The internet marketing landscape changes very quickly, each year marked by new trends, methods, improvements, technological innovations and developments in algorithms and artificial intelligence. Whether you’re a marketing professional or the owner of a business of any size, it isn’t always easy to keep up with the latest trends in digital marketing strategy, including such areas as email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising campaigns through social media and Google Ads.
From one year to the next, there are always new processes to master and numerous other developments that could affect your internet marketing strategy. Therefore, in order to achieve the best results for your business, it’s essential to stay abreast of the latest tendencies.
Internet marketing trends to follow in 2022
Since technology continues to evolve rapidly as we enter a new year, we would like to help you discover some of the indispensable internet marketing trends for 2022.
Adapting SEO for voice searches
Here are a few figures to give you an idea of the importance of voice searches, a technology that satisfies the current need for rapidity and simplicity:
- Fifty-five percent of teens use voice searches on a daily basis.
- Seventy-two percent of internet users use voice searches to make inquiries.
- Fifty percent of voice searches are performed from cellphones.
As the name implies, voice searches involve using one’s voice to conduct searches on the internet. Therefore, your website’s vocal SEO, or natural referencing adapted for voice searches, requires optimizing your website content based on the spoken (rather than written) inquiries that users initiate on search engines.
Consequently, from the perspective of internet marketing, it’s indispensable to optimize your website for voice searches in 2022!
Improving the user experience
Google Page Experience is a major search engine update whose goal is to offer a better user experience by including the user-friendliness of webpages as an SEO criterion. Therefore, the quality of the user experience on your website will now influence its ranking in search engine results. Google uses Core Web Vitals to evaluate the performance of any given page on your website in relation to real-life user data.
Below are the two most important updates.
- May 2021: Core Web Vitals evaluate performance on mobile devices.
- February 2022: Core Web Vitals will evaluate performance on computers.
The three primary metrics are as follows:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): this refers to the amount of time a browser takes to load the largest graphic element on the user’s screen, in other words, the frame displayed on the user’s device (rather than the overall site).
- FID (First Input Delay): this value measures how long it takes before a browser responds to a user’s first interaction on a page he or she is visiting, starting from the moment the user clicks on the URL of the page in question. In other words, it measures the page’s interactivity. How long does it take the page to react when a user interacts with it?
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): this criterion measures how long it takes for all of the elements (for example, the links or sections of text) in the content blocks of complex pages to reach their final location without changing their position. In other words, it indicates the visual stability of your website.
The search engine rates these measurements as shown below:
Picture reference: https://web.dev/vitals/
The conclusion? Your website must be efficient and offer a seamless user experience.
Developing mobile-first websites
In Quebec, smartphones are the most popular means (at 48 percent) whereby internet users ages 18 and over access the internet.
Therefore, it’s crucial to use responsive design to create and optimize web content that automatically adapts to the smaller screens of mobile devices.
To learn more, check out the latest BJMédia blog entries in which we address this topic at length.
Using short videos or animations
Short videos that are attractive and informative, that resemble stories and that stand out in your news feed will enable you to achieve better client engagement and brand recognition.
Sixty-eight percent of internet users learn about a product or service by means of short videos.
Integrating chatbots
Chatbots are an excellent way to offer customers a pleasant personalized user experience, as they favor interactions between internet users and your company. Furthermore, they help offset the labor shortage that many companies are currently experiencing.
To learn more about chatbots, read our article from the month of November.
Opting for simplicity
The days of King Content are over! Now, simplicity reigns. The fact is that people don’t read online the same way they do on physical media. Furthermore, there’s so much information online that, in order to stand out, your content must be simple, relevant and of good quality. Don’t hesitate to put the principle “keep it simple, stupid” into practice. This concept advocates simplicity, eliminating any unnecessary complexity. In other words, use short sentences and words that even a child can understand.
The big marketing question for 2022 is…
How will internet marketing change after the death of the cookie?
You’ve no doubt heard that Google has announced that they’re ending support for third-party cookies in their Chrome browser in early 2022 (reference). After the launch of its program, it will give us nine months to adapt and change our data collection strategy. After that, it will no longer be possible for a website to collect information through cookies to track website visitors and use that information in a retargeting campaign for example.
This is a critical development for the field of internet marketing, given that Chrome is the most popular browser with a market share of nearly 70 percent all across the board. However, the concerns related to protecting the privacy of internet users have become much more acute over the years. Moreover, online consumers can already disable cookies and refuse to allow third-party tracking.
But what does this mean for your business?
To put it simply and directly, it’s bad news, as it will necessitate some drastic changes. The ability to track internet user activity is essential for numerous advertisers and companies. Your email marketing strategy will definitely gain value in this context.
Every member of the team of specialists at BJMédia keeps up with all of the latest digital trends, announcements and major changes in order to implement effective online marketing strategies that are adapted to clients’ current realities. So don’t hesitate to contact us to learn more about how internet marketing is evolving in 2022.
