's Smart campaigns which it launched last year. It was introduced to simplify the complex process of managing Google Ads for small businesses, and since its launch it has proved to be a very popular tool for businesses of all sizes like courses for your IT business.

Core Web Vitals and EAT

Google continues to focus on Core Web Vitals. Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience. Following the precepts of Core Web Vitals should form an integral part of every digital marketing strategy in 2022. To ensure that they are constantly improving in this regard, last year Google announced that they'd be making core updates everyday.

In their words:

"Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our search results. Most aren't noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve."

The best way to be on the right side of these core web vitals updates is to focus on the quality of your content like this Cape Town storage company has done. Specifically adhering to EAT - expertise, authority and trust signals.

"Expertise" is really just being able to write content as a credible source of information. Do you have a high level of knowledge or skill in a particular field? Ultimately Google is looking for content created by subject matter experts.

"Authority" pertains to the domain authority your website has in the form or a DR (Ahrefs) or DA (Moz) rating. Domain authority derives from a multitude of factors including but not limited to, domain age, size of your website, and the quality and quantity of backlinks it has like this student accommodation website.

"Trust" is about the legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy of the website like this site on mobile phone deals for business. Having sufficient contact information and an "about" page is a good example of how one can foster trust.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing will continue to grow in 2022. As influencers become more prominent in new niches and sub niches, so will an advertisers ability to reach more defined audiences. A good example of this is the now infamous TikTok and Instagram train-spotter, Francis Bourgeois. With over 1.3 million followers on Instagram at the time of writing, brands like Gucci, The North Face and Puma have paid top dollar to partner with him.

Although it's clear that Bourgeois' appeal doesn't lie in the hobby of train-spotting, but rather in his quirky personality, he still attracts a well-defined audience. Pandemic-affected youths looking for an outlet of euphoria in what has been a rather dystopian last 2 years spent in a lockdown behind garage doors.

We must not forget that because influencer marketing is still nascent, the efficacy of brand advertising is so much greater than other channels. Savvy brands, like this virtual team building company, are taking advantage of this, and often at great discounts, with the knowledge that influencer marketing will eventually become saturated in years to come.