Digital marketing has come a long way since its early days. Back then, simply having a website and using a couple of necessary keywords on a campaign was enough to promote products and services. 

Whereas now, these strategies alone are not enough to attract traffic, gain leads, and make conversions. The advancement of technology initiates the change in consumer behaviour and business operations, but the COVID-19 pandemic hastened the adoption process.

Everyone had to adjust to the situation, especially businesses, to stay afloat. With the shift into a “new norm”, experts in digital marketing fort mill sc should be aware of effective methods to succeed in promoting products and services in today’s current state.

What does 2022 have in store for digital marketing? Watch this video to learn the eight digital marketing trends in 2022 that can help drive more traffic and gain leads while nudging customers to make a purchase.

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Dive deeper into the following digital marketing trends to find out how you can combine them with your current digital marketing strategies.

8 Digital Marketing Trends

1. Visual Search

When people stumble upon an unfamiliar object, they struggle to identify its name. Visual search, however, allows them to take a picture of it and learn more about the object. 

Since visual search is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, anyone can find what they are looking for within seconds. All they need to do is upload a picture of the object onto the search engine and receive multiple suggestions. 

This GIF is from Google, showcasing how visual search works when a consumer uses it to find what they want. 

The following are three factors you need to consider to implement this digital marketing strategy:

• Image title
• Alt text 
• Size and format

2. Shoppable Posts

Shoppable posts have been trending for a while now since consumers can shop on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. This digital marketing strategy works by allowing businesses to tag a product with pricing and description while posting a campaign on their preferred social media platforms.

This unique feature allows a consumer to directly purchase any posted item by adding it to a cart on the social media platform where they have found it instead of going to the seller’s website.

3. Gamification

A more engaging way to interact, connect, and communicate with consumers is through gamification. This digital marketing strategy uses video game elements to get its message across and make a campaign memorable. 

Since many consumers nowadays are a composition of millennials and Gen Z, implementing gamification is a great way to attract this market, stand out against competitors, and create an impact.

Make sure to include the following once you implement gamification in your business’s online marketing campaign:

• Simple game mechanics

• • • Allow anyone to join

• Countdown

• • • Create urgency until players complete the game and get rewards

• Achievement

• • • Encourage customers to level up and get better benefits like discount

• Actual game 

• • Something that customers will be able to play and enjoy for a long time

4. Marketing Automation

The use of automated technology for digital marketing is known as “marketing automation”. Automation aids in the completion of menial and repetitive activities like sending subscription emails to existing customers and instantly replying to chat messages to reduce wait time, all of which can be automated through marketing automation. Businesses can save time and money through the use of software solutions that reduce their workload.

The purpose of a marketing automation campaign is to automate the majority of time-consuming tasks and duties. Businesses can now focus more on other crucial tasks to effectively run their business.

5. Chatbots And Virtual Assistants

The use of chatbots and virtual assistants have been trending for a while now. Both customers and businesses have become dependent on using them due to the convenience they bring.

From a customer’s perspective, a chatbot allows them to receive support from the e-commerce website they want to purchase from even outside business hours. Meanwhile, virtual assistants have superior natural language understanding and artificial emotional intelligence, allowing them to comprehend a user’s order and help them in their daily lives.

For businesses, when they are too busy to answer inquiries immediately, chatbots can take over their customer engagement. As long as they set the answers to FAQs, they can provide support for their customers. They can also let their customers know when they are available to answer their questions in real-time.

Customers talk to virtual assistants as if they were speaking with an actual human being, so if you want to use a virtual assistant for your website, make sure it exhibits a natural and conversational tone. 

6. User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content made by individuals (not brands) and published online, such as texts, photographs, videos, reviews, or audio recordings.

A great example of UGC will be stories that customers share on their social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and that includes augmented reality (AR) content. 

Here is a GIF of user-generated content that utilises AR.

Besides adding an AR feature on your e-commerce website, you can create user-generated content without asking your consumers by doing the following:

• Customers who leave a review and rate your products will receive a reward
• Have an interactive event with prizes and incentives
• Host a contest with prizes and giveaways
• Collaborate with influencers on social media

7. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a type of digital marketing that concerns creating and sharing quality and relevant content, whether through videos, blogs, social media posts or digital content creation (infographic).

The following are the factors to consider when it comes to content marketing:

• Determine target audience
• Be efficient in language use
• Involve current news
• Share factual information

8. Mobile-First Design

Apart from the continuous growth of mobile device users worldwide, consumers often spend 70% of their media time browsing, watching, and shopping on their smartphones. 

If the user-experience of an e-commerce website on mobile is poor, chances are potential customers will likely leave the website and look for a similar shop that offers the same thing. The only way to not lose that sale opportunity is to implement responsive design on your e-commerce website so that the content will fit nicely on different screen sizes. 

Final Thoughts

These 8 digital marketing trends are currently impacting the digital marketing world. Incorporating all of them into your existing digital marketing strategies is going to be challenging, which is why you may choose to focus on one or two that are most relevant to your business. Then move on to the next one once you have seen results with the ones you have implemented. 

If you have any questions about digital marketing trends in 2022, reach out to a digital marketing agency like OOm. With over 15 years of experience, they can help showcase your brand while widening your customer reach. 

Contact OOm at 6690 4049 or schedule an appointment on their website if you are interested.