Digital marketing is now a key part of small businesses. Technology trends influence the strategies that are most effective in reaching your target market. In 2022, key trends include providing authentic content, chatbot service, optimizing for voice search, using social media marketing, and creating an engaging user experience. It is important to think about which trends are most beneficial to your business and which you should avoid. This article was written for small-business owners and digital marketers. It focuses on major trends in 2022 and where to focus your marketing efforts.
Although many marketing principles remain the same, the tools that businesses use to succeed in marketing are changing. Newspaper advertising was once commonplace. Today, digital advertising and artificial Intelligence play a critical role in marketing strategies for businesses.
Each year, entrepreneurs need to be aware of new technological trends. Staying ahead of the curve could lead to new levels of success in marketing for business owners. These are the 10 trends that small businesses should be aware of in 2022.
Top 10 Tech Trends That Are the Future of Marketing
1. Authentic long-form content
For small businesses with limited budgets, authentic content can be a powerful marketing tool. But you will also want to keep it long-form. 2021 was the year that Instagram and TikTok created three- to five-minute videos. 2022 will see the pendulum swing in the other direction, with 1,000-to-7,500-word articles becoming the norm.
This is true for both blog posts and articles, as well as video and audio content. Talking about subjects, Now this is a great way to increase customer interest and build brand awareness and brand loyalty. Trust can be built by showing that you care more than just about a sale.
No matter whether your content is a social media post or a blog, it should be balanced between highlighting your products as well as providing useful, actionable advice.
2. Chatbots and conversational Ai
According to revenue acceleration platform Drift’s State Of Conversational Marketing Report shows that almost 42% of consumers use AI chatbots and conversational to make purchases. However, most small-business owners were not aware of the technology. Chatbots or more advanced conversational AI is able to answer basic customer questions at any hour of the day and night. Even if you are focusing on different tasks, it doesn’t matter.
Joey Penick (Vice President of Marketing at Lumen Technologies) stated that AI-powered chatbots could be used to support customers and expand contact strategy with controlled messages.”These chatbots are so lifelike, many customers don’t know the difference, “They also have the advantage of being able to gather, analyze, and share data and provide actionable data that can help improve customer experience.”
3. Voice search
Voice search can be a powerful tool for small businesses to stand out from the rest. With voice services such as Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana increasing in popularity voice search is one way that your business can stand apart. There’s a greater chance that people will search for your website and marketing materials online in 2022 and beyond.
Chris Hornak, the founder of Blog Hands, stated that “a few years ago we had to adjust to the growing usage of mobile.” According to Google, mobile searches now account for more than half of all searches. Voice searches currently account for 20% of mobile search results. Marketers will need to adapt to voice searches and this is expected to continue its growth in the same way as mobile.
In 2022, a simple method you can use is to answer questions Hornak says that customers often ask questions about your product via your website. Hornak advises that you be conversational and detailed in your answers.
Also read: Top 5 Brand Experience Trends You Need to Hear About in 2022
4. Data analytics
While data analytics is a top priority for most brands, marketers still have a lot to learn, according to Curtis Tingle (senior vice president of product at Valassis, an intelligent media delivery company).
He stated that marketers must be able to make the most of the data they have collected. Customers are always giving their personal information to companies that they interact with, from purchase habits to favorite products to the best marketing and advertising methods to reach them. Customers are seeking some form of return with this data sharing, whether it is in the form of personalized advertisements or targeted coupons/deals.
Tingle’s observation is significant: Marketers must do more than just gather data. Businesses need to make the data meaningful and use it to improve their marketing campaigns.
5. Marketing via social media
Successful digital marketing campaigns will continue to rely on social media. In 2022, you can expect video, Instagram, live streaming, and podcasts to dominate the list. Facebook won’t be going away – it has staying power. LinkedIn will be more influential as influencers make use of it to amplify their voices.
2022 will be the year for experts with fewer but stronger followers. It is the niche that matters. Those who have little or no competition in the empty will be the ones leading the way.
6. New areas in e-commerce
Web3 is the center of e-commerce trends. Businesses use DeFi trends in order to raise their profile to new heights. Decentralized finance is also known as “DeFi”, which refers to cryptocurrency, blockchain, and non-fungible tokens. This new world of business can be conducted via blockchain and offers unique marketing opportunities.
Technologies such as the shared P2P ledger make it easier, faster, more secure, and more transparent to do business. Blockchain provides smart contracts that can verify, guarantee, and enforce transactions. There is also cryptocurrency or digital coins that can replace physical money in order to attract another type of customer.
Magnum Real Estate Group in New York, for instance, recently sold three condos on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to Bitcoin. Blockchain technology also offers agents the opportunity to network and share their knowledge, earning financial rewards.
NFTs, digital assets that are uniquely created by brands, are being used by brands as a trending method to market their products.
