Technology changes much faster than the companies that embrace them. As it happens, digital marketing pushes back all the other forms of marketing, traditional, new-way, and mixed, to the backseat. The creativity which is often associated with branding, advertising, and marketing is no more the only skill to excel in marketing. Today’s marketers have access to humongous amounts of data, have to use multiple channels, and more importantly, align their digital marketing endeavors perfectly with offline marketing activities.

Recent studies revealed that 48% of marketers described their technology stacks as the best-of-breed and 57% love to call their architecture ‘integrated’, not ‘fragmented’. This gradual yet fast shifting toward integration and a change in overall approach seems to be the biggest paradigm shift now.

Fast Smartphone Adoption – A Positive Catalyst

If we look at the data at hand, more than 50% of web searches are now initiated on mobile or handheld devices and 91% of Facebook users access the site from their mobile phones. Also, 80% of Facebook advertising revenue comes through mobile phones and 90% of mobile users spend their time on mobile apps. These are the tell-tale signs that consumer behavior is changing fast and a digital marketer who evolves with the market must pay attention to these changes.

How Are The Businesses Responding To The Changes In Consumer Behaviour?

34% of the respondents said that they have a digital marketing strategy weaved into their broad-spectrum marketing plan. Some 16% said that their digital marketing strategy is well-documented and 50% maintained that they DO NOT have a clear-cut digital marketing strategy, which begs the question of where the companies are lacking.

What are the significant trends in digital marketing in 2022? Are artificial intelligence, live chat, and marketing hubs the new-age strategies and platforms that would help the marketer of tomorrow to rise above the noise? Let’s take a look here.

Live chat

Live chat through messaging apps/bots/digital assistants is the new way of connecting with prospects in real-time. This way, organizations can communicate with their clients outside the confines of social network pages and increase customer engagement at a much lower cost. But exactly how helpful are these bots? Well, the use of the technology is still very limited and it is a key challenge for marketers to explore the possibilities.

Digital Marketing Hub

Multichannel marketing campaigns can be easily automated, executed, and optimized through a digital marketing hub – a suite that can easily be plugged into other solutions. This way, customer experience across different channels can be improved, which would in turn help marketers in generating leads organically.  For example, if you are running multichannel social media marketing for your brand, it would be easier for you to track user activities on your Facebook page and tailor your messages according to their profiles.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics has already been in use, especially in the financial sector, and is heavily used in applications used for assessing credit risks and fraud in financial services. However, it’s gradually making inroads in the marketing world too and is currently being used in automated lead scoring, algorithm-based grading (that replaces human-defined grading), and so on. One good example could be grading users based on their level of inclination to download e-books.

Content Sophistication Is The Future

Interactive content is gradually replacing hygiene content, though the latter is still important for SEO and online marketing. From web pages to video and infographic-based rich content, content sophistication is the buzzword in the digital marketing world today. Marketers need to cut the crap and feed visitors and app users with bite-sized pieces of content. Dynamic and personalized content is expected to take the centre stage. Other distinct trends are immersive marketing, personalization, and live videos.

Most Marketers Are Not Getting Optimal Value Of The Tools They Use

52% of them lack an effective strategy, whereas 42% think that the complexity of the system is the biggest roadblock. Inadequate lead data is the biggest impediment according to 38% of marketers. Lack of employee skills, lack of relevant content, and marketing-sales misalignment are some other issues faced by marketers of today, with budget constraints being a significant roadblock too.

Better technology-based strategy, data-driven analytics, and intensive training are the three ways to leverage their tools, according to most marketers. Partnership with digital marketing agencies and expansion of in-house training systems would straighten out these roadblocks.