2022 digital marketing trends: 25

practical recommendations to
implement
 By Dave Chaffey 05 Apr, 2022

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There is always a huge interest in digital marketing trends and innovation in

marketing around the turn of each year. 2022 will be no different, in fact, it’s
particularly true since the pandemic has forced downward pressure on
marketing budgets meaning that marketers are looking for new cost-effective
techniques.

According to the 2021 Gartner State of marketing budget report, marketing

budgets have fallen to their lowest recorded level, dropping to 6.4% of
company revenue in 2021 from 11% in 2020.

You can see that these cuts are consistent across sector and we can
anticipate these reductions across businesses of all sizes. Consumer brands,
financial services companies and healthcare seem to have been less
impacted by the pandemic as we would expect.
Digital media spend increases while agency spend
decreases
The Gartner research shows CMOs have shifted spending commitments
across their channels and programs, with the digital channels that we focus on
in this article dominating those priorities and accounting for 72.2% of the total
marketing budget.

The breakdown of budget across paid, owned and earned digital channels is

interesting suggesting the ongoing importance of website, email, paid and
organic search and social media which all gain a similar level of budget in this
survey.

Marketing technology (Martech, which we also review in this article) continues

to be important, taking up 26.6% of the total budget.
Another significant trend across marketing is the move to in-house resourcing
prompted by pressure on budgets. 29% of work previously carried out by
agencies has moved in-house in just the last 12-months alone.
The focus of in-housing is changing as well – with brand strategy, innovation
and technology, and marketing strategy development making up the top three
capabilities areas CMOs are moving to internal teams according to Gartner.

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Customer lifecycle opportunities

The best marketers are constantly looking for new digital marketing trends
based on the evolution of technology, and platforms, to identify new
opportunities that they can tap into... if they're looking in the right place and
know the right questions to ask...

I can help here since I’m constantly scanning for the latest developments to
help keep our members content up-to-date and to feature the latest
techniques in updates to my books.

Each year, towards the end of the year I review the digital marketing trends
landscape to help give recommendations on the digital marketing trends
marketers should focus on in the future. I like to keep it practical, showing
real-world techniques that businesses can apply.

In this 2022 edition marketing trends review, I’ll review the main trends across
our RACE customer lifecycle framework which defines 25 practical digital
marketing activities relevant to all businesses. This means that you will get
ideas from across marketing that can be harnessed by your business.
Improve your digital marketing plans for growth
Our free Digital marketing maturity benchmark report shows that many
businesses don't have a planned approach to take advantage of the latest and
evergreen digital marketing techniques. Our RACE Framework gives a simple
way to structure a digital marketing plan.
At Smart Insights, we support marketers and managers to plan, manage, and
optimize their marketing strategies through a data-driven customer-centric
approach.

Use the RACE Framework to set and track your marketing objectives at each
stage of your marketing funnel and identify new opportunities to increase
leads and sales.

Download our Free digital marketing plan template

Our popular digital marketing strategy template will give you an integrated
structure for applying the Smart Insights RACE Framework to help you rapidly
create an integrated digital marketing plan and incorporate digital marketing
trends in your business.

Access the Free digital marketing plan template

What digital marketing trends should we review?

I believe it's important for all businesses to review how they are harnessing
the latest marketing trends so they can apply the latest innovations through
the 70:20:10 rule of marketing focus. Google's digital marketing evangelist
Avinash Kaushik has explained the benefits of this mindset :

70% of the time we're going to focus on things that we know that are very
core to our business. 20% is where we're trying to push the boundaries. You
get into the known unknowns. And the last 10% is a true crazy experimental
stuff. Trying to figure out how to do uncomfortable things that we're going to
fail at more than we will succeed at. But with every success, you build a
competitive advantage.
So evaluating innovations can help you push the boundaries, but also improve
your digital marketing activities in 2022.
 Truth be told, at a high level, the trends across digital marketing tactics are
similar each year - with a lot of interest in search, social and email marketing,
and new web design and content marketing techniques to engage and convert
our audiences. Traditionally, technology innovations are the drivers of trends
in digital marketing  including changes in:

