Top Twelve Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2022

The cascading effects of COVID-19 will continue to influence the way marketing is run in 2022. However, that doesn't mean a doomsday situation for marketing professionals, as there is also strong hope for revival. Be cautious in spending, but do not panic!

Studies say that in 2021 the worldwide marketing budget was reduced by between 15% and 20% compared to previous years. I anticipate that this trend will continue in 2022 as we are still reeling from the cascading effects of uncertainty due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, companies invested 50% of their budget on outdoor advertising (billboards, airport ads, etc.) and physical events, such as trade shows and conferences, but that number has dropped and there will be a further drop in investment in these modes of advertising and brand building.

However, as the economy has shown signs of recovery in the last two quarters, businesses will start investing more in demand generation and retaining existing customers, instead of overall branding promotions. This means that marketers have to adapt to unexpected changes in consumer behavior, identify new digital marketing channels, and diligently measure ROI from every dollar spent on promotions.

Marketing leaders across every industry will be expected to learn new digital marketing strategies quickly, encourage their teams to transition to post-pandemic marketing tactics, and, most importantly, implement ready-to-use multichannel marketing platforms to accelerate their business growth. Self-service marketing tools like chatbots, email marketing, pre-recorded webinar hosting tools, social media, SMS and instant messaging, and ways to educate existing customers will play a pivotal role as the digital transformation process has accelerated in many traditionally brick-and-mortar industries, like education, healthcare, and retail in the last 18 months

The final consideration is that agility in experimentation and paying attention to customers' privacy will play a crucial role in the growth of businesses in 2022 as customers are also becoming more tech-savvy after the pandemic.

Connecting marketing to other functions will become one of the highest priorities for businesses.

The role of marketing in the customer experience is not to dress up the value proposition to attract new customers. Studying customer segments, establishing pricing models, building customer communities, and educating customers about products and services are all responsibilities that marketing leads and their teams need to take on today.

When closely connected with sales, marketing can generate better leads and help nurture them towards purchases more effectively. When connected with service or success, marketing improves the quality of education and helps reduce churn. When connected with commerce, marketing enables powerful self-service experiences.

When connected with finance, marketing insights help with planning the use of capital better within the organization. This is already happening at many of the world’s most progressive companies and will become the norm everywhere in the next couple of years.

2022 will be a lot about personalization, without the creepiness

The future of customer experience is finding ways to make it personal, without being creepy. There has been a lot of talk about the customer experience lately, but the brands that truly embrace it will continue to drive growth in the next decade. Whether it's more immersive point-of-sale experiences, long term loyalty benefits, or more focus on self-service solutions, technology will play a huge role in taking the customer experience forward. Strong CX also requires solid EX and businesses should embrace offering superior employee and agent experiences for that reason, especially in the distributed, multi-cultural, cross-functional, work environments that we're now getting used to.

In this internet-centric information economy, where hot takes are everywhere, quality still triumphs over quantity when it comes to community building. There's way too much content for people to consume and brands can't just keep serving content through a hosepipe if they really want to build trust and authority. There's a reason people pay to read Ben at Stratechery or will subscribe to Shreyas Doshi's SuperFollow feed on Twitter. A pandemic-led, celebrity-induced, VC-backed, exclusive social network can get very popular very quickly but it will suddenly become irrelevant for many of us within a few months. The rise (and fall?) of Clubhouse shows us that many trends are short-lived and people eventually figure out where they want to spend their time and how.

Consumption of videos peaked in 2021 and brands will continue to invest in creating more videos, both in-house and with the help of independent creators (expect to see more reels!) and agencies. Video consumption statistics are through the roof, and more than 75% of all video views come from mobile devices.

As third-party cookies are on the way out and customers are increasingly privacy-conscious, marketers will have to work on building trust by creating value for the customer. Useful content, delivered in a range of formats (long-form, tweets, reels, the list goes on...) for easy consumption is one way of doing that—and we'll see that happen more often.

Resilient marketing, sustainable growth.

Talking about resiliency and sustainability might sound weird in a world where companies can grow astronomically and set new valuation benchmarks without making any real profit, just by relying on borrowed money.

The last two years have been turbulent, and difficult times have taught us the importance of being resilient. Marketers need to think long term and craft marketing strategies that stand the test of time and generate growth that is sustainable for years, or even decades. It is not enough if you grow fast, you also need to grow strong.