If you’re an entrepreneur, you already know you need digital marketing, especially if you’re at the beginning when budgets are low, and the risk of failing is high. Bigger companies can afford to be sloppy or take chances. And they also have whole teams of people doing research and experimenting with different marketing strategies.
Unfortunately, you don’t have the same luxuries. You can’t afford to waste money, and you don’t have much spare time either. So you need to be careful about how you invest your resources. One thing you can count on is that digital marketing will give you the best return on investment. It’s the most powerful and cost-effective to get your message across.
The only problem with digital marketing is that it has become a vast topic, and it’s constantly changing. With the pandemic, we’ve witnessed huge changes in the last two years. People changed the way they consume and relate to media, and companies have had to adapt.
This year, we wanted to help you get off to a good start by giving you a glimpse into the future of marketing and sales in 2022.
Strong Brand Image
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Branding has long been a crucial component of marketing and business. If you want to keep customers coming back, focus on storytelling and developing a strong brand image. Branding in 2022 involves a two-step or hybrid marketing approach.
The first step is to promote your brand through digital advertising. With time, these campaigns get more expensive. That’s unavoidable. Increased competition causes Google’s bidding wars to spin out of control, making it harder for small businesses to compete. But you can get a good return on your investment if you work with the right digital marketing agency.
Then you have to figure out how to keep growing organically. You can do this through organic content that provides value like tutorials, videos, web content, podcast, and newsletters. Investing in organic traffic will help your overall marketing efforts by increasing brand awareness.
Local SEO
Geofencing isn’t something new, and you can be sure that it will gain a lot more traction now that consumers are becoming more local-oriented. Brands can use geofencing to send tailored messages to consumers via SMS, email, social media, or in-app notifications.
Local SEO can also support geofencing initiatives. To optimise for local SEO, invest in enhancing maps business listings, creating a Google My Business account, and creating content based on local events or stories. Of course, the best way to win the local SEO game is to work with a local SEO company. Let’s say you’re from London. Then you’ll want to Google SEO agency London. See what we did there? They’ll know what works best in your area.
You also shouldn’t miss out on free resources like Google My Business to improve your local SEO and attract new customers.
B2B Marketing
Because most businesses primarily focus on consumers, business-to-business content is frequently overlooked. And that’s a shame because it can be VERY lucrative. The reason for this is that B2B searches are intent-driven.
If you have a business that regularly provides educational content on specific topics, you’re building brand authority and trust. This makes other businesses interested in learning more about your products or services, getting in touch, and working together.
Publishing long-form content like blogs, white papers, and video tutorials on specific topics will help your company get more leads and build trust with its audience.
Video Content on Social Media
Given that more than two-thirds of consumers say they prefer engaging with image-based content while half want more video content, it may be time to shake things up a bit in 2022. Like we said before, the pandemic has had a dramatic influence on how people consume and relate to media.
With TikTok and Instagram Reels reigning supreme, it looks like videos will be the most popular type of content on social media in 2022. Consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. In fact, 4 out of 5 say they decided to buy a product after watching a video about it.
You can take your video content one step further by adding interactive elements. This is a new trend in video content. It allows viewers to interact with your videos, creating a more engaging and memorable experience.
You know how sometimes when you’re watching a video, like a review of a product or demo, you feel like skipping some parts because they’re telling you things you already know, and you’re looking for specific information? If you’d be reading an article, you could skim it, but that’s hard to do with a video. Still, you’d much rather watch a video.
Interactive videos combine the best from both worlds. They let the viewer decide what information they want to see and when to see it.
Micro-Moments
Now that we’ve gotten used to smartphones, we’re not as patient as we once were. We make snap decisions about what to eat, where to go, and what to buy. These short intervals of reflection are referred to as micro-moments, and there are four types:
- I want to know moments
- I want to go moments
- I want to do moments
- I want to buy moments
To satisfy this new, quick decision-making process, businesses need to catch people’s attention in a matter of, well, moments.
Micro-moments are closely linked to personalised advertising. The goal is to be present on the same platforms as your target audience and show them short ads that are perfectly tailored to precisely what they had in mind at that specific moment. They no longer have the patience to watch ads that are too vague.
For example, they might see an ad informing them that X store has a promotion with 50% off on electronics. That’s too vague. They’re not going to be interested. But if they saw an ad showing a 50% discount on precisely the type of Bluetooth headsets they were thinking about buying, there’s a good chance they’re going to want to learn more about that promotion.
