1. AI in Marketing

This is the #1 Digital Marketing Trend on our list. The world has been buzzing about how the Artificial Intelligence wave will take over every aspect of your lives in the future. Little do we realize, the change has already begun. 60% of internet users have already interacted with an AI chatbot for solving queries across multiple apps and websites. 

Most of the content we consume on our social media platforms is fine-tuned by AIs to make our stay engaged for longer! This technology is so amazing that it is projected to be a $190 billion industry by 2025 and digital marketers have an amazing opportunity to exploit this hi-tech tool.

AI is a complex algorithm that teaches itself by looking at vast numbers of data about a certain field or topic and learns the patterns that work the best. The learning capabilities of the AI provide programmers with the ability to introduce effective changes in outcomes by letting the AI use the techniques it found works the best.

There are multiple examples of AI already accomplishing never thought of activities such as content writing for JP Morgan and Chase.

They have adopted an AI-powered content writing assistant called Persuado.

AI can serve many functions and act as an extension to every digital marketer who knows how to employ it. It is cost-efficient, precise, and extremely effective. Having seen so many giant companies adopting these tools, every team must have a plan to incorporate AI in their array of tools.

2. Augmented Reality

By the definition of Wikipedia, Augmented Reality is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. 

It consists of 3 basic features

• a combination of real and virtual worlds
• real-time interaction
• accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects

While virtual reality makes buzz and gets everyone excited with grand sci-fi ideas, Augmented Reality is much more plausible from a marketing point of view. Experts foresee that AR will continue to outperform VR in terms of market share. 

Brands are progressively using this AR technology to elevate the consumer experience and increase sales. 

One such example is IKEA, which has its own app that allows the users to click a picture of their room on their smartphones (iOS 11.0.1 for now) to test drive IKEA’s furniture in it. The users can move the furniture around to check out how the furniture looks different from different angles.

Another example would be Gucci, which is the latest luxury brand that newly added an Augmented Reality feature to its app to let users ‘try on’ sneakers’. 

The user can choose to see 19 different sneakers on their own by pointing their smartphone camera downwards. It enabled users to swipe left or right to change to another pair. The app also lets users take photos, which can afterwards be shared on social media or in messaging apps.

With AR elevating more than ever, we will see a massive uptake in brands finding useful applications for the technology in the future.

3. Voice Search Optimization

According to research by Review42 on voice search, they found that 55% of teenagers use voice search every day. This massive adoption by the entire generation shows how popular voice search is going to get in the future.

There are a couple of reasons why Voice Search, a feature we all received with our smartphones around 2014, is taking off in a big way this year. Firstly, the increasing adoption of smart speakers. 20% of the households have bought a smart speaker such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home. The adoption of devices that are fully voice search controlled is a big indicator of how people have started to get accustomed to this new behaviour.

Secondly, Google claims that they have achieved 95% accuracy with their Voice Search. With higher precision of search, the ease of use factor for voice search has jumped up. Now with better accuracy to match what you ask for, and the ease of using your voice to get results makes the process personalized and attractive.

Thirdly and most importantly, it is projected that by 2022, 50% of all online shopping will be conducted through voice results. This is a whopping $40 billion opportunity for digital marketers to exploit. With so many growth factors indicating the rise of voice search, making your website ready for voice search will be very essential for the future. We found a guide by SEM rush during our research. This article will teach you how to optimize your website for voice search in simple 7 steps. 

4. Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic Ad Buying is the use of software to purchase digital advertising. While the traditional method includes human negotiation, requests for proposals, and quotes, programmatic buying makes use of algorithms and machines to buy ads.

Programmatic Advertising is when AI is used to automate so that advertisers can target more specific audiences. 

The automation is quick, efficient which ultimately increases conversions and lowers the customer acquisition cost. 

Real-time bidding is a type of programmatic ad buying, it allows better and fast targeting, qualifying ads to be bought and sold on a per-case basis, which means visitors who are your targeted audience will be exposed to the ad. 

Here’s how Programmatic Advertising works:

Programmatic Advertising is rapidly increasing every year and is predicted to be used for a huge majority of display advertising in the next couple of years.

According to the research of eMarketer, the display ads in 2021 in the US are nearly 88%, which are forecasted to be secured programmatically. 

One of the best examples for the same would be ‘The Economist’, a digital and print publication, started a programmatic advertising campaign with the aim of persuading curious readers to try the publication. 

The same campaign generated 6,50,000 new prospects, additional return on investment (ROI) of 10:1. Brand Awareness for “The Economist” also elevated by 65%.

5. Chatbots

Chatbots are considered one of the top digital marketing trends in 2022, the AI-based technology makes use of instant messaging to chat with customers, and with site visitors. It is designed to communicate with customers by textual or auditory methods. 

Businesses can leverage the use of chatbots to engage with customers. Since there are plenty of users visiting the website at once, it advantageous to have a technology that answers hundreds of users at once.  The benefits of having chatbots are 24/7 customer service, instant responses to inquiries, and answers to simple questions.  