 Digital platforms: Innovations from the FAMGA businesses of Facebook Inc

(FB), Apple Inc (AAPL), Microsoft Corp (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and
Amazon.com Inc (AMZN)
 Martech vendors: In particular, the big marketing cloud players with the
biggest R&D budgets including Salesforce, Oracle, HubSpot, and companies
with a larger user base targeting SMEs like Mailchimp

The latest digital marketing trends technology

hype cycle
Across all digital platforms and marketing cloud services, the trends are well
documented by Gartner in their digital marketing hype cycles which I
summarize each year. Here is the latest visual from Gartner of the 2021 digital
marketing hype cycle.
 From reviewing the latest hype cycle, and from my recommendations on
innovations in this post,  here are the core marketing themes that I think will
be most significant for marketers considering their adoption of digital
technology in 2021 and into 2022 and beyond:

 Multichannel Marketing Hubs

 Conversational marketing
 Personalization engine
 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
 Consumer privacy and consent
My hype cycle article has a brief introduction to each.

Right, let's get to the detailed recommendations on innovations which I have

grouped by the RACE customer lifecycle activities to show how new
techniques can be applied to marketing activities.
REACH : Increasing awareness through digital
marketing medias
Within media, I'll concentrate on changes to search and social media
marketing, the two channels that are most important to marketers - although
the use of programmatic display advertising continues to increase amongst
larger brands.

Recommendation 1. Organic search: Monitor

core updates and EAT
During 2021, core updates have continued to have a significant impact on
organic visibility for businesses. This article from Search metrics
shows significant traffic differences from the July 2021 Core updates.

If core updates are new to you, their advisory What webmasters should know
about Google’s core updates Google explains these like this:

“Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to

improve our search results. Most aren’t noticeable but help us incrementally
continue to improve.
We aim to confirm such updates when we feel there is actionable information
that webmasters, content producers, or others might take about them".
The advisory and the more recent case studies often reference the perennial
importance of content quality affecting Expertise, Authority and Trust signals.
So anyone serious about competing in search should grab a copy of the latest
search quality guidelines to benchmark their content.

In 2021 Google has also continued its ongoing battle against link spam with
more guidance and an update in 2021. Check your approach against the
guidance.

Recommendation 2. Organic search: Look at

opportunities from structured data and the
SERPs features.
Experienced SEOs pay close attention to the search engine results pages
(SERPs), since Google and Microsoft are always innovating how they appear
to help improve their experience and monetise their ads. As marketers, they
give us opportunities to engage our audiences better than competitors and
attract more visits by increasing clickthroughs – if we follow the latest
changes.

For example, in August 2021 Google made this change to page titles which

affected the SERPs which is worth reviewing against the impact on your
business.
The latest SERPs Features summary from Moz shows where you could focus
if you are missing out on visits from some of these features such as Related
Questions. These have remained important.
 Retailers in particular should also consider changes to semantic markup and
structured data.

Recommendation 3. Organic search: Voice

search remains hyped but will deliver little for
most businesses
Sorry, I have to mention it since we so often still see the dumb
recommendation that Voice search is the number one trend businesses must
focus on. If you think back, you may remember the often misquoted 2014
prediction that “voice search will by 50% of all searches by 2020”. Well we're
in 2020 and it's still being widely touted and of course, smart speaker use has
increased dramatically, but the reality is that voice-based searches on mobile
and desktop have a minimal impact on the practical execution of SEO for
most businesses.

I agree with the views of Cameo Digital who explain the limited impact of voice
search  when they comment that regardless of whether the uptake for voice
search increases, the game stays virtually the same for SEOs. They explain
that Voice Search involves using a spoken command to retrieve the
information you want from search engines with two types of voice search,
each differing in their type of output. Only the first of these, however, is
relevant to SEO:

 Type 1: When a user chooses to use spoken voice commands as opposed to

typing a query into Google. This is treated as a normal web search, the data
of which will be collected in Google Search Console, so SEO as normal.
 Type 2: When a user chooses to use a spoken voice command in order to
receive a spoken answer. This is the case with many smart speakers such as
Google Home and Amazon Alexa. These searches are not logged in Google
Search Console and have very little relation to SEO.
So, businesses can tap into any voice-based changes in search behaviour by
focusing on the fundamentals of SEO such as keyword research, on-page
optimization best practices, structured data and creating quality content with
high Expertise-Authority-Trust to fit evolving search behaviours, including
more conversational queries.
I would add that changes in keyword behaviour prompted by rising local voice
queries are important to optimize for if you target local buyers.