7. User experience
Customers of the future expect an interactive, user-friendly, and seamless online experience. whether that’s in an e-commerce shop or perusing a website. In 2022 Expect to see more push for a seamless, highly engaging UX with an emphasis on interactive, experiential, convenient, and personalized experiences.
Aylon Steinhart is the founder and CEO at Eclipse Foods. “We know users love engaging content that speaks to them,” he said. We are striving to create a page-experience-based marketing strategy that draws users in. But creating amazing content that attracts users is only one aspect of UX. It’s also about speed, visual stability, and mobile-friendliness. These tactics can be used in content marketing strategies to increase engagement and visibility.
8. The metaverse
The metaverse today is a futuristic mix of virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR), leading to a new immersive 3D experience that blurs the line between the physical and digital.
Examples include interactive ads such as NASCAR’s, on the interactive gaming platform Roblox. You can make your own avatars to allow you to experience the experiences, but not buy them. “Gamevertising” is a new term in the marketing industry that describes how brands and marketers use gaming to promote their products. This trend of gamevertising is a dominant feature in the music and movie industries, according to technology agency Wunderman Thompson.
Brands also use technologies such as augmented reality in the retail frontier to create blended shopping experiences. Buyers can “try on” clothes, “sit on chairs”, “live” in specific areas, and more.
Also read: What Role does the Metaverse Play in the Future of Customer Service?
9. A cookieless future
There have been many complaints about data collection privacy over the past two years. Google is leading the advertising technology industry by introducing its cookieless future in 2023. This will rectify the situation. Google will begin testing new advertising technologies near the end of 2022. Cookies rely on customer-provided data such as emails. To succeed, alternative cookie technologies will need to be able to access troves of quality first-party information.
What does this mean for marketers, advertisers and businesses? Prudent companies will be looking out for a future in which cookies are replaced by cookie alternatives to address customer privacy concerns as well as regulations such as the GDPR.
10. Keywords and SEO
The advantages of keyword and SEO strategies are still being maintained. Google’s page experience algorithm will be available in March 2022. The SEO instrument will evaluate loading speed, interactivity and visual stability, and HTTPS security, among other metrics.
Google is also focusing its attention on mobile with its Mobile First Indexing (MFI ) to rank mobile-friendly sites. This means that marketers should focus on the UX of mobile devices just as much as on websites. Google’s Multitask Unified Method (MUM) encourages publishers to give more complicated answers to simple questions. MUM rewards authoritative content.
Relevance of the basic principles of marketing
These trends will influence marketing in 2022, and beyond that doesn’t mean that you have to abandon immediately stop doing what you are good at and start using more advanced technology to market and grow your business.
Allen Adamson, an adjunct professor at New York University Stern School of Business and cofounder of Metaforce, stated that the basic principles of marketing and building a brand have not changed over the past 10 to 15 years. “What technology has done is increased the truth of what was already true.”
Adamson explained that even though there are many new marketing tools, word-of-mouth marketing is still important. In the past, people might have asked their friends where they could get the best hamburger. Adamson says that people now “ask all of their friends” to find the best burger joint in town by doing a quick search on the internet and reading reviews.
While marketing concepts have not changed, technology has magnified every success and failure. A bad burger might have led to one customer complaining to their friend and urging them to avoid the restaurant. An angry Yelp review could deter hundreds upon hundreds of potential customers.
It is important to understand the potential benefits of new technology tools for your business. However, if you don’t know how they can benefit you, it is pointless to add them to your arsenal. Adamson was the North America chairman for Landor Associates and advised companies such as HBO and Marriott.
He said, “It’s kind of like watching 8-year-olds play soccer. It’s just the ball. No one is playing defense.” Everyone is after the shiny object. It doesn’t matter how much technology you purchase, if it doesn’t work well you won’t have a competitive advantage in the market.
Some of these trends may not be necessary for you to take action. However, incorporating a chatbot into your marketing strategy or using authentic content may help your business achieve new levels of customer engagement and financial success.
How do you decide which new marketing technology to use?
Choosing the right technology for your business depends on your needs and those of your customers. It may be better to not follow a marketing trend, particularly if you don’t fully understand the technology or are only following it because other businesses do.
Ryan Gould (Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services at Elevation Marketing) stated that while we are moving faster toward a tech-dominant future, small and medium businesses must prioritize technology trends that can be leveraged for greater business growth. How can they achieve that? These four questions should be asked:
- Who are my audiences?
- Where and what are my business weaknesses?
- Can this technology close the gaps in my business?
- Are there enough resources available to support this technology over the long term?
Gould’s questions can be used as a checklist to ensure that you don’t jump unnecessarily on a marketing trend that’s not right for your business. You can take note of the 2022 marketing trends but you should also examine where your business is at this point.
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