Digital marketing keeps getting increasingly complicated each year. Other than the fundamentals like SEO, PPC, and branding, marketers now also have to juggle emerging social and marketing channels, along with content, automation, and personalization, to name a few.
To understand this shift in digital marketing trends, ClickInsights recently organized Digital Outlook 2022. Digital Outlook is ClickInsights' landmark event where our panel of expert marketing practitioners from brands, agencies, and technology vendors, offered their insights into the rapidly evolving digital marketing space.
Here are the predictions made by three of our speakers.
Prakash is the APAC Regional Head of Omnichannel CRM & Loyalty for Levi Strauss & Co.
According to Prakash, some of the trends that were gaining prominence in 2018 and 2019 but couldn’t remain mainstream due to COVID-19 will once again surface in 2022. The first of these is the use of first-party data. With new GDPR rules, companies will find it increasingly difficult to purchase data or obtain data from third-party cookies. Therefore, they will be constrained to double down on their investment in first-party data.
The second important area where a notable shift will be seen is that of personalization. As brands will find it challenging to compete with each other on pricing and promotions because of their limitations in providing long-term benefits, they will use first-party data to enhance personalization. The key would be to get one step ahead of the consumer to meet their demands promptly and deliver an amazing customer experience.
The third trend, according to Prakash, is the use of analytics. Brands that figure out how to break the analytics silos and bring all the attribution together are more likely to succeed.
Nicholas is the APAC Regional Head of Growth Marketing for Adobe DX.
Nicholas said that brand purpose and utility would be a major trend in 2022 because it’s the reason behind the existence of any brand. Consumers today care more than just the products or services that a brand offers. They also care about the impact that those brands make in the world. According to Nicholas, companies need a sense of purpose that their audience can truly connect to if they want to take their brand to the next level.
Brand utility, on the other hand, is an added value or service neatly integrated into the brand purpose so that it drives both awareness and loyalty. In a nutshell, it’s the means to apply brand purpose.
The second most important trend for Nicholas that would assume greater significance in 2022 was experience-driven commerce. According to Nicholas, marketers would look to combine digital and physical worlds and move away from transactional e-commerce experience to an integrated e-commerce experience that would bring all the key touchpoints together. This would provide a seamless experience for the customers and work wonders for not both B2B and B2C brands, as well as for D2C brands.
The third most important according to Nicholas would be utility-based content that can help consumers make informed decisions. While the digital space is cluttered with all sorts of irrelevant content, marketers would need to come up with content that can actually add some value to their consumers.
3. Ketan Samani
Ketan is the Group Chief Digital Officer (EVP) at China Development Financial Holdings.
Keeping in mind the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer behavior, Ketan said that brand building and brand positioning would be a major area of focus in 2022. Brands would need to highlight how they catered to their customers’ needs during the pandemic. In short, they’d need to position themselves as brands that would stick with their customers during adverse times for the customers to stay with them in the future. Therefore, brand positioning and rebuilding would be crucial factors for building customer loyalty.
Engagement would be the second most important trend in 2022. How companies engage with their customers to address their needs through multiple mediums like video marketing, where customers understand the value proposition offered by brands, would be a critical trend in 2022. This includes behavior-driven marketing and understanding and immediately meeting customer demand with the help of AI and big data.
The third most important trend according to Ketan is value exchange. Providing a prospect with valuable information in exchange for information about them would be instrumental to building customer loyalty in 2022.
Wrapping Up
So, these were the major trends as identified by our key speakers. While these trends may not be directly linked to each other, all nine of them have one thing in common- they are all customer-centric. As Prakash rightly pointed out, companies would eventually stop competing with each other based on their pricing and promotions; they’d instead focus on enhancing the overall customer experience. After all, your customers are whom you’re ultimately catering to.
We’ll be back tomorrow with insights from three more speakers at ClickInsights’ Digital Outlook 2022. Stay tuned till then.
To watch the full webinar, click here.
Also, you can download our Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions 2022 report by clicking here.