The first quarter of 2022 is well underway and so should your inbound marketing goals for this year. Inbound marketing is defined as a marketing model whose sales performance relies on the initiative of its client base to find and purchase a product. The tactics you use will attract customers through creating content and experiences that are tailored to them. Whether you’re a small business or large corporation, having goals for inbound marketing campaigns are very important for implementing the top inbound marketing trends for 2022. Inbound marketing goals will:
- Enable you and your marketing team to focus your efforts
- Outline boundaries for your content
- Align a company’s marketing, sales, and customer service teams with one vision
In addition to knowing what your inbound marketing goals are, you should also know what the fundamentals of inbound marketing are. The first is goal setting, the rest are:
- Contacts. These are the people who and who your business can build relationships with. Contacts can include anybody your business markets to, partners with, or sells to. A strong contact database is essential when trying to expand your brand/business. Don’t forget to segment your contact database to ensure that you are sending each group information that’s relevant to them, captures their attention, and influences them to engage with you.
- Buyer personas. Buyer Personas is a representation of your ideal customer. This is based on real data, which contains demographics, behaviors, motivations, and goals. Buyer persona helps marketers understand their customers’ wants and needs so they can effectively engage them.
- Buyer’s journey. A buyer’s journey is the process of a customer’s experiences leading up to a purchase. There are 3 stages – the awareness stage, consideration stage, and the decision stage.
- Content. Simply put, content is what attracts customers and persuades them to purchase your products or services. Your content should be based on your contacts, buyers’ personas, and the buyer’s journey.
Now for the Top Inbound Marketing Trends for 2022
The top inbound marketing trends for 2022 that are a must for any company are: simplified content, short-form videos, mobile optimization, infographics, redefining influencer marketing, and removing cookies.
- Simplified content
Content is one, and probably the most important, fundamental component of inbound marketing. But content flies at your customer a million times a day from dozens of platforms. You don’t want your content to become drowned out as noise.
One way to ensure that doesn’t happen is ensure your content is simple and clear. Complicated and super flowery content may turn off the very customer you’re trying to reach. Your content needs to be understandable for the public. Clear content will always be more effective.
- Short-form video
And speaking of content, invest in more video content. But make sure it’s short. In 2022, 89% of global marketers plan to continue investing in short-form video content or increase the investment. Over 40% of global marketers consider short-form video effective when it comes to performance and engagement. Around 59% of marketers use video for content marketing. Seventy-six percent of marketers that invest in video say that video is effective. Twenty-seven of marketers say that video provides the biggest ROI.
Two reasons marketers go ga-ga for short-form videos is because short-form videos take less time to create and are aligned with the fast-paced attention spans of platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat.
And with over 1 billion global users, TikTok has positioned itself as the number one short-form video app for marketing and branding. Over 60% of marketers plan to increase their investment in TikTok in 2022. So, make sure you are investing in TikTok as well.
- Mobile optimization
Did you know that more than half of annual online website traffic comes from mobile devices? This is because millennials and Gen Z continue to grow in buying power and these fast-paced, highly connected generations engage with business, it’s crucial vital to provide them with a mobile-optimized digital experience. In fact,
- 33% of global marketers invest in mobile web design
- 84% of marketers that utilize mobile web design plan continue to invest the same amount or more in 2022
- 64% of SEO marketers consider mobile optimization an effective investment
And your business needs to be one of them. Make sure that as you focus on the mobile experience for your website, you also consider the mobile experience for your email marketing campaigns.
- Infographics
Infographics pack a lot of pertinent content in a small punch. And if using infographics isn’t a part of your content marketing strategy in 2022, it should be. Over 40 percent of marketers currently use infographics in their content marketing. Infographics can be one of the most effective inbound marketing tools. You can use them in social media posts, emails, blogs, SMS marketing and as a downloadable link on your website.
- Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing reached over $10 million in 2021, and this year it continues to grow. Marketers and brands are increasing their investment in influencers because influencer campaigns naturally provide relevance since the influencer is endorsing the product. An additional benefit is that your product or service can be introduced and marketed to a new segment of potential customers that’s outside of your target base.
- Removal of cookies
Internet cookies are blocks of data created by a web server to identify your computer as you’re browsing a website. While they were originally created to identify specific users and create a better browsing experience, tech companies have started to eliminate them as internet privacy regulations continue to be established. One way you can still track users without using cookies is by using the ETAG, an opaque identifier assigned by a Web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL.
In closing, one of the benefits of inbound marketing is its great way to build long-lasting relationships with customers and expand your business. Using these top inbound marketing trends for 2022 can assist you in attracting, engaging, and hopefully converting more customers. And if you need any help implementing any of these trends into your inbound marketing strategy, then let the marketing experts at Make Your Mark help you. Don’t hesitate to reach out today!