ThinkOTB Agency

Marketing trends to capitalise on in 2022

January 19, 2022

2021 proved just how quickly the marketing industry can evolve. During the pandemic marketers embraced digital transformation more than ever as they adapted to constantly changing virtual and hybrid business landscapes. Keeping up with these changes and ensuring you stay relevant with your audience isn’t easy so here are our marketing agency’s top predictions for 2022 marketing trends:

1. Word-of-mouth to create cut-through

The advertising landscape is getting more crowded by the day, making earned media and word-of-mouth more important to deliver cut-through. The pandemic saw consumers championing brands that lived by their promises. The brands that only paid lip-service to their values fell by the wayside. In 2022, consumers will continue to scrutinise the brands they buy from, choosing to spend their money and share their social love with retailers who have good social, environmental, and economic values.

Recommendation: Marketers should focus on creating experiences and bringing to life the benefits of their social, environmental, and economic credentials at every interaction with customers to earn social word-of-mouth.

2. Thought leadership keeps things real

As consumers demand authenticity, thought leadership will become even more important. Brands often achieve this by building profiles of key people in their companies. They then publish their thoughts through social articles, videos and papers, speaking opportunities, and blogs.

Recommendation: Marketers should look for opportunities to demonstrate authenticity through B2C thought leadership opportunities.

3. Content marketing will continue to be prioritised

At least 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a business. For consumers, it’s now a given that brands will build lots of content around a topic, product or service, to answer all their questions, before they even know they have a question! That’s why brands will continue to grow their investments in content marketing in 2022.

Recommendation: Go back to the customer journey and your most up-to-date customer insights and look for new and interactive ways to deliver the content they are searching for – infographics, video and blogs are all still in the mix in 2022.

4. Virtual combined with physical

As the pandemic created the virtual events trend, we saw the benefits – the ability to rerun the event, share material, react in real time to attendee’s requests, the list goes on. Post pandemic some businesses saw slumps in the virtual engagement and online traffic they’d recently relied on. But, as technology continues to develop with more sophisticated augmented and virtual experiences, it’s evident that combining virtual and physical can really maximise the effectiveness of events.

Recommendation: Use a hybrid approach to ensure your brand delivers the best of virtual and physical experiences.

5. Print marketing makes a comeback

Print is the punch that brand’s key campaigns need to break through the digital marketing noise. Just like digital marketing, print can be highly targeted, achieve strong conversion rates and has the impact to build lasting impressions in consumer’s memories. Read more about this trend in our blog.

Recommendation: Align your digital and offline marketing plans. Add a hit of print to punctuate the customer journey and create a lasting brand impression.

6. Advertising challenged by privacy

Digital marketing is heavily reliant on data to automatically optimise campaigns. But, governing bodies want to give users more choice when it comes to releasing their data through new privacy regulations. In 2021, an Apple IOS launch enabled users to choose which apps could track their third-party data (used for hyper-targeted ads). In 2022 Apple will roll out another IOS update with email privacy protections and Google will discontinue third-party cookies on Chrome.

Recommendation: Stay up-to-date with changing privacy rules and assess their impact on your brand’s advertising. Then, create alternative strategies in case you can’t use a pivotal datapoint.

2022 marketing trends roundup

As marketers, we love to be on the leading edge of new technologies and platforms. 2022 feels like the year that marketing will use its pandemic learnings to create even more effective ways to connect to consumers and build strong authentic brands. If you’re ready to capitalise on some of these trends for 2022, get in touch for strategic planning and insight that will lay the foundations for a year of business growth.