Top Marketing Trends To Define Success For Businesses In 2022

Rakesh Jaitly Jan 31, 2022

Modern marketers must have a broad understanding of the best, most effective ways to reach consumers at critical moments. It may appear simple, but each year brings new challenges that can complicate marketing plans. Every day, a slew of disruptive forces influence how we interact with customers and prospects.

Understanding how these trends influence our marketing strategies is critical to developing a successful plan. To help make sense of what's going on in marketing right now, here are the top six defining marketing trends for the coming year-2022:

1. 'Data Democratisation' assists businesses in leveraging the power of data

Over the last two decades, the explosion of data collection has fuelled the business world's obsession with data-driven strategy. However, we've reached a tipping point. According to Statista, the total amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally has increased by more than 5000 percent since 2010 and is expected to continue growing at an exponential rate through 2025. Because of this explosive growth, businesses now have access to a wealth of data. The question now is how to best activate it.

The concept of data democratisation comes into play here. It is based on the idea that access to data is distributed throughout an organisation—across cross-functional roles and departments—to harness its power to create 360-degree views of customers that drive better experiences and business outcomes.

As data moves from the hands of a few to the hands of many, AI will play a critical role. Business leaders will need to make sense of a massive amount of data and connect it across organisational silos. To provide customers with a truly seamless experience, sales will need to connect with service, and service will need to connect with marketing, and the back-office will need to connect with the front-office.

2. Personalisation is the 'new normal'

Businesses today no longer compete solely within their market category or industry. Personalised experiences provided by direct-to-consumer disruptors and digitally native brands raise the bar for all businesses. Customers have come to expect the same level of service and experience regardless of whom they do business with. Personalisation is now an important part of any business strategy.

Personalisation, which was once thought to be an umbrella term for better targeting and serving prospects with the right offers at the right time, now encompasses all aspects of the business. Customer preference has shifted, and they expect a personalised experience from the service center to marketing emails and advertising, all the way to the offline or in-store shopping experience.

3. Brands foster retention and loyalty by instilling trust in their customers

Customers want to buy from brands they trust as the world recovers from the global pandemic, and they will remain loyal to brands that treat them with respect. Trust is the equity that brands can build by retaining loyal customers, who can then become their most valuable acquisition asset through referrals and social media networks.

As a result of this trend, brands' budgets are shifting from acquisition to retention. According to Forrester, "spend on loyalty and retention marketing will increase by 30% as CMOs assert control over the entire customer lifecycle." Brands are implementing loyalty programs that reward members not only for spending but also for engaging and interacting.

4. Marketing will become a key component of the sales process

Consumer buying behavior has significantly changed, especially because of the social isolation caused by the regional lockdowns throughout the pandemic. Buyers do the majority of their research on new products and solutions before contacting sales. As a result, we are seeing significant investment in digital transformation for marketing, as well as its integration with sales and service as a complete end-to-end experience ecosystem.

Because of its proximity to the customer and involvement in their day-to-day lives, marketing now plays a far more important role in driving sales and business success than ever before. With marketing at the top, many businesses will prioritise lifecycle marketing campaigns and initiatives designed to keep consumers engaged and invested in their brand in 2022.

5. The demand for long-term and scalable 'Madtech' is increasing

Gartner's post-pandemic surveys of marketers reveal a significant increase in leaders preferring integrated Martech and Adtech suites over the spaghetti architecture that procurement of 'best of breed' solutions resulted in. Aside from the economic benefits of consolidation, organisations are still grappling with reducing operational complexity, eliminating capability overlaps, and lowering their carbon footprint in any way they can.

6. Outdated targeting habits disintegrate with cookies

For as long as digital advertising has existed, third-party cookies have been an effective marketing method. However, as the industry transitions away from cookies, major questions remain about what will replace them and how marketers will adapt to a new audience targeting environment.

The reality is that there will most likely be gaps in reach and scale compared to what we are accustomed to thanks to the use of cookies and audience IDs. Marketers, on the other hand, must be prepared for a future in which customer privacy plays an outsized role and adapt accordingly. The solutions will be mixed and varied depending on where one falls on the marketing and advertising spectrum.

While the current wave of fast-paced and dynamic changes can be frightening, modern marketers, should be confident and embrace the next evolution of the Adtech and Martech journey. In this context, operational procedures will need to be altered and a renewed focus on understanding real prospects and customers to inform new targeting and audience solutions should deliver considerable value in reach and scale.

*The author is Rakesh Jaitly, Senior Sales Director, Oracle Applications