What to expect in 2022

Curious about digital marketing trends in 2022? I’ve summed it up in this article.

Reading time: 3,5 mins

by Gergő Bárándi

First of all let me wish you a Happy New Year!

We went trough another though year with full of challenges and new experiences. I also assume that most of you currently looking into 2022 with a bit of worry due to the economic and pandemic situation.

I’m not a financial guru so its not a business, more like a friendly advice: don’t. 2022 could be the year of recovering for suffering business industries which means more players will get on the pitch in digital advertising. Business industries who already take a key part in digital advertising world will be able to grow more, since a lot of technical innovations are coming regarding the advertising side.

Let’s get trough what can we expect from 2022 looking at general digital marketing topics.

Algorythm driven everything

For now every, literally every part of digital marketing is driven some kind of algorythm, think about search enginges, social media news feeds and ads, etc. These algorythms has one key purpose: provide the best user experience to make us spend more and more times at the current platform.

These algorythms will be more and more sophisticated, for example take a quick look at Google’s statement about highlighting pages with great user experience.

We’ll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won’t play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August. You can think of it as if you’re adding a flavoring to a food you’re preparing. Rather than add the flavor all at once into the mix, we’ll be slowly adding it all over this time period. As we have said before, while this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account. More info >>>

Digital marketers debating since long time about organic content’s reach on Facebook, however in my opinion all of us can still agree that we must stay relevant. Facebook knows what could be a relevant content for a user, better than any of us.

Recommendation: monitor the organic reach, create relevant content for your followers as you did before – and do not afraid to spend some money on your content, post engagement campaigns are much more than likes and comments.

Fancy a consultation about this topic? Contact me.

We have to learn to interrogate our data collection process, not just our algorithms.
Cathy O’Neil

mCommerce still yet to reach it’s peak

While more and more upgraded Plus, Pro, ProMax cellies released every year, marketers turned their focus on mobile based ecommerce over the past years. This trend does not seem to decline in 2022, while more and more players stepping on the pitch to join banks, airlines, music streaming services, etc.

According to snapchat we can expect a growht in direct commerce activity, where desktops are less and less involved in sales funnels. 

We also need to keep a side eye on AR and VR shopping experiences, these technologies yet to have their breakthrough, but it could this could got a step closer with Meta in 2022.

Google ads: focus on big picture instead of micromanagement

Google started to push us a bit harder to advertising automations in 2021, announcing the night-night for Expanded texts ads (ETA) until June 2022 and introducing Performance Max campaigns in Q4 2021. For first it could be though to switch your micromanaging mindset (yes, sometimes I still micromanage small accounts), but if your budget is a bit broader you should put your focus on long term data collection and asset development.

Responsive search ads which will replace ETAs will require a bit more text assets than your 3 ETAs (you had at least 3 in an ad group, dont you?) to create more flexible ads to provide the best possible results for the users.

The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more opportunities Google Ads has to serve ads that more closely match your potential customers’ search queries, which can improve your ad performance. After you enter headlines and descriptions, Google Ads assembles the text into multiple ad combinations in a way that avoids redundancy. Unlike expanded text ads, you can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for a single responsive search ad. Next, in any given ad, a maximum of 3 headlines and 2 descriptions will be selected to show in different combinations and orders. Part of your ad text may automatically appear in bold when it matches or closely matches a user’s search query. Over time, Google Ads will test the most promising ad combinations, and learn which combinations are the most relevant for different queries. More info >>>

I recommend you to start to implement responsive search ads as soon as possible.

The situation is more spectacular when it comes to Performance max campaigns.

Performance Max campaigns allow you to promote your products or services across the Google Network by creating one easy-to-manage campaign. The situation seems easy, since you could put your search, display, local and shopping campaigns into one campaign and let Google algorythm to optimize everything.

But where you can win easily, the loss could be even bigger. Since we do not know too much about Performance Max campaigns and their optimization possibilities (maybe in 2022 Q1 or Q2), focusing on your big picture, strategy, segmentation and assets is more important than ever. You should know what to cover with Performance Max and what to keep closer to you.

Social media – well designed funnels will be more important than ever

Most of the advertisers starts their facebook spendings like: everyone can create campaigns on facebook, I’m also able to do it. Facebook will encourage you about this, like of course you can honey, do it by yourself. Later on, looking at ROAS numbers, the faces are not this happy at all.

Thousands of users coming into your site from a boosted post or a link-click optimized traffic campaign, but the number of conversions are still low? Of couse, because you forget to tell the algorythm to provide you qualified users who potentially convert on your site for your money not just pure traffic.

Educate instead of instant money

How does your upper funnel look like? How much money do you invest into educating your target group about your service, or even creating bigger demand for it? Believe me, Facebook knows better than me and you what users want, so our task is to implement the relevant content strategy to different part of sales funnels and let the algorithms work.  

What can you do? Create sophisticated funnels beginning with education, where you can build most of the engagement. Track these engagements because these users wont be as cold as your ex’s heart, so you may put more budget for generating conversion from this segment, leading them trough your funnel. It’s much easier to sell for educated users, isn’t it? 

Summarized, 2022 will be the year of staying relevant with your whole digital marketing mix. In case you cannot keep up with this, you may see decline in your results. 

In case you need a specialist to guide trough 2022, feel free to contact me. We may design your funnel together, while implementing a clear content and ppc strategy.