Future of marketing is a dynamic space and each year new trends appear from the rapid advancements in technology that are changing the behavior patterns of consumers towards almost everything that has been done before in marketing. 2021 being a tumultuous time for the world, digital was the one constant and there are sure to be many new trends in digital marketing that aim to offer merchants best options to maximize their efforts. While the principles of marketing may remain the same, the tools to achieve success in marketing efforts have been ever-changing. Here are few tools that will be critical to achieve success in digital marketing world:
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1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Marketing
AI has been the buzz word for every sector and has been taking the number position for many trends in the technology space as well as in digital marketing. Over 50% of the internet users have been noted to be already interacting with AI built chatbots over multiple applications and websites.
From using AI to move to automated tasks (Chatbots) to predicting customer trends, AI is a powerful tool that has the ability to analyze large sets of data and offer all possible solutions. In terms of digital marketing, it can analyze the data to suggest the best selling item/ offer and even a personalized ad. This empowers digital marketers to predict customers’ next moves and target them with relatable ads – right time, right place. Offering a chance of higher conversation rates without overwhelming them with ads.
JP Morgan and Chase have been known to use Persuado – an AI power content writing assistant that helps with their daily operational content writing. AI in digital marketing is a cost-efficient, precise and effective tool.
2. Metaverse and AR
Metaverse is forward thinking, futuristic blend of virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence – an immersive 3D experience. Facebook, now known as Meta, is presently the leader to build this world.
Using our own digital avatars, Metaverse aims to build a real world in the digital space, an avenue that has mega potential and is still largely untapped. With the gaming sector already making use of digital avatars and metaverse, digital marketing’s one of the prime trends for 2022 and moving forward is reaching the large population of this sector for social commerce with personalized and interactional content. NASCAR has been already using interactive ads on interactive gaming platform – Roblox that allows and offers users to create their own avatars and feel the experiences. Giving rise to the term ‘gamevertising’ – where marketers and advertisers make the best possible use of gaming to advertise their products. Music and movie industries are using this increasingly to build their new digital marketing platforms.
In AR, retail brands are making waves using the emerging tech to offer digital try-ons, building avatars, visiting a whole store digitally and buying limited edition digital merchandise.
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3. NFTs – Non Fungible Tokens
NFTs are digital assets that represent real world items like art, in-game items, video and music that one can trade. They have a unique token attached to each one of them that mentions that it is an original NFT and is owned by the person. While NFTs have disrupted the technology and art sector widely and are now seeping into the world of digital marketing. How can one make use of NFTs for digital marketing?
To build their unique customer base, to penetrate into the segments that a brand has not been able to before, marketers are trying every trick in the book. NFTs are now being offered as prizes for contests or winning a brand raffle. Marriott Bonvoy designed raffel and offered winners 2,00,00 Bonvoy points as well as their own NFT. Backed by Blockchain, one of the most coveted emerging tech trends, NFTs are here to stay for good and marketers must leverage on this trend in 2022.
Popular culture brands like Adidas have also been building exclusive campaigns making use of NFTs. Adidas in partnership with Bored Ape Yacht Club, Punks Comics and GMoney ( A crypto pseudonymous enthusiast) made NFTs and earned more than $22 million from sales in an afternoon ( for approx 30,000 Into the metaverse NFT’s). These NFTs gave the buyers access to special and limited edition physical goods like a tracksuit worn by the Bored Ape ( owned by Adidas) and other upcoming digital experiences. Some of the merchandise sold was pre-ordered making this a hit campaign for the brand.
4. Voice Search Optimization
Review42 conducted a research on voice search and found that 55% of the teenagers are using voice search every day. This scale of the growing population adopting voice search reflects how popular the tool is and how important it is to optimize this for brands.
What is fueling this further is the increasing adoption of google voice search and smart speakers that are present across millions of households today. Both these aspects show how consumers have adopted these changes and made it a part of their regular lifestyle. With Google claiming close to 95% accuracy on voice search, the higher precision offers the user and ease and hence more adoption.
Digital marketers here need to capture the trend in 2022 by making sure their websites and applications are ready for voice commands, search and more. Many brands are using this to with a mix of chatbots to answer consumers queries about products and services in a pre-recorded voice offering maximum amount of detail.
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5. New avenues of e-commerce
Livestream commerce, social commerce, metaverse commerce ( AR-commerce) and much more has become so integral to brands’ overall channels of sales today. China has been leading with a billion-dollar market in livestream commerce. Livestream is when a brand launches or introduces their products on a live platform and the audience can buy it live itself.
Social media is making an addition to incorporate commerce via its platform. Instagram has added a Shop feature for brands to enable and empower to sell during live video interactions. AR based gaming services are now integrating music, movie and retail partnerships in their games to offer limited edition products for gamers to buy during their gaming time, making it a real-time purchase with unique offering.
Such livestream reduces the time a marketers and consumer spends with an advertisement and promotes direct and in-time sale – making it one of the hottest trends of digital marketing in 2022.
6. Interactive content
Rise of chatbots and social media content has given rise to make content more interactive so as to keep one’s audience engaged and hooked. Customer interaction is growing at a large scale and changing the landscape of brands interacting with their consumers.
When the audience can actively participate rather than just passively reading, watching or listening to a brand’s content it is called interactive content marketing. Many researchers have noted that interactive content offers more effectiveness and drives traffic to the websites while educating the user more of the product and the brands.
A fine example of interactive and conversational marketing is how Airbnb has used this marketing tool to build a unique quiz for its customers that finds out their design personality and can be shared with other friends, making the brands more visible socially and increasing their website traffic.
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7. Personalized content
To outperform your competition, standing out with personalized content, emails and products is also becoming key. Researchers have found that the majority of customers find personalized content more appealing. Making it one of the most important tools for marketers. With emerging tech today, marketers can track the interactions a consumer has with the brand to form personalized content marketing strategies without any distractions.
Starbucks’ introduction of a gaming app tracked the number of times a customer visited and their purchase history, offering them a choice to customize their drinks and receive rewards. Their ‘reward system’ feature on the app spiked the revenue to over $2.5 bn.
Another fine example is how Netflix and Amazon offer personalized recommendations to its users for content to watch. Similarly music applications like Spotify are progressively making content more personalized for its users to keep them hooked.
8. Keywords and SEO
Both these tools have maintained their edge over the years and have now become even more niche than before. Hyperlocal SEO as a digital marketing tool is very helpful for start-ups and small businesses. It uses the new Google algorithm push that is focused on a person’s present NAP ( Name, Address and Phone number) to offer personalized results for general daily queries like ‘medical shop near me’, closest retail shop for clothes and more. Hyperlocal SEO tools are amazing for small businesses to form a strong regional market for themselves. The best use of Hyperlocal SEO is when it is set up with a Google My Business Account. Further, when this is combined with a voice search tool, people can easily find your business in their locality.
One of the hottest trends for 2022 within SEO will be Vernacular SEO, with google widely advertising its vernacular voice search and local search – marketers must make sure that their consumers from a town or village in Tamil Nadu have access to their website and content as well as ads and marketing campaigns in their regional language.
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Other few digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2022 are influencer marketing, micro-influencers, personalized pop-ups, YouTube shorts, social media stories, whatsapp marketing and few others.
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