Podcasts, privacy, and paid ads are crucial to your digital marketing strategy for 2022.

Sookio’s Digital Strategist Clark Chapman says that getting to know Google’s algorithm, testing your techniques, and crafting captivating copy will boost your digital marketing success in the year ahead…

9 key tactics for digital marketers in 2022

• Get to grips with the Google algorithm

• Experiment with paid ads

• Analyse your marketing efforts

• Respect user privacy

• Test, and test again

• Use short-form video

• Sell on social media

• Try your hand at podcasting

• Write dazzling copy

1. Get to grips with the Google algorithm

Google is on a mission to clean up the internet.

There are several changes on the horizon, particularly in how its search engine crawls and ranks websites. In 2021, we saw Google unleash the core web vitals update, which ensures the user experience of your website has an even greater impact on your search engine ranking.

By making it easier to create websites (with companies routinely using their own CMS), we’ve inadvertently added a ton of excess code, which is starting to impact the browsing experience.

Google will now start punishing websites with technical issues, including slow page loading speeds.

If you’re not sure where to start, use the Lighthouse Chrome extension to run a report. This will show you the core web vitals of your website. You’ll also find some handy recommendations that you can send to your web developer!

2. Experiment with paid ads

With organic content views continuously falling across social media, paid ads are becoming more important on the web.

More businesses are uploading content. The social media market is like any other, and the time people spend on the platforms has plateaued at the same time as the sheer amount of content has exploded.

This leaves the same amount of newsfeed space, but far more competitors vying for user attention. Putting money behind your content is a great way to turbocharge your online efforts.

3. Analyse your marketing efforts

Link up your marketing tactics by referring to the digital marketing funnel. This way, you’ll always be targeting the right people with the right content at the right time. If you’re an unknown startup company, then use social media to raise awareness of your brand: this approach acknowledges that nobody will be searching for your company name. After all, the brand recognition of Nike doesn’t happen overnight!

Alongside strategic planning, use attribution models. If a customer purchased a product from your website straight after clicking on a Google ad, then under the last-click attribution, that Google ad gets all the credit.

There’s a problem with this. What if your customer watched seven or eight YouTube videos from your brand, then searched for the product and happened to click on the ad because it looked more trustworthy?

Ask yourself:

• Is it fair to give all the credit to your Google ad?

• Would the web user have seen the ad without seeing your content first?

• Would they have clicked the ad if they didn’t trust your brand?

These are the kind of questions your marketing team needs to answer to ensure you know which parts of the digital marketing mix are providing the most value.

The average web user has multiple touchpoints online. Your 2022 marketing efforts should reflect this shift.

4. Respect user privacy

The digital world and the real world have become more integrated, leading to a new focus on privacy. This is a good thing overall. However, it calls for new, innovative thinking from marketers, as we no longer have access to the same data we have come to rely on.

In early 2021, Apple released the iOS 14 app update, causing panic at Facebook HQ. This update asked Facebook app users if they wanted their activity tracked off the platform. A high proportion of people answered with a resounding, ‘no’, making it much more difficult for Facebook to track actions on the website.

This is just one part of a much larger trend, leading us towards a privacy-focused digital experience. We are also saying goodbye to third-party cookies (so no more tracking from external websites) courtesy of Google’s latest updates.

But don’t worry, marketers can still access some of the data they want. Google Analytics data stems from first-party cookies, so you’ll be able to see the number of visitors and page views.

5. Test, and test again

Whether you’re running ads on Facebook, posting on LinkedIn, or adding a button to your website – test it! The businesses that test, test, and test some more will see much greater returns on investment from their online marketing efforts.

The great advantage of digital marketing is the real-time data which allows you to run many more tests to get the best possible results. Don’t forget that when you’re testing any content, it’s important to test one element at a time. If you change the headline, image, and call to action all at the same time, you ultimately don’t know what aspect made the difference.

To use a football reference, treat your testing like the FA Cup. At each round, you eliminate the worst performing thing you’ve tested until you have a winner.  You can then focus all the remaining budget on that winner! If you set your testing up properly, you’ll never waste a penny on digital marketing because you will have learned something about your audience.

6. Use short-form video

For companies looking to grow, there’s nothing quite like the explosion in short video apps.

Statista estimates that the number of TikTok users in the UK will almost double to 16.8 million by the year 2024.

TikTok might be the most notorious, but it’s not the only player in town.

Other notable platforms include:

• YouTube shorts

• Instagram Reels

• Facebook Stories

LinkedIn also stepped into the arena, but so far, not very successfully. When building out your 2022 marketing strategy, consider ways of using your longer-form videos to create multiple clips. There is much more competition in 2022, and you shouldn’t rely on one piece of content to do all the work.

Short video content is the online marketing version of spread betting. Why put all your money into one video when you can create 20 smaller clips to tell a story?

7. Sell on social media

The expansion of social media platforms is one of the unexpected offshoots of online privacy changes. Businesses are increasingly using their social accounts as a means to both market and sell products.

Facebook is a popular platform for this style of social selling. Since May 2020, you can add all your products to the catalogue and sell directly on Facebook via Shops.

If you’re an e-commerce brand in 2022, using these streamlined offerings is a great way to grow your sales.

8. Try your hand at podcasting

The possibilities of podcasting are incredibly exciting in 2022! It’s estimated that podcast listeners in the UK will grow from 15 million to 20 million by 2024.

Podcasts provide listeners with a chance to learn new things whilst hitting the gym, doing housework, driving… The ability to consume media while getting on with the essential tasks of life gives podcasting an advantage over all the other trends for 2022. 

As podcasts continue to grow their share of the digital media market, think of ways your organisation can connect with potential customers. Don’t worry about being too niche. There’s something for everyone!

9. Write dazzling copy

It’s easy to get caught up in some of the jargon and speculation around digital marketing. One school of thought declares technical knowledge is the best way to secure your business future in 2022. But some of the ‘old-fashioned’ tactics are more important than ever before.

Google search crawlers improve the AI of the ranking process, so it’s critical to write for humans, not robots. You may have heard people talk about adding keywords and anchor text, but ultimately, the more natural the content, the more value it offers the reader.

The more readable the content, the more time visitors will spend on your webpage (a significant factor for Google rankings).

Good writers are crucial in 2022, so invest in their input and reap the rewards.

Ready to tackle your digital marketing challenges?

Contact the digitally savvy Sookio team to find out how!