Recommendation 4. Paid search: Assess the

use of machine learning optimization carefully
Although our research shows that the vast majority of businesses say they
don't use machine learning internally, many will use it as an external service
since it is a big part of organic and paid search and in particular offers options
in Google Ads. . So, this is a major trend to consider if you are not using
machine learning options within your paid media so far.

You may have noticed the 'Smart' prefix being attached to more and more
Google Services. The aim is to help businesses manage the complexity of ad
targeting to increase ROI, while of course protecting Google's ad revenue.
Some of these should be treated with caution. For example, Smart Goals in
Analytics assesses what a positive marketing outcome is rather than the
business specifying it, which is preferable.

Smart campaigns in Google Ads have been introduced to simplify the complex
process of managing Google Ads for small businesses. Yet there are large
downsides in reduced insight and control over campaigns meaning that small
businesses may outgrow this solution.

In 2021, Google continued to make changes to its bidding including this

relatively minor update to Smart bidding in Google Ads.

Some see the application of AI as reducing control and they are right to
question the ROI. But my view is that businesses should embrace Machine
Learning and develop the skills to understand it. For example, Google’s Smart
Bidding can help manage bidding across large product inventories on Google
Shopping – but we have to question just how smart is Smart Bidding actually?
This article from agency Precis introduces some of the mechanisms behind
Smart Bidding for Google Shopping and suggests a practical approach to
maximizing efficiency for your inventory. This article from White Shark Media
gives further examples of the analysis techniques for machine learning that
marketers should master rather than simply treating Machine Learning as a
black box.
There are so many opportunities for marketers to apply machine learning,
propensity modeling and artificial intelligence to inform their marketing
strategy and boost their results. As you can see from our RACE Framework
diagram, marketing technology adds value at every stage of your customers'
journeys.
Download our Free digital marketing plan template

Our popular digital marketing strategy template will give you an integrated
structure for applying the Smart Insights RACE Framework to help you rapidly
create an integrated digital marketing plan and incorporate digital marketing
trends in your business.

Access the Free digital marketing plan template

Recommendation 5. Ad optimization testing

becomes more sophisticated as ad platforms
develop
With more than two-thirds of digital ad spend now going to Facebook and
Google, optimization on these platforms is becoming ever more important. Yet
research by the Boston Consulting Group shows that only 9% of marketers
can accurately forecast the impact of a 10% shift in marketing spend.

Using attribution and creative optimization becomes more important to

understand complex customer journeys across mobile and desktop devices
and different ad placements.

For example, on Facebook alone, an ad could appear in a variety of

placements, such as in the Facebook News Feed, during Instagram Stories,
Reels or within Instant Articles. These Facebook IQ case studies show how
more advanced companies are working on ad optimization using Facebook's
new ad placement customization to reach their goals.
Recommendation 6. Review changing adoption
of social networks, especially video social
platforms like TikTok and Reels
During the pandemic, social network usage has naturally increased, so
changing the relative importance of social networks as a method of generating
awareness. As we show in our social media stats updates, Datareportal
reports that:

Social media user numbers have surged in the past 12 months too, with 520
million new users joining social media in the year to July 2021.

