Next Year’s Biggest Marketing Trends

Merry Christmas!

With Christmas right around the corner and the majority of the Fidelitas team taking some well-deserved time off next week, we’re going to dive in on some of the marketing trends we see on the horizon for marketing leaders heading into 2022. Special thanks to Jon Merlin, our Creative Director, and Moises Parada, our Search Manager, for their input here as well.

Paid Media:
What’s old is new again, and what was new two years ago remains new for many media buyers. YouTube, TikTok, and Connected TV will take a larger share of the digital ad revenue in 2022 as Facebook and Instagram cede market share in light of a more level playing field when it comes to targeting. As more marketing leaders become increasingly uncertain regarding the performance of their digital ads, we’re going to see a reversion to optimizing for CPMs in many circles. I don’t agree with this strategy at all for most marketers, but it remains a marketing trend we’re seeing nonetheless.

Many performance marketers were pleasantly surprised with TikTok’s ad performance in Q4, and longer-form creative will continue to find an effective home on YouTube. Connected TV offers perhaps the most exciting targeting capabilities, at least until the next Apple TV iteration broadcasts its own VPN.

Zero Party Data:
No cookies? No problem. Zero Party Data will be critical to acquire for marketers. Great copy, creative incentives, and savvy strategies will enable marketing leaders to cash in on Zero Party Data acquired voluntarily from their customers. For example: now, instead of knowing that Tyler is a customer, we might know that Tyler is a customer living in San Diego that has kids and enjoys a Cutwater cocktail with his sports. The more Zero Party Data marketing leaders are able to acquire, the better in the long run. I believe we’ll see marketing leaders carve out time on their calendars and room in their budgets for Zero Party Data acquisition tools and strategies this year in an effort to curb escalating acquisition costs. Many will be successful.

Design:
​When it comes to visual communication, we’re going to see the continuation of three marketing trends in 2022. The first is a continued push towards motion. More and more brands and creatives are utilizing video, motion, and animation to capture attention and deliver a better customer experience. Static graphics as your main source creative just won’t cut it anymore. Taking it one step further, we believe that as more and more brands pivot to video, winners and losers will be separated by their post-production chops. Simple videos that would carry a brand in 2020 won’t cut it in 2022.

We are going to see more and more playful typography and brands being willing to break the mold and be different with their type choices. We’ve been seeing a lot of rebrands using a fresh take on a vintage or retro typeface. We’ll also see the continuation of brands using nostalgia to create delight. We’ve already witnessed a reemergence of the ’80s for years, and you should see a push toward the 90’s MTV era and the early internet aesthetic over the next year.

Influencers:
Influencer marketing became a staple for large and small brands alike in 2021, and as brands struggle to keep up with the demand for compelling creative, savvy marketing leaders will leverage and expand their influencer relationships to help shore up creative production. UGC-style content from creators/influencers will salvage creative outputs for teams trying to pull a Houdini with their creative budgets as larger and larger portions of their budgets are reappropriated to accommodate rising customer acquisition costs.

Another ripple effect: our Magic 8-Ball says that investment into CRO will increase out of sheer necessity.

SEO:
With the most impactful announcement of 2021 from Google introducing MUM (multitask unified model), there will definitely be some change in search with this new AI model. With MUM being 1,000 times more powerful than BERT, it can understand information from text and images and uses the “total sum of knowledge, even if that knowledge is in a different language”. It will also expand to video and audio as well. Unfortunately, it’s not something you can optimize for. SEO strategies will continue to evolve with MUM, so making sure to provide content that answers a user’s query in your language and location with proper use of images related to that query will be more important than ever next year.

Marshall Goldsmith’s quote that “What got you here won’t get you there” is as true as ever heading into 2022. If you’re struggling to discern opportunities from distractions, or if you just need help reaching your growth goals next year, we’d love to chat. Want to dive into more marketing trends? Just respond to this blog post to get in touch.

Cheers and Merry Christmas!