According to a report by HubSpot, Litmus, Rock Content, and Wistia, over 1,600 marketers had their say on the marketing trends of 2022.
Amongst them, marketers stated that influencer marketing was the trend they were most leveraging, followed closely by mobile-friendly website design. In addition, short-form video content, virtual events and experiential marketing made up positions 3, 4 and 5 of the top 5 list.
It was estimated that the influencer marketing arena is worth around $16.4bn in 2022. This is a considerable growth from 2016 when the industry was worth a much lower $1.7bn.
The growth to $16.4bn is no surprise given the number of influencer marketing companies rose by 26% in 2021 alone.
Marketing teams continue to place a high focus on content marketing, which now includes multimedia formats and has grown more interactive and available in recent years. For the third year in a row, video is the most popular media medium in 2022; nevertheless, short-form video services like TikTok and Instagram Reels are expanding at the quickest rate.
The most effective postings are 1) humorous and 2) interactive, even if marketers are more prone to employ content that reflects their company identity or industry.
In order to promote the voices of their organisation, brands will continue to be present and real in their marketing by showcasing user- and employee-generated material.
The significance of developing an online presence that spans the whole customer journey, leading and delighting audiences, is becoming increasingly clear to advertisers.
This is a potent technique to not only create a favourable brand perception and raise awareness, but it’s also the ideal method for gathering primary data, which is becoming crucial for any marketing campaign that can withstand the test of time. The best—and possibly the only—way to develop this type of future-proof marketing is to have a strong online presence with fantastic content and a carefully planned, privacy-conscious data collection approach.
The apparent first step is to create an owned channel with excellent content if your strategy still does not call for it. If you want to address every step of the customer experience, having your own blog, podcast, or newsletter is no longer optional. You can’t just rely on PPC or social media to grow your business because doing so makes you dependent on an algorithm that may change at any time.
It’s time to start considering changing your distribution, even if you currently have a solid content marketing plan in place and your own channels. An excellent example is SEO, which will continue to be a crucial acquisition channel for some time, but it is no longer advisable to place all of your eggs in one basket. Similar to social media, zero-click searches are always growing, and you are at the mercy of an algorithm that is constantly changing.
Want to read more? Download the full report on HubSpot’s website here.