That equates to annualised growth of 13.1 percent, or an average 16½ new

users every single second.
Reviewing social media trends, Global Web Index consider the influence of
social media on purchase intent. They note the continuing importance of
influencers, particularly in some age groups, reporting that:

27% of Gen Zs say following influencers is one of the main reasons they use
social media, ahead of seeing content from their favorite brands.
More generally,  their research shows the relative importance of different
social networks on purchase. We would expect that Facebook and Instagram
would be important, but this report highlights the influence of TikTok,
Snapchat, Twitter and Pinterest, suggesting the importance of consumer
brands having an effective presence on all of these networks.
Recommendation 7. Review engagement
options for messaging platforms
Each of the social networks supports direct and group messaging and of
course, there are many dedicated apps such as WhatsApp, Messenger and
Snapchat. These are also offering more opportunities to reach audiences.

Recommendation 8. Privacy Wars: Review the

implications of increased consumer privacy
protection on advertising effectiveness
It seems a long time since GDPR was launched in May 2018 and it has been
helpful for enforcing more transparency on privacy with similar laws enacted in
US. The latest developments in privacy see a standoff between the bigger
players in digital platforms. Chrome has been increasing privacy by promising
to stop using third-party cookie tracking ads by 2022 while still protecting its
advertising interests by launching FloC to track groups of similar users rather
than individuals. FloC entered testing in 2021, but hasn't received a good level
of industry support, so this trend is "one to watch" in the months ahead.
ACT: Increasing digital marketing interactions through
digital experiences and content

Recommendation 9. Consider adoption of

design systems (most relevant to larger
businesses)
Inside Design identifies the trend of an increased focus on design
systems which it explains as a "collection of reusable components, guided by
clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of
applications".

The efficiency benefits for businesses to reduce costs and increase

conversion through common web design elements, and for users who have
less need to learn different interfaces, are clear. But it does beg the question
of the difference between a design system and a style guide or pattern
library? Well, one consideration is the scope; design systems can be much
broader than the web site patterns and style guides as designer Siw
Grinaker explains:

"A design system maintains the visual and functional elements of your
organisation in one place, in order to fulfill your brand principles through the
design, realisation, and development of products and services. It may include
a sketch library, style guide, pattern library, organisation principles, best
practices, templates, codes, and more".
This interesting design system case study from a designer at Airbnb explains
the benefits and the practical approach. I applaud the transparency of Airbnb
Design site where their designers share their approach to design innovation.
Recommendation 10: Ensure visual designs fit
the zeitgeist?
 Across all communications channels, first impressions are important, so
trends in visual and graphic design can have an effect in developing
preference for a brand. Certainly, we can all call out a dated web design
consciously or sub-consciously.

Often, articles on web design trends are based on web designer or agency
sites pushing the boundaries using new design technologies - and while these
approaches may go on to inform brand and company sites, more typically they
don't. So we have to consider visual design trends across the most popular
sites which our audience is familiar with to see whether a site. Venngage
catalogues these web-graphic design trends that are likely to continue into
2022:

 Inclusive visuals
 Fun data visualizations
 Bold backgrounds
 Colorful icons and illustrations
 Serif fonts
 Branded memes
 Quotes
 Social screencaps

Recommendation 11. Consider innovations in

interaction design and video to boost
conversion
Taff have this useful summary, with examples, of what they see as the latest
interaction design trends which we can see continuing into 2022. Some of
these are familiar from recent years, including Mobile-first design ethos and
personalized experiences. My pick of newer interactive design techniques for
marketers to be aware of include:

 Neomorphism - combining elements of skeumorphism and flat design

 Immersive 3D visuals
 Micro-interactions to promote engagement
 Design for speed - prompted by Google's new Core Web Vitals metrics
focusing attention on this
Video is not explicitly included here, but will continue to be a medium that is
increasingly used to increase conversion. For inspiration, see these 6
examples of how video can increase conversion rates.

Recommendation 12. Evolve content

marketing management approach to better
align content strategy with customers
The Content Marketing Institute is a great reference source for understanding
trends in the management of content marketing thanks to its annual surveys
that cover B2B, B2C and verticals within these like manufacturing.

One finding in the latest content marketing management research is the

content operating model which defines the focus and mechanism of content
creation. CMI reports that:

“Interestingly, half (50%) indicated a “content products” model (focused on

content marketing platforms such as website, blog, magazine, resource
center), followed by 32% who indicated a “projects/campaign” model
(operating as an internal agency, responding to ad hoc internal requests).
 However, from a communications point-of-view I think the trend is to more
persona and journey-focused content.

