Digital Marketing trends and features you should be looking out for in 2022

2022 is almost upon us and while many of us will be winding down for new year festivities, we’re also wondering what the next 365 days ahead will have in store for us. The digital marketing industry is an ever-changing one, and every year new features and trends are predicted or announcements are made. Whether they’ll truly make an impact on your businesses efforts in Paid Social, Email marketing or SEO is yet to be seen, but the potential payoff is what really gets us digital marketers excited.

While most things will stay the same, there is still a lot to be excited about. Join us as we break down what trends and features to expect from each channel during 2022. 

Paid social media marketing

Social media continues to grow year on year, as to be expected. Statista suggests that 3.7 billion of the world’s population uses social media in 2021, with that figure expected to grow to 4.41 billion by 2025. The gargantuan potential has been well covered in the digital marketing world, but you’re probably wondering what trends to look out for and prepare for when 2022 rolls around. 

During the coming year, we can expect to see video marketing take the front seat of social media advertising. This is mainly thanks to the growth of TikTok. The platforms undeniable growth and unique nature mean that it is now the go-to platform to run your campaigns. You can expect TikTok to dominate headlines as well as ad-spend over 2022 as it grows popular with more and more people, of varying ages as well! In 2020, TikTok was the worlds most downloaded app, hooking people in as a result of restricted socialising due to the pandemic. But now it presents the opportunity for businesses to capture a new audience and showcase their brand personality.

Get our top tips on how to get your brand started with TikTok.

TikTok leads us into our next trend prediction. With a new platform and new format of video, brings a new batch of influencers. More specifically, micro-influencers. These are influencers with a smaller following compared to your typical influencer. Their followings vary from 10,000 followers all the way up to 50,000 and provide the opportunity for brands to collaborate with them and their passionate fans. In 2022 we expect more businesses to turn to micro-influencers to get their products/services out there.  

With regards to your more traditional platforms in the shape of Facebook & Instagram, we can expect more features to roll out over 2022 to improve the shopping experience for not only the customers but also the business. Instagram has already rolled out the checkout feature in the US and begun trialling it in the UK, so we can expect a full rollout over the next year. This will provide more data and insights on the customer journey but also conversion stats. 

We also expect to see more businesses rolling out frictionless purchases, making the customers journey faster and more efficient. What we in the digital marketing industry and those concerned by eCommerce will have to do is alter the ads we run, the copy that is used as well as branding. Should your business be optimised for frictionless purchasing, you will want to be promoting your new USPs. For example, the one-click purchase or the use of monthly repayment services such as Klarna. These are all aspects of which people could be swayed by and buy from you as opposed to a competitor. Those in the business of PPC will want to consider altering their campaign copy to include a few words on this also.

SEO

SEO will continue to be the long-term efforts of digital marketing departments across the globe, with many of the same things expected to be at the forefront of next year, as they were this year. Page speed will continue to play a large role in web performance and rankings. While there is already a strong link between site speed, traffic and conversions, most sites are still struggling to meet the Core Web Vitals benchmarks set out by Google in July of this year. We expect to see site builders such as SquareSpace and Shopify spend more time and resources in decreasing the load times for their users due to the fear of losing customers as speed becomes expected and consumers become less tolerable of slow load times.

Our own Peaky SEO experts expect to see the revival of desktop continue into 2022. Thanks to the pandemic (not many things to thank it for, mind) the increased amount of people working from home has seen desktop traffic increase as more time is spent on them as opposed to mobiles. This means we can expect to see Google refrain from pushing it to the back seat just yet, as the WFH culture looks to be something that is sticking around. 

AI (Artificial Intelligence) will begin to play a greater role in SEO strategies of 2022. Since Google announced its AI algorithm RankBrain, many in the industry have been left to ponder how this will affect SEO. While the details have yet to be announced, many believe that user experience is one of its primary ranking factors. This means that click-through rate and time spent on the site by the user will be key factors that RankBrain will take into account. 

Email Marketing & PPC

Your email marketing efforts in 2022 are likely to prove more crucial than ever, with the restrictions for data tracking in the paid social department. iOS updates continue to restrict what data of consumers can be tracked as a result of paid social efforts, so it can be expected that more people will be turning to lead generation campaigns through social media ads and then using the database generated from this to utilise email marketing. The way the medium is used to market to your businesses to its customers will change in 2022 as a result of this. 

Looking to supercharge your e-commerce email marketing? Read our previous blog for our top tips.

As for PPC, featured snippets in SERPs and zero-click searches mean the consumer may no longer have to click on your link to get the information they desire – making it difficult for marketers to establish their return on investment. The solution may be here to alter the text that is previewed, and then alter it to entice the user into clicking. How altering the preview text affects SEO rankings is yet to be seen.

If you or your business are wondering what benefits you could gain from digital marketing in 2022, why not come to the experts. Here at Peaky Digital, we provide a boutique service of which will obtain you and your brand the best results possible. If you have any questions about how we could help you or what services we offer, please do not hesitate to get in touch.