While 2021 was largely about getting your brand’s name out there, 2022 is about creating an effective brand as well as building enticing and compelling storytelling. Consumer preferences always evolve, and businesses find it challenging to connect with them consistently. Keeping up with the predicting trends of 2022 will allow you to explore emerging opportunities and pathways to find the right marketing strategy for your business.
Small business marketing requires business owners to invest wisely in their branding and engage with customers more intently using various strategies and promotional materials, such as banners and banner stands, to be able to effectively navigate fierce competition and lead their business towards success. If you’re a small business owner, you need to know the top 5 marketing trends and predictions of 2022 to take your business to newer heights.
AI in Marketing
With the entire world buzzing about the unlimited possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence, more businesses and digital marketers will start exploring this amazing hi-tech tool. With concepts such as the metaverse, AI cybersecurity, autonomous vehicles, and so much more, all small businesses need to do to start becoming AI-friendly is install a chatbot on their e-commerce website.
The best part of AI is it can serve multiple functions, acting as an extension to every digital marketer who knows how to use and employ it. It is an excellent, cost-efficient, precise, and super effective tool that every small business team must incorporate in their arsenal of digital tools.
Dominance of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
Other top marketing trends of 2022 and beyond will be VR and AR. An increasing number of businesses will be leveraging these coming-age technologies to promote products and services, thus changing marketing forever.
VR (a computer-generated environment) and AR (based on an existing real-world setting) will be used more by businesses to improve the customer’s awareness and enhance their purchasing decisions. The key benefit of integrating VR and AR into marketing is a distinct competitive advantage while interacting with a target audience.
Remote Work is Here to Stay
With remote working becoming the new norm, many employees won’t be willing to return to the office anytime soon. With studies suggesting the benefits of remote working in terms of enhanced productivity, more and more small businesses will try to stay cutting edge by catering to at home workers. This year will see more of a hybrid working or employee-choice driven model as an option at workplaces.
To make the best out of this trend, businesses will have to support their remote teams by providing them with all the required resources, such as flexible time, fast internet connections, co-working spaces, and remote-work tracking apps.
Organic SEO Strategies
Leveraging SEO to drive traffic will remain one of the key marketing strategies for most businesses in 2022. There have been several exciting changes in SEO that small businesses will soon be able to use to their advantage.
For instance, more keywords in the content will allow featured snippet spots, shown on search engines as the first result, that display a small portion of the content. Not only does this allow businesses to receive an increased number of clicks to their website, but it also helps build overall business credibility.
Some of the other SEO trend predictions for 2022 are:
· Blogging will become an essential part of business to help them rank for more keywords related to products, services, and the industry.
· Search engines will favor long-form content (2,500-3,000 words or more), and businesses will follow, dedicating more time to long-form, engaging content.
· Having a mobile-friendly or mobile-optimized website will become a top priority for businesses to avoid hurting their SEO in the long run.
Proliferation of Cryptocurrency
The dominance of cryptocurrencies in 2022 will be another trend to look forward to. Irrespective of the size of your business, as a tech-savvy marketer, you will need to keep a close eye on this trend.
Failing to offer consumers the opportunity to pay for goods/services with cryptocurrency can lead to losing out on sales. With predictions around cryptocurrency being more widely accepted as a payment source in 2022 and a number of big organizations already accepting Bitcoin payments, it will become important for small businesses to up their game in this area.