Privacy management, news on social networks, a more respectful and close approach to the user, and the metaverse on the horizon will mark the popularity of brands on the web.
Semrush states that in the last two years, the global online presence has increased considerably, both in the number of users who connect daily, and in the number of hours they spend browsing.
The Internet is constantly evolving, influenced by the "real" world and the behavior of its users. For this reason, marketers (who today cannot ignore digital) must take into account what is happening, study it and understand it, anticipate it and know how to manage it in their favor.
"Not all phenomena, however, carry the same weight," explains Andrew Warden, Semrush's director of marketing. – “If something lasts only a year, it is not a trend but an ephemeral fashion that will not affect long-term strategies, but can affect actions in the short term. For example, the rapid rise of Clubhouse, which in a short time experienced an equally rapid decline. To build a winning digital marketing strategy for 2022, we have identified the digital marketing trends that are here to stay and are likely to have a major impact on how we market our products or services in the long term."
In order to understand what are those movements and approaches that brands have to assume as their own, Semrush, the leading SaaS platform in online visibility management and content marketing, has identified five key trends in 2022.
Being human matters more than ever, really
We are in the era of overcoming B2B or B2C logic. Today, the winning approach is Human2Human. Brands are now defined by what they stand for: company culture and values. The tone of voice in all communication is becoming more relaxed, which translates into more informal words, space for humor and a closer language. Instead of using more aggressive and direct communication, brands are activating the “suggestion mode”, letting their notoriety and relevance become visible to the user.
Privacy Based Marketing
A growing number of consumers understand that many of the benefits they get for free often come at the cost of their privacy. And the long list of scandals — from Cambridge Analytics and Facebook in 2018, to the recent WhatsApp metadata sharing controversy — reinforces those beliefs.
Apple recently changed its privacy policy requiring apps to be more transparent, resulting in 80% of its users opting out of being tracked by mobile apps, a policy change that had major effects on markets. Google, on the other hand, went a step further by introducing the FLoC initiative, which is supposed to replace cookies, the way the user is now tracked on the web.
According to Semrush, brands need to return to first-hand data collection: regular customer surveys via email, social media polls, and in-person interviews.
Organic strategies will be more important than ever, as well as "classic" SEO strategies that ensure organic growth:
Perform a technical SEO audit of the website. Optimize for relevant keywords. Prepare the site for Core Web Vitals.
New landscape of social networks
The most innovative changes have to do with three “Ts”:
TikTok: the first to undermine the dominance of Facebook-YouTube-Instagram. By the end of 2022, it is expected to reach 1.5 billion users, so preparing a TikTok strategy to target the potential consumer is key. Some companies are already hiring CTTOs, or directors of TikTok. "The Goldfish myth": This refers to taking on users' short attention span (fish memory) to deliver 10-15 content. seconds as a strategy. The solution, therefore, is not to offer ephemeral content, but to attract attention from start to finish. Twitch: Perhaps the platform that has benefited most from the boom in streaming and gaming, an industry with unstoppable growth. According to calculations by Semrush Traffic Analytics, Twitch today has over a billion monthly visitors.
A more engaged marketing
What we understand as "engaged marketing" encompasses several sub-trends:
Eco marketing: sustainable products that promote ecological awareness. Transparency: reject marketing tricks that deceive customers. Diversity: intra-company culture and its approach to customers, suppliers and others, through equity and inclusion.
Adapt to the metaverse
Semrush claims that the metaverse is already here and Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard may be the gateway for brands to start positioning themselves in virtual worlds, something that is an inevitable part of future marketing.
PWC expects a $1.5 trillion increase in global GDP by 2030, thanks to virtual reality and augmented reality. Not in vain, already in 2021, elements of the metaverse, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) became one of the terms of the year, achieving a growth in searches of 5400%.
Brazil recently reinforced its vaccination campaign by reaching out to the virtual world of the popular video game Grand Theft Auto (Pfizer Brazil approached the gaming community by awarding blue bracelets to GTA characters, signifying that the character had received their vaccination), which Which points out that brands and even governments are entering the virtual world to speed up their communication efforts. Brand positioning in virtual worlds is an inevitable part of future marketing.
Press release.
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