Recommendation 13. The growth of influencer

digital marketing continues, but with more
targeted use of influencers
For several years now there has been an increased focus on influencer
marketing as organic opportunities for content distribution via search and
social media has declined. Plus influencer marketing offers the potential of
increased audience engagement and the power of endorsements and
recommendations which we know are one of the main reasons for purchase.

Analyst Altimeter highlighted this trend in their report The Power of

Influence where they recommended that brands spend 25 percent of digital
marketing budgets on influencer marketing, which they estimated would reach
$10 billion by 2020, a 5X increase.

Here is my selection of some of the key trends in influencer marketing from

the Forbes Agency council.

 Rise of micro-influencers
 More focus on performance marketing
 Influencers as an 'always-on' strategy
 Long-term relationships with influencers
 From amplifiers to communicators
With more focus on performance and ROI, influencer marketing tools will
continue to evolve with a move away from unrepresentative Twitter follower
based measures. For example, Onalytica have recently announced that they
will blend B2B future influencer lists based on the Twitter API with traditional
influencers who could include:

 Social influencers
 Content creators
 Event speakers
 Industry analysts
 Brand employees
 Brands and publications
I think this is long overdue since a focus on celebrity and micro-influencers
alone misses the opportunities to form long-term relationships with the other
types who are often more influential!

CONVERT: Increasing conversion to sales through

online and offline channels
Recommendation 14. Consider your use of
structured always-on optimization
The options for testing are one of the biggest strengths of digital marketing,
yet there are still many businesses that don't take advantage of these
opportunities. From our free Digital Marketing Optimization report we see that
around one-third of businesses have no or limited testing while only around
one fifth have a continuous, structured programme.
Recommendation 15. Review the use of
conversational digital marketing trends and
communications styles to increase conversion
When discussing the Gartner hype cycle I noted the importance of
conversational marketing. This is sometimes perceived narrowly as chatbots
which have their place, but have not proved popular with end-users because
generally, the AI is not intelligent enough and human-assisted chat and sales
support has proved more practical in practice. In B2B categories, the growth
of conversational marketing and sales (or revenue acceleration) platforms
such as Drift, Intercom and Lyft looks set to continue.

Prompting micro-interactions doesn't require a full chat-like conversation, it

can be a simple dialogue based on an onboarding interaction like this from
Grammarly which is aimed at segmenting customer journeys, a similar
approach is used on the Smart Insights home page for 3 use cases for using
our platform.
Recommendation 16. Dark patterns: Consider
the ethical and legal ramifications
Dark Design Patterns emerged from the growth hacking mindset where CRO
teams have targets to increase conversion and guardians of the brand aren't
sufficiently involved. With many of the obvious wins from CRO achieved, there
may be more tests that involve obfuscation, but this reflects poorly on the
brand and with more specific privacy or distance selling laws catching up with
these practices.

It might be thought that dark patterns are limited to smaller ‘get rich quick’
schemes, but they also offer big advantages to large brands who test
techniques. Econsultancy gives these recent examples of large brands using
Dark Patterns including: Airbnb excluding additional amounts, including
cleaning fees and Airbnb’s service fee and Amazon prompting new customers
who check out with a default order qualifying for free shipping.

It's ironic, but a recognition of the problem that Tim Allen VP, Design at Airbnb
suggests that Brands should champion inclusion. He says: "Designers,
business leaders, and engineers will continue to embrace inclusivity and the
need for brands to reflect a rich diversity of perspectives. This will lead to
increased advocacy for human interests in technology; a more intentional
integration of ethics, equity, and justice into design decision-making; and the
dismantling of sustained bias within algorithms, products, and services".

Recommendation 17. Review the

sophistication of your website personalization
According to a SmarterHQ report, 72% of consumers say they now only
engage with marketing messages that personalized and tailored to their
interests.

