Keeping abreast of emerging trends is a fundamental obligation of marketers and efficient use of their time. Equally beneficial is the appraisal of those trends for the target audience. Therefore, before modifying your marketing approach to include the current craze, research and confirm that a sizable section of your target audience supports you.

Unsurprisingly, content marketing continues to reign supreme, with video content and influencer marketing close behind as marketing trends to watch for this year.

There are still unanswered issues, and marketing trends are anticipated to ebb and flow like they do each year. If you're already in full marketing mode this year and want more marketing insights and statistics from professionals, we've got you covered.

1. Marketing Using Social Media

Social media is the largest and will continue to grow in importance as more companies learn to live online in 2020. By cultivating an engaged community and loyal clientele via proper social media tovoice broadcast, you may create a wide platform for promoting discounts, promotions, and new releases.

Authenticity, as well as brand cohesiveness, are critical. Assure that your postings are a good balance of engaging and sales-oriented content, and customize your approach for each platform. For instance, on Instagram, prioritize visual aesthetics and relevant hashtags while devoting more emphasis to lengthy descriptions and group participation on Facebook.

2. Make Use of Social Media Listening Tools

Imagine a room full of marketing execs speculating what pushes their consumers to spend more money or react to marketing activities. On the other side, businesses that participate in social listening are more likely to understand their consumers' wants and preferences and to have a greater awareness of their brand.

Social listening can be as straightforward as using social media as a two-way communication channel, encouraging followers to send direct messages or comments, including a line in each email conversation inviting readers to respond with feedback and creating interactive surveys or forms to gauge interest in new ideas, products, or services.

By incorporating consumer feedback into your marketing plan, you demonstrate to your audience that you are listening and are just as concerned with their satisfaction as you are with your profits.

3. Personalize It

Another potential outcome of social separation is that customers worry more about brands seeing, hearing, and appreciating them. It's no longer a one-way street – your consumer wants to feel like they have a voice and are a part of something bigger.

These clients want individualized product suggestions, hyper-targeted information, and promotions and discounts specifically suited to them. The same boilerplate email and advertisement material will not suffice.

This year marketing will place a premium on personalization. Create customized content, emails, and landing pages for your ideal segments and personalities. Segment your information if necessary and delve into your buyer personas to provide relevant messages.

Consider your writing and material from the perspective of a person, not a faceless brand.

4. Place a Premium on Consumer Privacy

While online privacy protections are a thorn in the side of companies, they are what customers desire. Brands will need to adapt and develop new methods for forecasting consumer behavior without gathering personally-identifying information.

It will be critical to zero in on first-party data. Another method is contextual targeting (display advertising directly related to the product being sold). Additionally, try giving discounts to clients in exchange for their data – but be aware that they will likely want a greater level of customer care in return.

5. Conduct an Audit of the Results of Last Year's Strategy

Before optimizing your marketing strategy for 2022 and capitalizing on emerging digital marketing trends, it's critical to analyze how your 2021 plan worked and where adjustments should be made for the following year.

Regrettably, marketers often neglect this phase since it is neither visually appealing nor interesting. However, moving forward might result in making the same errors year after year. It is critical to create plans before determining what worked.

To assess your previous year's techniques and determine which ones are the most successful, compare the results of each marketing campaign or strategy to the objectives you established. For instance, if your aim for the year is to grow website traffic by fifteen percent, perform a Google Analytics analysis comparing your site traffic data of the last two years. Then, go further to assess the strategies that aided in achieving the marketing objective or may have missed the objective.

Wrapping Up

While it is admirable to celebrate accomplishments, it is much more admirable to comprehend why they were successful. Again, this emphasizes the need to be particular while developing your plan. You'll want to have the required data and methods on hand to conduct an analysis when performance falls short of expectations.