Digital Marketing: Key Trends for 2022

Half a year has passed. Equator passed. You can evaluate which predictions came true, which did not.

Content:
1. Metaverses
2. Video Marketing
3. Influencer marketing
4. Marketing Personalization
5. Use of data analytics
6. Virtual events
7. Conclusion

We offer a list of new digital marketing trends that, according to many analysts and experts, should have become key this year. This text was prepared by the author in the winter. But, for various reasons, it was not published at that time.

So readers have the opportunity to compare the forecasts with their own observations. Trends in digital marketing that are obvious even to non-marketers, such as the growing role of mobile devices or the need for high-quality content, are deliberately excluded from the review.

In the fall of 2021, Facebook changed the name of its parent company to Meta. This event can be considered the moment when marketers paid more attention to the Metaverse phenomenon.

Let me remind you that the Metaverses are a network of virtual worlds. You can enter them through the technologies of augmented (AR) and virtual (VR) realities. As an example of the Metaverses, I will cite the gaming platforms Minecraft, Roblox, Pokemon, Fornit.

Mark Zuckerberg believes that the metaverses will replace social networks in their influence on people. eMarketer claims that 65 million people will use VR in 2023, and 110 million people will use AR. Agree - a rare opportunity to get at the disposal of a huge number of potential customers. Marketers have already begun to master the Metaverses. So, Gucci Garden was created in Roblox. Here, visitors can try on and buy Gucci digital products for their avatars. The creators of Gucci Garden intend to increase brand awareness among young people in this way.

Louis Vuitton offered skins for League of Legends in collaboration with Riot Games.

In order to present the fall 2021 collection, Balenciaga has created its own video game, Afterworld.

In the examples given, a method of selling virtual items for avatars, called D2A (Direct-to-Avatar), is used.

Marketing in the Metaverse does not involve a complete separation from reality. Direct sales to reality D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) are also used. The movement of the client to purchase begins in the virtual world, and the purchase itself is already carried out in the real world.

Video marketing is becoming a battleground for marketers. Suffice it to recall the explosion in popularity of TikTok. All-knowing Google states that in the US, YouTube has more viewers in the 18-49 age category than all cable TV networks combined.

Video posts get six times more engagement on Facebook than posts with images or text. On Twitter, video views increased by more than 160%.  When uploading a video to your Facebook page, ensure that the file is in MP4 format to avoid issues with slow loading or no loading at all.  

“Users are ordering … while watching their favorite shows and YouTube videos,” says Pauline Butor, Google Director of YouTube Ads, Media Solutions & Creative Works, YouTube Ads, Media Solutions & Creative Works.

A livestream survey showed that 80% of users prefer live video over text. Most marketing experts believe that live videos provide the best ROI (return on investment).

Promotion of goods or services through influencers has proven to be a good marketing tool. Although for many, influencer marketing remains an innovation that needs to be learned to use.

The idea of influencer marketing is to promote products and services not with paid advertising, but with visual messages from popular content creators.

Who should marketers target? Here opinions differ. Forbes classifies influencers as:

It is not necessary for a small company to negotiate with a Hollywood star on cooperation in promoting their goods and services. There is a steady digital marketing latest trends towards working with micro-influencers. This is a type of influencer marketing, but on a smaller scale. In this case, brands are interacting with people who don't have millions of social media followers. The audience size of a micro-influencer on social networks is 1,000-10,000 subscribers. But they have a good reputation in their area of interest. And the level of engagement of their audience is very high.

The main platforms where influencer marketing works are Instagram and (but far behind) Youtube.

The close-to-personal relationship between brand and customer is a handy tool for accumulating data about existing and potential customers. Experts believe that the personalization of marketing promotions allows you to increase the level of engagement, stimulate discussion, and add new customers.

Experts' reasoning is confirmed by statistics:

The Internet offers an impressive array of tools for implementing personalized marketing, from entertaining surveys to detailed analysis of data received through e-mail newsletters and CRM.

Obviously, this digital marketing current trends closely interacts with the next point of my review.

The increase in the importance of data analytics is also determined by the fact that companies have begun to save money. Advertising budgets have been drastically reduced in recent years. Marketers are forced to more carefully justify the return on investment (ROI).

Brands prefer to calculate possible results in advance and only then direct funds to the most effective way of promotion.

This is why data sets are becoming one of the key assets. Formation of effective marketing strategies has become impossible without a thorough analysis of all available information. After all, in this way, marketers get the opportunity to more successfully implement their initiatives in digital marketing.

Research shows that attendance at virtual events has increased by 34% and attendance at live broadcasts has increased by more than 250% in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic made me appreciate the opportunity to take part in an event, even remotely, that you don’t get to in person. In addition, virtual events are cost-effective for businesses. Virtual events increase brand reach and awareness. This applies to both small companies and large businesses.

The success and effectiveness of virtual events is highly dependent on the quality of the video content. Moreover, companies are interested in developing the skills of working with online video of their own employees. And we are ready to invest in such training.

At the equator of the year, it is already possible to talk about which digital marketing trends turned out to be in demand, and for which expectations were exaggerated. Those who have bet on the widespread use of visual effects and video can hope for success. The bet on the use of data analysis and marketing personalization also justified itself. As for, for example, the Metaverses, here events are developing more slowly than expected.

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