63% of people prefer messaging on chatbots to communicate with businesses or brands. This virtual support provides excellent customer services, this means a business gets rid of repetitive tasks and can focus on important work. 

Starbucks has introduced a chatbot that operates via the MyBarista app where you can order by auditory message through Amazon Alexa or messaging. 

Another amazing example of chatbot systems is the recently launched project LaMDA by Google. It is going to revolutionize the coming generations of chatbot systems. Here’s a bonus read on everything you need to know about Google’s LaMDA. 

Besides allowing customers to remain in the comfort of their homes right up until their coffee is ready the chatbot messages the customer when the order is ready for pickup, the chatbot also allows payment and tipping. 

6. Personalization

If you want to outperform your competitors and want to stand out in the market, you must focus on personalizing content, products, emails, etc. Personalization is the next big trend that will soon become an industry standard.

According to research by Instapage, 

• 63% of consumers are annoyed with the fact that brands repeatedly keep blasting generic advertising messages.
• 80% of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers them personalized experiences.
• 90% of consumers claim that they find personalization appealing.

The best example to understand the power of personalization are Amazon and Netflix, they have personalized recommended movies for each user. Here are some other examples of brands that are progressively using personalization at present:Starbucks: Starbucks introduced a gamified mobile app that keeps track of the number of times a customer visited, the purchase history of the customer, and their location. This personalized app allowed customers to customize their drinks, and it enabled them to receive rewards. The feature ‘reward system’ on the app itself spiked the revenue to $2.56 billion.

7. Automated & Personalised Email Marketing

As the name implies, automated email marketing is sending emails to your customers automatically based on triggers or schedules you set.

Emails have always been the most reliable channel of digital marketing. Promotional emails are an amazing way to reach out to your customers and let them know what your organization has achieved or any sale you have coming up. 

Yet due to over usage of mass email tactics, most people have stopped responding to promotional emails. Personalized emails are a great way to bring back the attention of your customer, and create a far more engaged customer base.According to the research of Backlinko:

• You are 6x more likely to get a click from an email than from a tweet
• Adding a call-to-action button in your emails instead of simply a text link can lead to a 28% increase in click-throughs
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in engagements (including CTR) in the last 12 months

Making your customer feel special is important for every business. Personalized emails do just that, they give the customer the experience that the business is far more than an imaginary entity, rather a collective of individuals just like them.One of the best examples of automated email marketing would be:

EasyJet: EasyJet had launched an email campaign using customer data to essentially tell each customer their individual story. The email-campaigned used customers’ travel history with the airline to create personalized stories, which suggested and recommended where they might like to travel next. 12.5 million personalized emails had been sent, which had a 25% higher CTC as compared to non-personalized emails. 

8. Marketing Automation

Automation drastically uplifted the industry in the last year and is going to be one of the major digital marketing trends in 2022. Marketing automation is all about streamlining the processes and automating them to make them more smooth, effective, and faster. One of the best uses of marketing automation is going to be under lead collection and nurturing.

If you manage to bring a lot of traffic to your website but do not collect effective leads at the right time, then the traffic makes no sense. With the help of marketing automation, you can integrate various CRM tools and lead nurturing software that assist you in collecting leads at any time of the day and making the process personalized.

After these leads are collected, you can also nurture them stage by stage systematically. This ensures a higher and qualitative conversion rate.

9. Micro-Influencers

A digital marketing trend that is going to explore new horizons is definitely Influencer Marketing. The concept of influencer marketing is very stillborn and yet, the market feels saturated. So here’s how it might transform in 2022 and the next few years. 

The hype around macro-influencers is not well appreciated by all audiences. The difference between true influencer marketing and staged influencers has clearly started to show. Hence, to take the more authentic route, companies will now use micro-influencers as well as their employees and consumers for social proofing. 

They can be the best brand advocates and can influence people with their real stories and emotions. Not that macro-influencing will take a hit in 2022, but it has chances of being overtaken by micro-influencers. 

10. Video Marketing

Video Marketing is also one of the top digital marketing trends in 2022 and is likely to be at the top for more years to come. Here are some stats that will demonstrate the importance of including a video in your digital marketing current trends list.

According to the research by Impactplus:

• 72% of businesses say videos have improved their conversion rate 
• 70% of consumers say they have shared brands video 
• 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions
• Video content is 50 times more likely to drive users than plain text.

One of the issues faced by marketers in recent years was to showcase long-form texts on mobile screens, as it becomes too difficult and tedious for users to read them.  However, a video can present the same information in a much better way regardless of the device.  

According to Seotribunal, if your website includes a video, it’s 50 times more likely to bring organic search results as compared to plain text. Why does this happen? Because people find video content more captivating, hence google brings such sites on the top results. 

But simply producing a video after another isn’t enough. You need to make sure that you are well-aware of the ongoing video marketing trends, a few of them are listed below:

• Livestreams on mobile
• Short-form videos
• user-generated video content
• Online Training & Educational Videos
• Video advertising 
• Interactive AR content
• Shoppable Videos
• Virtual Events