With the new year now upon us, it’s a great time for brands to look at potential trends in digital marketing and digital PR for 2022. For companies to be able to make a good plan in the short term, they always have to be keeping an eye on their long-term plans. While no one can be certain of what’s going to happen in the future, staying on top of trends and trying out different strategies can help companies identify some beneficial insights.
Customer experience
Each year, more and more companies are shifting their focus onto their customers, which has slowly changed some of the big beliefs around what marketing is actually about. These days, it’s less about convincing people to make a purchase or work with a brand, and more about providing consumers with positive experiences that will keep them coming back. When a business is able to focus on building a positive culture and providing customers with great experiences and services, the marketing almost takes care of itself.
Consumers expect a seamless experience from brands, from the first moment that their interest is sparked to the customer service once a purchase has been completed. They expect personalized messages that will help them solve problems or make buying decisions, and a high-quality experience focused on their buying journey across every channel. Aside from custom messages, companies should also find ways to receive and respond to questions from customers.
Story-driven visual content
While voice search and smart speakers have found their place in consumers’ homes, which means there’s once again an increase in readable content, visuals and design are just as important. Most people prefer visual continent instead of plain text, which is almost obvious from the number of active users on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Visual content is a lot easier to remember for consumers compared to written content. Additionally, with infographics, images, data visualizations, and video, companies can make their written content a lot more attractive and interesting, which will help consumers remember the message for longer.
Employee activation
According to research, nearly half of all consumers abandon a brand if that company’s employees aren’t knowledgeable. One of the biggest factors that stops consumers from purchasing from a brand is a bad employee attitude. Since employees are a way for consumers to put faces to a brand, it’s important for businesses to highlight interactions between their consumers and their employees. When employees are in charge of customer experiences and customer service, those employees have to want the business to succeed as much as executive-level team members in order to ensure a positive experience for everyone involved.
The best way to go about that is to build a foundation of employee engagement where the company ensures that each employee is aligned with the company’s values and mission, and understands them in detail. If employees aren’t happy at work, they won’t care about the business, and therefore the customers. Making the workplace somewhere that the employees want to work, and investing time and effort into making sure they all feel valuable, is how employee activation works best.
