For marketing professionals, 2022 has already begun in many ways: looking to the future, they need to anticipate the latest trends to be one step ahead of the competition. New strategies, goals, marketing plans, editorial calendars… It’s a lot to get done.

Repeating the same old strategies year after year isn’t enough. After all, a lot changes in 12 months: new technologies emerge, social platforms go viral, consumers’ behavior and preferences change.

Discovering the latest marketing trends is essential to ensuring that your company will keep up with changes and adapt to the market. This way your company will stand out and attract new customers.

With your business success in mind, we’ve made a list of the top 9 marketing trends for 2022. Keep reading them, and invest in the ones that best fit your business needs!

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a topic of science fiction and has taken over our daily lives.

An example is the popularization of chatbots, virtual attendants that replace people in user services. With them, a company can answer questions about products, provide information on the delivery status of merchandise or access certain services.

And the uses of artificial intelligence in marketing are not limited to virtual attendants. Voice recognition services are increasingly sophisticated, thanks to the growth of voice searches and personal assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Smart Home.

The trend is that investments in this type of technology will continue to increase in 2022. AI has the great potential of improving user experience, which is more than reason enough for many companies to include artificial intelligence in their routine.

2. Private chats for customer service

For a long time, the only channels for the contact between a company and consumers were email and phone. But social media has transformed this scenario.

In addition to being useful to attract your audience’s attention, these channels also serve as customer service channels. Services such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have direct messaging (DM) features.

It didn’t take long for many brands to start using these private chats to contact their audience. In addition to being more convenient, they convey an idea of closeness to customer service, which is important to strengthen the relationship between brands and the audience.

And for this year, one of the biggest digital marketing trends is the use of messaging applications, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, to contact users.

WhatsApp for example, has been used for sales for some time now, especially after the platform released its corporate version, WhatsApp Business.

However, you can go beyond and use these applications to share promotions and innovations with the creation of chat lists.

In the future, it will be possible to complete a purchase through these applications. Since 2018, WhatsApp in India has a payment system via app, which will soon be released in other countries.

3. Personalized experiences

Another major promise for the marketing world, which is already being successfully experimented by several companies, is the personalization of the user’s experience.

Offering content and services tailored to each user’s interest is no longer a mere unique feature, but a necessity. Just check out the feed on any social media. All of them gather recommendations based on each user’s profile and browsing habits.

In addition to pleasing users, this increases engagement with the content. After all, there are great chances of users interacting with content in which they are interested.

Just to give you an idea, a survey conducted by Accenture Interactive revealed that 91% of consumers prefer to buy from brands that make offers and recommendations aligned with their interests.

So, if you want to win over more customers in 2022, you need to offer personalized experiences.

If you have an email marketing strategy for example, you can send segmented offers and newsletters according to each user’s profile and interests.

4. New audio formats

Another top digital marketing trend for 2022 is more audio content.

This is because users are searching for faster and more agile experiences, and want to consume relevant content anywhere.

There are several ways of offering audio content for your audience, such as include a player in your blog posts.

Thus, instead of reading texts, visitors can listen to a spoken version of the content while they perform other activities.

But without doubt, the best type of content that explores the advantages of audio is podcasts.

This type of content has become quite popular and as of 2019, 51% of the US population has listened to a podcast, according to a study by Nielsen and Edison. And it looks like podcasts will keep growing.

With this in mind, you can create a podcast program and offer relevant content to your audience. This strategy will help you increase your brand’s reach and engagement rates.

Therefore, if you don’t want your brand to fall behind in 2022, make sure you invest in podcasts.

5. Image searches

Among the latest marketing trends that seek to optimize user experience are image searches. This feature is very common in search engines and allows users to search based on an image, such as a photo or screenshot.

Several tools already offer this feature, such as Google Images, Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. Thus, users can see an item of their interest, take a photo or screen print, and search for similar products on online stores.

