Social Media Marketing Trends for 2022 You Should Know
As another year draws to a close, it’s time to look at what the exciting new year of social media marketing could hold. Social media is ever-evolving, and the companies who use it to advertise need to evolve with it. Here’s what the expert team at Zebra 360 Digital Marketing Agency thinks will be key focuses in 2022.
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A revolution is coming
Social Media Marketing has become the ultimate paradox. It’s one of the biggest marketing drivers, and ad revenue is climbing and climbing. Digital forecasts from eMarketer suggest over half of Facebook’s $50 billion revenue could come from advertising alone this year. Big Tech is hungry for marketing ad revenue.
So the smart marketer will have one eye on social media at all times. Digital ads are likely to remain your most efficient way to market. However, change is coming, and you may want to begin to broaden into other ways to drive ROI.
Big Tech has seen a lot of hot water this year, and personalization and privacy have become industry watchwords. While the narrative is always around serving customers better, their hungry data-gathering is beginning to face pushback, and third-party data is no longer a given. We will likely see this grow over the next few years as pushed for legislation to curb some predatory practices, and growing awareness of the harmful effects of social media, will only grow.
What should smart marketers do? Expect to leverage features to enhance customer experiences, not simply feed on their data. While digital marketing itself is not the focus of most of these practices- predatory big tech leveraging humans is- it will still change the marketing landscape. Adaption will become important.
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The market is getting crowded
With the boom in social media marketing, we’ve seen more platforms launch than ever before. The stay-at-home work revolution has only accelerated this growth in digital spaces. While the well-established, ‘Big Name’ social media platforms are likely safe from user erosion (for now), we’re seeing newer, more niche-focused platforms evolve that are easier to manage and offer a safer sense of community. Be it substack or Twitter Spaces, people are seeking a meaningful connection with things that matter to them, rather than algorithmic suggestions driving stress and outrage.
What does this mean for marketers? Again, we’re back to cultivating customer experience options, rather than gimmicky attention grabs.
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Customer Service is digitizing
Another thing the unprecedented global changes of the last few years has created is a world in which almost everyone is becoming accustomed to initiating transactions online. This, in turn, means they want fast, efficient, and accessible customer service that happens in real-time, too.
For marketers, this may seem a no brainer, but it’s well worth the focus. Too many firms are stuck in a past where answering an email or social media post for customer service experience can happen in days, not hours as it should.
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Influencer or Creator?
Influencer marketing has yet to die the death gurus have been threatening for the last few years. However, the global health crisis has changed who is driving that influence. Creators, not mere influencers, are coming to the fore.
This means an exciting new marketing opportunity is waiting to be leveraged. Creators let you showcase the way you help create a solution, not merely generate hype through influence.
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AI is Still Coming for Us All
Yes, yes. We know ‘AI is coming’ has been a trend prediction for decades now. However, interest in Augmented Reality is growing fast. Plus, we’ve seen tech companies finally start to manoeuvre around AI-influenced tech, with great potential to draw downstream AR development in with them. Lastly, the advent of so-called ‘no-code programming’ is creating an environment where the ‘tech nerd’ bottleneck is widening to include more customizable software options for companies bypassing the developer shortage.
Smart marketers may want to start experimenting with AR to enhance their customer experience.
There’s sure to be many exciting social media marketing trends in 2022, but they will be influenced by these key developing fields. Are you keen to position your brand to take advantage of them? Why not let the Zebra 360 Digital Marketing Agency team help you take your marketing to the next level in 2022?
