The Digital Marketing Trends to Watch Out for in 2022

Digital marketing in its true essence is the process of using the internet or other digital forms of communication to reach out to potential customers. But digital marketing is a broad terminology that encapsulates anything from websites, blogs, and ad campaigns to social media, emails, and more! Let’s dive into why digital marketing makes sense for every business.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

1. Better reach
   Let’s face it – everyone is online now. It’s just become easier for brands to connect with their customers, even potential ones, through social media, search engines and targeted ads. You no longer have to play Russian roulette with ads – there’s an actual science behind it, which you can master with the right digital marketing courses to equip you. 
2. Cost efficient
   The primary goal of any organisation will be to reduce their cost of acquisition/acquiring a customer. Digitally, it’s called cost per click. You can run multiple ads online for the price of one billboard at a town square.
3. Easy to track
   The results are easily quantifiable given the right tools. It’s easy to understand how a consumer engages with you and thereby run experiments on optimising successful campaigns/formats.
4. Better conversions
   The time taken for any potential customer to convert is significantly lesser with digital marketing. Ie, customers can take action almost immediately if your content is convincing.

We’re not saying one medium is better than the other. Different mediums suit different businesses – depending on whether you are B2B or B2C, and who your target audience is. Different tools and types of digital marketing kick into play for different phases of the sales funnel. For instance, if you’re looking for customers to become aware of your brand, blogs and websites are a great content marketing tool. This builds awareness at the top of the funnel. But digital ads or emails can help convert a person quicker, and fall into the bottom of the funnel. But the funnel might now become an outdated concept – keep reading to see why!

Types of Digital Marketing

1. Content Marketing: According to Hubspot, content marketing is important because it answers your audience’s questions and helps you build trust, develop relationships, improve conversions, and generate leads. In today’s age, customers expect high-quality, consistent content from their favorite brands. Brands choose to engage with customers using videos, blogs, infographics, testimonials, influencers, etc. While the content may not be outrightly about selling the product, it builds awareness, and educates consumers on a service/product/industry.
2. Social Media Marketing: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, even Tiktok, are some of the most popular social media platforms that marketers use to engage with the audience. Easier to reach people, easier to drive traffic and convert, no wonder marketers around the globe have specialised into understanding each platform and how best to leverage them.
3. SEO: is the craft of making sure your content becomes attractive to search engines. Constantly evolving, this deals with: How does your content rank over competitors so that it’s noticed by high intent consumers? It’s an art and science that has many invested in it heavily. 
4. Affiliate Marketing: This is an innovative way of getting other brands and individuals to drive traffic to you in exchange for a commission. Many top brands like Amazon (Amazon Associate program) use this.
5. Email Marketing: If you’ve ever opted to become a subscriber or if you’ve ever purchased anything from a brand, email marketing then kicks in to keep you abreast of updates, sales and so on. This is an ongoing initiative that keeps people coming back.
6. Digital Advertising: An aggressive strategy, you can buy/bid for top positions for relevant searches in your category. You spend with every click a consumer makes, i.e., Cost Per Click.

Back to the Basics: What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing in 2022: 5 Trends to Watch Out For

With such a fast-paced field, you have to constantly keep evolving and staying abreast of trends. So what does the coming year have in store?

1. Video content will take priority like 2021, but the formats will become shorter
2. Is your website and content mobile-optimized? Focus on driving traffic with a mobile first approach
3. Influencer marketing – leverage it all you can!
4. SEO will dominate most marketing strategies. Having a robust content marketing strategy can have long lasting effects on brands
5. Experiential marketing that adopts AR/VR will be big 

BONUS: Marketers will move from the funnel to the flywheel, which is a self-sustaining marketing strategy that keeps a steady stream of traffic and leads. Hubspot first adopted this model having noticed that the conversion was not the only goal, it was to also ensure a good customer experience. Content will overcome the inertia it now faces with this model. Read more about this here. 

What’s most interesting is that Emeritus offers you a chance to learn more about all this and more from industry experts in the field you are interested in. Be it content marketing strategies, social media or analytics, you’ll get the know-how you need. So, don’t forget to check out these online digital marketing courses to give you an idea of how you need to prepare for the future and invest in your own growth.

By Preethi Thomas