According to data from Gartner consulting, brands that adapt their websites for visual searches will have a growth of up to 30% in their online sales by 2021.

Therefore, it’s important that you apply SEO techniques for images on your business’ website. This includes inserting title tags and descriptions that help search engine algorithms understand what the image is about and relate it to user searches.

6. Influencer marketing

One of the marketing trends that is expected to stay strong in 2022, is the use of digital influencers in advertising campaigns.

Digital influencers are people who produce content on social media and online platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. And from this content, are able to influence audience behavior.

With an eye on this market, many brands have started to establish partnerships with several influencers to advertise new products and promotions with their audience.

Influencer marketing will continue to be an important strategy. The difference is that now, there will no longer be the need to focus on profiles with thousands of followers on social media.

The trend is to invest in micro influencers, those with a smaller number of followers, but who have a lot of relevance and authority in a market niche.

7. Video marketing

Video marketing has been growing strong in the past few years and is still one of the biggest marketing trends for next year.

Every year, videos become consolidated as users’ preferred content format when it comes to consuming information. Videos are easy to consume, they adapt to several devices and are more didactic than texts.

Besides informing, online videos can help in the purchase decision. According to a survey conducted by the Wyzowl website, 78% of the people surveyed said that they decided to make the purchase of software or an app after they watched a video.

According to data from the Wyzowl website, last year alone, 87% of marketing professionals used videos to promote their brands. And 79% of users consider videos as the best format to follow their favorite brands, according to the Brightcove website.

If you wish to increase your brand’s reach and win over more customers, make sure you invest in video production, even if you have a small business.

With technological advances, you can produce quality content even with a smartphone.

8. Humanized chatbots

You’ve probably interacted with chatbots, virtual assistants used in customer service. In the past, many customers disliked this tool, thanks to the robotic and cold style of conversations. 

But, nowadays, the scenario has definitely changed. Advances in Artificial Intelligence, neural language, and machine learning have made it possible for chatbots to offer a much more interactive and personalized service.

For 2022, the trend is to humanize chatbots, giving them a “personality”, with a proper name, face, and backstory, to build a better relationship with users and help them more effectively.

They are virtual influencers who create brand awareness and customer engagement, stand out on social media and provide customer support. A great example is Lu do Magalu, a virtual influencer for Magazine Luiza, one of the biggest retail companies in Brazil. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, she was the most followed virtual influencer in 2020. 

Such success has led other brands to create their own humanized chatbots, making customer service more personal. So, if you want to improve customer satisfaction and boost your brand, this is a great tip!

9. User-Generated Content (UGC)

Social media has broken several marketing paradigms. One is that only brands create content, while audiences consume it passively.

Now, consumers want to have an active role in content production. So, here’s one strategy to consider: make room in your business for User-Generated Content, or UGC!

These are contents spontaneously created by the audience, usually using a hashtag or by tagging the company in a post. This concept also includes product reviews, comments, and engagement in campaigns.

According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, consumer participation is essential for global brands. As a result, the latest trend is finding ways to engage consumers across their entire journey and transform them into brand ambassadors, influencers, advocates, collaborators, and even innovators.

In other words, user-generated content is a great way to build customer loyalty, humanize your brand, and show that you listen and care about consumers.

Keep an eye on marketing trends for 2022!

2022 is not quite here yet, but with this new information, you can get out in front of it and implement strategies that will dominate marketing for the next 12 months.

As you can see, some of the biggest trends of the past year, like video marketing and influence marketing, still deserve a lot of attention. Others, such as artificial intelligence and humanized chatbots, are still new to many entrepreneurs.

In the end, all the marketing trends we mentioned here can definitely help set up your business for success. So keep them in mind when planning your next steps! 

To help you create your Marketing strategy for next year, we have a gift for you: our complete tutorial on how to put together a marketing plan.

This post was originally written in January 2020 and has been updated to contain more complete and accurate information.