The Trends in Digital Marketing for 2022

The trends in marketing for 2022 

Nowhere have the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic been more obvious than in the way consumers are using the internet to secure goods and services. Yes, online sales of merchandise have been increasing every year for at least two decades. But what merchants have been experiencing since the early part of 2020 is unprecedented. While locked in their homes, consumers all over the world stayed active as consumers. What they changed was their buying habits, taking a majority of the shopping and buying activity to the internet. With the online consumer population hitting record numbers, our firm has never been busier as a digital marketing Montreal agency.

As a top marketing agency, we feel obliged to discuss what we see as the hottest trends in digital marketing for 2022. Here are 8 trends that we think every digital marketing Montreal agency should have on its radar.

1. More Emphasis on Keyword Searches with YouTube

Conventional marketing wisdom has always made clear that successful digital marketing programs required a shared emphasis on keyword searches and effective tagging. That is no longer the case. For anyone who has been paying attention, YouTube has realigned its algorithms in a way that puts almost all of the emphasis on the keyword search in conjunction with the right title and description. For a marketing agency in Montreal, local SEO Montreal would be king.

2. eCommerce Flows to Tik Tok

With well over 1.0 billion unique users on TikTok, the year 2022 is the year eCommerce should explode on the platform. As an entertainment platform, TikTok is able to hold the attention of viewers for hours at a time. That gives marketers plenty of access to potential consumers who do not seem to mind in-app shopping features tied to major shopping apps like Shopify. That is very likely to lead to the inclusion of TikTok shops where online merchants will be able to set up online stores. If merchants get the tools they will need to target the right customers, the potential here is tremendous for online business owners all over the world.

3. Teens Assume the Role of Family Purchasers

As eCommerce continues to grow, older adults are put at a big disadvantage. They aren’t as tech-savvy as they need to be in this age of digital commerce. When moms and dads want to make purchases through social media sites, they are calling on their tech-savvy teenagers to act as the family’s purchasing agents. This has resulted in the percentage of impulse buys reaching as high as 60%, something teenagers are notorious for doing. This is a growing trend in the U.S. Marketing programs need to start targeting teens buying goods for the family.

4. Online Sales and Customer Service Will Trend Towards Informal Interactions

In the not-so-distant past, sales and customer service interactions always felt like a robotic process between the customer and the sales or customer service representative. A lot of that was driven by reps who were forced to respond to customers with scripted answers and solutions.

Recently, we have seen more major sales and customer service departments using social media messaging platforms for interactions with customers. Interestingly, reps are interacting more like friends than respondents. That higher level of informal personalization is starting to return big dividends.

Trend #5 in Digital Marketing: More Emphasis on Push Notifications

It seems that consumers have trended away from paying attention to marketing emails in their inboxes. Much of the dissatisfaction with this method of trying to reach customers has come from people getting bombarded by email advertisements, making it nearly impossible to find what was relevant to them.

Moving forward, it appears that consumers are paying more attention to push notifications that come across on their mobile devices. What marketing personnel need to do is learn from what has happened with email marketing. People are likely to stay receptive to push notifications as long as the daily volumes stay low.

6. Voice Searches Will Continue to Surge

Through 2020 and well into 2021, the smart speaker business has been experiencing explosive growth. That is a clear indication that consumers are placing more reliance on voice searchers. Now is the time for advertisers and marketing agencies to pay attention to this trend. Even if particular brands are not ready for smart speaker advertising platforms, there are still benefits that can be derived from having branded advertising optimized for voice searches. According to recent surveys, more than 61% of surveyed consumers between the gave of 25 and 64 intend to increase their voice searches into the future.

7. Interactive Marketing

Since the internet and social media have become such an intricate part of everyone’s daily lives, consumers are showing a growing interest in personal interaction with branded merchandise. One of the best ways marketers can create interactions is by placing interactive tools and videos on their marketing content. This allows customers to learn more about products and brands without having to read boring content.

8. Refocus on Customer Retention

Online merchants are well aware that new customers come and go. It’s the recurring customers who will drive a business to success. They do this by frequently returning to buy more products and talking to friends about the online merchants and products they like. The real value created by referrals from loyal customers comes from the free advertising it creates. It’s incumbent on each merchant’s marketing agency to make sure effective advertising campaigns are being directed at the most loyal of customers.