How to Win at Marketing in 2022
Over the past year, marketing has experienced significant developments in the way businesses communicate with their target consumers. While the same can be said for most years, 2022 holds some interesting and yet-to-be determined possibilities in the marketing world — particularly when it comes to changes in the digital landscape. By planning ahead and taking stock of upcoming trends now, you can develop a winning marketing strategy for your business in the new year.
Top Marketing Trends to Watch in 2022
While there is no magic formula that will unlock the door to marketing success, the best place to start is by gaining a thorough understanding of current trends. Read up on the following eight top marketing trends to learn how you can incorporate new technologies and marketing techniques into your strategy this year:
Metaverses
Don’t mistake the metaverse as a passing craze: Small businesses have a lot to gain from leveraging the power of metaverse relationships between platforms in their marketing efforts. As consumers experience the world around them through more and more virtual means, brands will have a nearly limitless range of new opportunities to reach them. While the whole concept is still in its infancy, it’s safe to say that the metaverse will have a disruptive impact on the marketing industry as a whole. The businesses that adopt this into their overarching strategy early on will be the ones to win out in the end.
Content
One of the things that businesses struggle with the most is releasing the content they’ve worked so hard to create. Waiting for perfection can often come at a crippling cost to companies trying to get in front of new consumers. While it’s important to put out quality content, analysis paralysis can keep you from taking center stage — especially if your competition regularly releases content that resonates with your target audience.
As a photo and video company, we definitely identify with wanting content to be flawlessly designed; however, sometimes done is better than perfect. Especially with the speed at which the world moves, every moment spent hemming and hawing over minutia is an opportunity lost for your company to:
- Increase Sales: According to Techipedia, brands with higher content consistency are worth 20% more than those that are inconsistent.
- Increase Awareness: By posting consistently on the right days and times on the right platforms, brands have seen increases in social following by up to 30%.
- Increase Trust: Content creation is how brands build relationships with their audiences, and a consistent content schedule helps strengthen these relationships by giving your consumers something valuable on which they can rely.
Video
While video is nothing new, the formats and placements for these videos will be. Short-form video content in particular has completely transformed the social media sphere with platforms like TikTok and YouTube only catering to video content creators. Even Instagram has announced a major shift as the company works to adapt its platform to better serve video content to its users.
Of particular note, the 16:9 aspect ratio is losing popularity with a 9:16 portrait ratio taking its place. The main reason for this change is because consumers are on their phones now more than ever before. People watching from their phones are less likely to flip the screen to view long-form, horizontal video content. Find new ways and options for video formatting to keep in line with how your audience communicates and experiences the world.
Micro-interactions
To continue the conversation on video content, micro-interactions will play a critical role in 2022. What are “micro-interactions” you ask? We define these as videos under five-seconds long that explain everything there is to know about your brand. Instagram stories, reels, TikTok videos, and YouTube shorts are just a few examples of this type of content in action. This vertical content is tapped, not scrolled, allowing you to capitalize on clickable real estate when placing your creative in front of consumers.
Because content will be so much shorter, you’ll need to create many more varieties. The old saying used to be that an individual needed to see your brand seven times to remember it. In today’s age, we already see this number skyrocketing much higher as attention spans become shorter and the digital landscape becomes much larger and interconnected.
Cost
This point won’t win over any wallets, but in 2022, you can bet on higher marketing expenses as social advertising becomes more and more diluted and ads get more and more ignored. Placing non-skippable ads will be of paramount importance, but this almost always comes at a higher cost. While a rise in cost might not happen across the board, it’s important to plan and budget accordingly so your ads can have the highest impact and rate of return.
Storytelling
As aforementioned, micro-interactions — particularly in the form of video content — will be critically important for brands to incorporate. To take care of both variety and volume, creating micro-interactions that work together to tell a larger story will grow in popularity. The layering of this is going to be crucial to building an effective funnel, retargeting properly, and using a multichannel approach. You and your team must consider how each platform works together (especially if it falls within the Meta umbrella of companies) so you can identify unique opportunities to tell your entire story across the metaverse.
Competition
With the release of iOS 14 and 15 in 2021, it is getting increasingly difficult to track consumer activity with iPhones. As a result, marketing competition has become incredibly stiff as businesses vie for the same ad space, no longer having access to the data that helped demystify how to reach the right people in the right place at the right time. This will force agencies to become more creative, particularly when it comes to ad placements. Many agencies may resort to traditional media buying and unique campaigns that may not even exist within the digital landscape.
Audience
Building, reaching, and understanding your audience is nothing new in marketing, but that doesn’t mean it’s gotten any less important. Especially as the digital world expands and changes, it will become critical for companies to understand where their audience exists and how they experience their surroundings. With the metaverse on the horizon, reaching audiences in virtual reality will also become a top consideration when creating an effective marketing plan. Tools like SparkToro can analyze your audience so you can identify the platforms they are using most and find out how to reach them more easily.
Get Help with Marketing Your Small Business in 2022!
Keeping your business on-track for marketing success in 2022 is a huge undertaking. Allow the team at Signature W Studio to take the pressure off your shoulders: Our marketing experts are here to help create the winning strategy you need to satisfy your business objectives this year. Receive a marketing quote for your small business by contacting us online today!
