The digital marketing landscape is changing so fast, thanks to new tools and apps that are also being developed regularly. Many of these strategies, however, are shaped not just by technology but by social and business trends. These events shift marketers to a whole new perspective of what must be done, what needs to be changed, how to approach audiences, how to solve issues, and reach business goals through marketing.

In the year 2020, the biggest and most unprecedented change that shaped the entire business industry on a global scale was the pandemic. Now more than ever, businesses need to infiltrate the online arena. This is coming from the pressing need of shoppers to purchase products and avail of services online, due to health and safety reasons.

This set a background for even greater competition amongst businesses that now have to find their way in the online business environment. This pandemic is just one of the many factors that shaped the marketing industry and the new trends and strategies that are shaping digital marketing services today.

Below is a list of the top digital marketing strategies that are set to be the most effective for your business in the year 2022:

1. Practice Inclusivity Marketing

If your brand still uses homogenous content and marketing strategies that were popular in the past few years, then you’re definitely out of touch with your market today. You’re going to lose customers who can no longer connect with your brand. Today, customers are looking for more businesses that practice inclusivity marketing.

With inclusivity marketing, your brand is able to respect and reach out to individuals who align with all gender forms, race, religion, and even equal representation as well for those who suffer from physical or mental difficulties. By doing so, your brand can effectively spark that image of positivity, which many consumers are looking for today.

It shows that you’re a brand that cares for everyone and that your products and services are also meant for everyone. With that said, here are tips on how you can get started with inclusivity marketing:

Do your research, particularly when your campaigns are touching on cultural, physical, or mental issues

Don’t go into inclusivity marketing in a rush, especially if you’re not taking the time to research various cultural facets you’re including in your campaign or the physical and mental disabilities you’re highlighting. Otherwise, you could end up with campaigns that may be offensive, rather than helpful or uplifting.

Focus on reality

You don’t need to cover all demographic groups all at once in your pursuit of inclusivity. What you can do instead is focus on real and timely issues in your locality. If the most pressing issue now is gender, then focus on that. If it’s bullying due to race, then touch on that.

Focusing on relevant or timely issues will give your digital marketing campaigns a sense of order. This ensures that you aren’t all over the place, scrambling for strategies that you have to do for all demographic forms.

Practice what you preach

Customers are getting more attentive to the brands that they choose to patronize. So, it is also important for you to practice what you preach. This means that when you promote and start with inclusive marketing, then you must incorporate the same values and ideals in your organization as well.

Your customers will know if you’re just using inclusivity as a marketing gimmick, and once they do, they wouldn’t want to be associated with your business. Many businesses have been boycotted whenever customers discover the hypocrisy of an organization who is merely using sensitive issues for profit.

2. Increased Use Of Social Media

Now that many more individuals are working from home and parents are homeschooling their children, this means one thing: usage of the Internet has significantly increased.

Apart from other communication forms, social media is still the most widely used platform for people to connect. For others, this is where they spend their idle time to at least have a sense of connection to the outside world, especially during the time when cities went on lockdown.

For families that are now separated geographically, social media is also a way for them to connect, and to get in touch.

So, in 2022, social media is still a very effective aspect of every digital marketing campaign. In fact, you can tap on your social media accounts to retain and attain new customers. With its wide market reach, your business is missing out so much on potential business growth if you opt out of it. 

Despite its wide reach, however, people can easily get distracted on social media. Therefore, you must still employ ways to capture their attention. Here are some of the strategies you can use to boost your business’ presence on social media:

Be conversational as much as possible

Your business must be able to connect and converse with customers or audiences on social media. The conversational interaction of brands and their customers is now on a highly different level.

For instance, in the past, it may have been alright not to respond to comments on your social media sites. After all, the bigger your brand, you’re going to have thousands of comments, that no matter how hard you try, it may still be difficult to keep up.

However, today, the conversations have changed. Now, there’s a need to converse well with your customers since this is part of customer engagement and relationships. Being unresponsive on social media will reflect badly on your corporate reputation, and customers are more likely going to patronize brands that hear them and recognize their issues, concerns, and even their loyalty.

• Use videos and interactive visuals to get the message across. Think YouTube, Instagram stories, Facebook My Day, and TikTok. The content that gets viral is mostly short-length videos, so best to hop on that train. Why? Because it captures the attention of everybody! There’s no need to read long text, or to try and digest what a photo is trying to say. With videos incorporated in your digital marketing strategy, you’re able to entertain and capture the attention of a wider audience effortlessly.
• Use your social media page as a shopping channel. If you’ve got an online website for your products and services, then good for you! But don’t just stop there. Apart from using your social media accounts to promote your products and services, you can also use them to run your e-commerce store. And yes, that’s now possible!

Since most online users continue to spend much of their idle time browsing through social media feeds, it’s just fitting for you to touch on this market and give your target market easy access to shop for your products and services through your social media pages. By doing so, there’s that added convenience. They’d no longer have to move away from browsing on their social media account to make that purchase.

3. Focus On Customer Retention

In the year 2020, businesses have also struggled to survive. Unfortunately, some are even left with no other choice but to close or reduce business operations simply because of the lack of customers and foot traffic.

So, instead of pouring so much time, effort, and resources into getting new customers, why not shift your focus to retaining existing customers instead. Especially if your business already has a strong following of customers, this is an advantage in itself. If not, your business will struggle to stay afloat. Now, you’ve lost loyal customers that would’ve kept your business going strong, so you not only need to gain new customers but also re-gain the old ones as well.

In business, a high customer retention rate actually has more advantages especially during times of economic difficulties. These include:

It carves out the way for customer loyalty

When you’ve got customers who are consistently happy and continue to choose your products and services as their preferred option, this paves the way for customer loyalty.

Especially in competitive business seasons or difficult financial and economic trials, your loyal customers can keep your business going. Most importantly, in marketing, loyal customers are a key growth factor, as they can also become advertisers for your brand. Don’t take for granted the power of word-of-mouth marketing that your loyal customers can do.

It increases your return on investment

Your business’ ROI refers to that timeframe when your business has already paid off the initial capitalization expenses. Soon after, your net income is considered the actual profits of the business.

Retaining loyal customers can increase your ROI rate simply because they’ll keep purchasing more, and therefore increase sales. Aside from that, repeat customers don’t have to be bombarded with new gimmicks, because they are voluntarily patronizing you out of their personal choice and satisfaction. 

Final Word

So, are you now ready to implement these changes for 2022? Half of the year has already gone by, but it’s not yet too late. You can still begin to focus on these needs for the remaining half of the year and set your marketing game on the right foot. By doing so, you can keep up with the competition on the World Wide Web. 

Digital marketing brings about a lot of changes regularly, so it’s hard to predict what the next future strategies and trends will be. But you can start by determining the new lifestyle and needs of your customers. That way, you can devise more creative ways to reach out or communicate with them.