Despite this, the same report also reveals that 86% of consumers are
concerned about their data privacy. Of these, Baby Boomers and Gen X are
the least trusting consumers, with Millennials and Gen Z being around 47%
more trusting than their older counterparts.
80% of self-classified frequent shoppers will only shop with brands who
personalize their experience. So, it becomes important to explain the value
proposition of data collection to reassure consumers about privacy and
understand what is valued most.
 Beyond retail and transactional e-commerce, use of personalization for
recommended content remains surprisingly low, but this will increase as
platform providers make it easier. For example, HubSpot's Smart Content
criteria to personalize web pages and email, but many people use WordPress
for their CMS like us which doesn't have plugins to support this. This is the
case with Smart Insights, so we use rules-based personalization instead, but
it's time-consuming.

Recommendation 18. Omnichannel commerce

including social commerce
There are clear signs that social commerce will continue to grow. North
American e-commerce agency Absolunet has identified the following key
signs of the popularity of social commerce:

 87% of e-commerce shoppers believe social media helps them make a

shopping decision.
 1 in 4 business owners are selling through Facebook.
 40% of merchants use social media to generate sales.
 30% of consumers say they would make purchases directly through social
media platforms.
Gavin Llewellyn has examples of the techniques in this Smart Insights post
on Social commerce trends.

ENGAGE : Improve customer communications to

increase loyalty and advocacy
Recommendation 19. Increase use of
techniques to understand and improve
customer journey effectiveness
Our Digital Marketing Optimization research shows the popularity of AB
testing to support conversion, but techniques for assessing voice of the
customer are relatively rarely used.
Recommendation 20. Review the relevance of
micro-communities
Referring to communities of designers, UX Design give an assessment of
online communities that many marketers will be able to relate to:

"The promise of large online communities where designers can talk freely and
learn from one another has not panned out... The reality of online
communities is quite different from what they initially seem to promise.

Groups with thousands of designers either become inactive once members

realize they have little in common, or remain active but end up devolving into
an endless stream of self-promotion and content marketing pieces.

Discussion threads on Reddit or DesignerNews don't delve deep enough into

a topic because they are held back by miscommunications between
participants. Design Twitter slowly becomes a shallow stream of polarizing,
angry, and loud voices.

Instead, micro-communities are on the rise. Pick one or two trusted

colleagues, select a few mentors outside of your bubble, and build your own
sounding board if you are looking to have more honest and in-depth
conversations".

Recommendation 21. Assess relevance of

community insights platforms
For brands, online support communities are only relevant for some sectors
such as telecoms, so the trend I see in larger brands is gaining customer
insights by developing a consumer insight panel supported by platforms like
Qualtrics or Alida.

Traditionally these types of services have focused on research functions

about new product development or customer service functions, but they are
now expanding across all touchpoints to what Alida are calling 'Total
Experience Management' - TX.
Recommendation 22. Improving email
personalization through lifecycle and
behavioural segmentation
Our email marketing lifecycle targeting infographic shows the fantastic
potential for using personalized email marketing to deliver more relevant
communications through the customer lifecycle.
Reviewing case studies of how businesses are using email marketing
automation shows signs of more sophisticated techniques, but if I'm honest
these automated techniques like welcome sequences and basket abandons
have been possible for over 15 years, so I can't get too excited about them, it
sometimes seems as if just the labels have changed...

We now talk about 'lifecycle email marketing' and sales cadences within B2B
nurturing. These do highlight the trend to increased integration between
channels though and email marketing to prospects and customers is now
treated as a channel that is better integrated with web, social, display ads and
personal ads.

However, these techniques are exciting for the businesses and marketers
involved if they are novel and should result in improvements in engagement
and sales. This lifecycle email marketing case study of Nike in Hong Kong
caught my eye.

Automation of 10 new lifecycle campaigns and improved relevance and

targeting increased website visits by +32.5% and automation revenue by
110% (abandoned basket campaigns were already in use). Lifecycle
segmentation included categories like purchase lifecycle groups, first-time
buyers, inactive, and defecting customers.

