5 Trends in Online Marketing

Each year brings new trends in online marketing. While 2022 seems to partially inherit what 2021 has brought to us, there are new things we need to be aware of. Online marketing is a rapidly changing field, and those who are not able to timely react to new tendencies, are left behind.

So, let’s dive into what to expect and what to focus on this year so as to keep our marketing efforts smooth and effective.

1. Focus on improved user experience 

Geo-tracking, device listening, and other tracking ways can give customers a feeling of insecurity because of being digitally monitored and that technology is intrusive. According to the research by Deloitte, 53% of people have a negative reaction to device listening—for instance, when a person chats with a friend about new jeans, and an ad by an apparel store appears on their Facebook feed. Meanwhile, marketing specialists need this data for smart targeting. 

So, companies and marketing teams need to find a balance between making their customers feel insecure with constant tracking and providing a positive personalized customer experience. 

In order to do this, companies need to build ​​trust. And there are three key points this trust can be built on—value, transparency, and security. Your business needs to provide real value to customers while being transparent about their tracking methods and ensuring that customers’ data is safe. This will help to keep providing personalized experience and relevancy of your marketing campaigns while not triggering fears of your customers.

2. Educate customers via online events

According to a recent study, 54% of customers reported that they are willing to watch more videos from brands they support while 84% of consumers claimed they purchased a product or service after watching a branded video. So, promotional video content can be very powerful and and even more powerful is content where your brand’s promotion is naturally integrated into an educational or informative video.

Among such educational video tools are webinars, workshops, and live classes which can present a product or service in an engaging way while providing some useful information. Webinars and similar online events led by companies educate their customers and promote their products in an unintrusive way. 

Moreover, such training and classes as a business and marketing tool have a number of benefits. First, it can help in building trust and loyalty to your brand as it shows that your company is an expert in the field and is willing to bring added value to its audience. Secondly, it can improve customer satisfaction by educating and showing your product from a less commercial angle. Finally, this is also a great sales tool. 

When creating webinars, consider these practices. First, gather all the main information your customers need. You can get this information from your support or sales team or just by exploring your online reviews. Second, encourage your customers to ask questions during a webinar and make sure you provide satisfactory answers throughout the event. Finally, involve external experts and industry leaders to talk on the subject related to your brand while also revealing how your company can solve issues within this subject.

3. Implement mobile-first thinking

Studies claim that about 73% of internet users will search on the Internet solely via mobiles by 2025. Today, this ratio of mobile vs desktop usage is almost 50 to 50. People are spending more and more time with their smartphones, while at home or when being out. As a result, this device is used for different tasks, including going through all stages of a sales funnel, from research to purchasing.

Moreover, Google, the biggest search engine, has already switched to mobile-first indexing since 2018, which means the search engine analyzes websites according to how they look on mobiles. This is also a powerful signal for marketers to focus on the mobile-first experience.

For marketers, all this means that websites and promotional materials should be created for mobile users in the first place. This usually requires hand-in-hand cooperation with UX designers who conduct solid research to offer solutions on how to provide the best experience with a website, a landing page, or an ad.

Moreover, when it comes to the technical side, the loading speed is what really matters. If your page or website loads longer than 3 seconds, customers will probably leave it and look for your alternative. So, test all your website pages or landing pages with this tool by Google to make sure they are within this standard.

4. Test influencer marketing

Influencer marketing means involving a person with a huge audience, an influencer, who can use their popularity to promote a product or a business. According to the survey, about 90% of marketers say that ROI from this type of marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

All in all, there are two main groups of influencers. First are niche influencers who are popular within a small but highly loyal and relevant audience. The second group is reach influencers who have an impact on a huge group of people but this audience is more diversified and less loyal. 

So, analyze what type of influence marketing will work better for your kind of business. For this task, you also need to consider a social media of a potential influencer and whether this is a network your prospects tend to use. Moreover, the main key to success here is that the influencer’s audience fits the company’s buyer persona. 

5. Cooperate with data scientists and dev teams

Data-driven marketing is a solid trend in recent years. This basically includes two aspects—building a marketing strategy based on customers’ personal information (interests, age, location, etc) and working with clear metrics and KPIs.

Both aspects require implementing tracking and analytics solutions which often need to be advanced to effectively gather all the needed data in a needed format. To implement such tracking within analytics tools like Google Tag Manager, BI, or similar ones, marketing specialists often need to cooperate with data analytics. Data-driven marketing usually also requires an advanced analysis and building complex predictions on product performance or customer behavior. In this case, a marketing team needs to cooperate with data scientists to get such an analysis and data for making decisions. 

Additionally, customers today are more demanding when it comes to digital products, which means using custom features within websites and landing pages. This often requires the help of software engineers.

So, by cooperating with other teams, marketers can get the best result out of data and resources given. This is especially true for products that are technology-focused.

Wrap-up

In a nutshell, 2022 can be defined as a year of improved user experience and effective cooperation. If we can leave our customers or prospects satisfied, it means there are more chances that marketing campaigns will be successful. Moreover, to get the best results out of our promotional investments, we need to cooperate with the right people to deliver the right message in improved forms with improved tracking.