Over the last few years, I have made predictions on what the trends for that year will look like in the digital marketing realm. This year, I am going to continue that tradition, however, I am also going to review how close I was for 2021.
I said the following:
Digital Transformation – As a buzzword
Video-on-Demand – Longer format video when visiting a website.
Reaching Remote Workers – The remote/hybrid model
Loss Aversion – Fear of missing out
Digital Ads – Social, Google, and beyond
The biggest win was probably reaching remote workers. So many companies learned to do this much better in 2021 vs. what we tried to figure out in 2020. Even here at Ke we started hiring fully remote employees and have staff in 6 different states now! For companies that do not need to be physically in front of their clients, this has been a big shift, and again, something we don’t see changing any time soon.
However, reaching those stay-at-home workers through marketing efforts has proven to be trickier than we originally thought, and will continue to be a focus for improvement in 2022.
So, what do we think is to come in 2022?
X Ads –
X has come out and said they want to double revenue by the end of 2023 and want to grow their user base by 20%. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that in order for a social media platform to double its revenue, it must do so through ads. If you have been around the digital marketing world for any amount of time, you know that X ads just stink. They must improve the user interface, targeting, and analytics to have marketers jump in. Now that @jack has stepped away, maybe the gloves will come off and they will be able to make the necessary changes.
Meta will become mainstream –
Creating and interacting in VR and AR is going to be more mainstream by the end of 2022, with Facebook (Meta) leading the way. Watch the entire rollout here –
Digital Marketing will become part of everyone’s strategy. –
At Ke, we have led with strategy since pretty much day 1. However, many of our clients didn’t have a digital strategy at all before coming to us. We believe this is changing and digital marketing is no longer something that companies are just “winging it”. More and more strategy leads to less being more – meaning creating more meaningful and impactful content, but probably less overall.
LinkedIn will continue to grow –
LinkedIn has had a bit of a glow-up recently. The network has sort of become the new Indeed, in fact, the last 4 hires at Ke have come through LinkedIn Jobs. The use of the network through job seekers, networkers, and that building authority will continue to grow in 2022. If you haven’t been paying much attention to LI – start.
I am sure that we will see a few surprises happen over the year, along with a few challenges for us to overcome. Such as targeting while dealing with more privacy, costs of ads increasing, and more competition online. One thing that won’t change through this year, is that digital marketing will continue to evolve, change and surprise us all.