Recommendation 23. Applying Big Data

analysis and machine learning to improve
customer email targeting and website
personalization
More novel is the use of these techniques, which weren't practical 10 years
ago. Previously, many email marketing systems were limited to reporting on
individual newsletter and campaign email broadcasts. These are still the
'bread and butter' of email marketing for many marketers.

However, a more sophisticated approach (which I have been recommending

for over 15 years for more advanced email marketers) is to consider lifecycle
engagement reporting and targeting based on this. Predictive analytics can be
used to identify:
 Best send times to engage an individual (can be based when they originally
bought or subscribed, but this can be refined through time)
 Best timing and offer for follow-up communications based on analysis of
latency (average interval of response)
 Best product or category combinations from cluster-based segmentation

Recommendation 24. Using machine learning

to create more engaging communications
In addition to these targeting techniques, machine learning has a role to play
by boosting relevance and speaking in a more personal tone. Persado is an
interesting tech here.

Persado uses a copy impact classification applied to existing copy, which is

used to tailor copy and calls-to-action on an individual basis.

For example, using Persado Natural Language Generation to run an

experiment, Air Canada sparked a higher response using Anxiety language
getting a 3% engagement lift, compared to a 5% drop using Exclusivity
language, and a 3% drop using Safety language.
Another example of  AI application is nutrition and wellness retailer Holland &
Barrett using AI to provide better-targeted emails. This Machine Learning
approach from Tinyclues goes beyond optimizing copy using a tool like
Persado, instead, it also involves targeting based on the behaviour of
individuals to create more micro-targeted campaigns.

Speaking at a session I chaired at the Email Innovation Summit, Richard

Lallo, Head of Digital Marketing, described what he calls ‘strategic promotions
and mono-product pushes’ in a campaign. The business was able to drive
campaign revenue and increase re-purchase rate while sending emails.
Campaign revenue increased by 27%, open rates increased by 19%, while
email send volume decreased by 23%, which also gives cost savings.

Recommendation 25. Put a plan in place to

support digital marketing transformation
Our free Digital marketing maturity benchmark report revealed many
challenges of how digital marketing is run in companies today. Problems
included a lack of focus on integrated strategy, testing, and optimization and
structural issues like teams working in silos or a lack of skills in integrated
communications.

To counter these types of problems and to make the most of the opportunities
for growing a business through digital marketing trends, many businesses are
now putting a digital transformation programme in place.
The aim of digital transformation is to develop a roadmap to improve digital
capabilities and skills, while at the same time, integrating ‘always-on’ digital
marketing activities with brand and product marketing in the business.

This chart from the research shows that many businesses are active in
transformation to try to achieve this aim through the success factors covered
in this briefing.

Review your digital readiness, either for integrated digital marketing or

individual channels, download our free digital marketing benchmark
templates or take our interactive capability graders. These templates will give
you a quick review for digital marketing governance and the key channels like
search, social, email marketing plus analytics, content marketing and digital
experience.

Digital marketing trends in 2022 and beyond

All the best for grasping the opportunities from digital marketing trends in 2022
and beyond! I'll continue to cover the innovations through the year via my
LinkedIn profile, so do connect if you'd like these insights or to ask me any
questions.

If you're looking to rapidly implement one or some of the digital marketing

trends covered in this blog, don't forget to ensure you have an integrated
digital marketing plan in place, so you can reap the rewards of the latest
digital marketing trends across your customer lifecycle.

Download our Free digital marketing plan template

Our popular digital marketing strategy template will give you an integrated
structure for applying the Smart Insights RACE Framework to help you rapidly
create an integrated digital marketing plan and incorporate digital marketing
trends in your business.

Access the Free digital marketing plan template

By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing
training platform and publisher Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the 100+ templates, ebooks
and courses in the digital marketing resource library created by our team of 25+ digital
marketing experts. Our resources are used by our Premium members in more than 100
countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing. Free members can access
our free sample templates here. Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is
author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing
Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. My personal site,
DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support
materials including a digital marketing glossary. In 2004 he was recognised by the
Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped
shape the future of marketing. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a
question.