It’s that time of year when the Internet bursts at its proverbial seams with advice on digital marketing trends in 2022. Not every insight thrown out there works though! Here’s our shortlist of marketing trends to watch.
1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Add or upgrade the chatbot for your website. Unlike early bots that you had to pre-program with answers, the new artificial intelligence/machine learning bots learn from customers. You still provide the answers to frequently asked questions, but the latest bots learn language skills from customers and pick up on new questions not already in their database. They submit these new questions to the web developer or human manager for addition to their existing responses. Some of these bots you can program to suggest the most likely answers on their own. This way you spend less on “employees”, but better address client questions, which makes you their hero.
2. Personalization of Content
In 2022, personalization goes way beyond simply addressing an email marketing message using the individual’s name. Personalization refers to including information and details in the message about the customer’s last purchase or past purchases. This lets the client know you care and shows them you know their likes and dislikes. When you offer coupons or targeted sales that produce what they want when they want it, you make sales.
3. Design for Mobile-First
By 2025, more than 72% of Internet surfers will use only a mobile device – smartphone or tablet – to connect to the Internet. Your digital marketing campaign needs to target mobile users first but also needs to still provide the computer users with an appropriate website and app experience. This increases the importance of responsive design.
4. Integrate Emerging Technologies
The wide world of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, provides artists with a new sales opportunity, but as Taco Bell showed, marketing can use NFTs to increase brand ownership by customers. It also provides the customers with unique artwork, similar to the early 20th century Coca-Cola glassware collecting trend.
5. Use Marketing Automation the Right Way
Using marketing automation lets you send cues to your customer relationship management (CRM) database to send specific messages personalized for the customer in response to their last action. This can help you make sales by sending a reminder email about a deserted shopping cart or create upsales by suggesting items previously purchased that didn’t make it into the customer’s current cart. Walmart does a great job at this upsales technique by offering an hour to add to an order, then suggesting items the customer previously purchased. These suggestions come on-screen and in an email order confirmation.
6. Create an On-Site Membership
Even free websites can do this to gather website visitor information. Similar to offering a newsletter or mailing list signup, offering a site membership nabs your customer’s personal information and lets you retain added site data when they visit. It also provides you with a way to reward them for loyalty by providing information that customers who haven’t shared their information don’t get to see. Goalry, a set of financial educational websites, does a great job of this with its free Member Key offering. By following suit, you can offer those signed in to make a purchase with an hour to add to their order or include a free sample in the order. This helps you solve the huge problem of the loss of third-party cookies, which looms right around the corner of 2023.
7. Partner with Non-Profits
You can partner with a non-profit to support its fundraising and to increase your advertising. The non-profit typically features the names and logos of companies that donate to it on all of their marketing collateral. This gets you seen by many others besides those who look at your advertisements. You might get noticed by customers who usually mute commercials or pass over magazine ads. This partnership also raises public opinion of your company since your business gets viewed as a community player.
Don’t Go It Alone
Contact Bake More Pies today to learn how to implement one or more of these marketing trends in your marketing plan. Call us today!
