As the wave of uncertainty continues following a global pandemic, rising inflation, and geopolitical tensions, what are the top 2022 trends marketers are seeing so far this year, and what is their impact on business?
Pace of Business Continues to Accelerate
Since the start of the pandemic in 2020 “on average, organizations have driven seven years worth of digital progress in a matter of months. Companies have reported acting 20 to 25x times faster than expected”.¹
As competition continues, many marketers have seen a convergence of marketing strategy, customer experience, and business strategy as customers have come to expect a highly personalized digital experience when engaging with a brand or service.
According to a survey conducted by Adobe to marketers:
50%
cite poor integration between tech systems and lacking digital skills/capabilities as the top reasons for holding back marketing/customer experience from driving better customer experience.
Collaboration & Silos Are Continuing to Breakdown
The relationship between the CMO, CFO, and CIO is strengthening as organizations are recognizing the need to invest in customer data technology in order to drive personalization and differentiate from competitors.
24%
of marketers surveyed by Adobe in their Q4 2021 digital trends survey say they will spend significantly more on a customer data technology platform.
Building Trust, Especially in a Digital Environment, is More Important Than Ever Before
With the launch of IOS 14.5 update, 85% of consumers worldwide reported opting out of of app-tracking.² Last year (2021), according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 69% of countries worldwide have data protection and privacy legislation and 20 more have draft legislation in the works.
Enterprises and organizations big and small need to take data privacy, compliance, and protection of its customer data seriously; especially as the data is often accessed and used by multiple cross-functional stakeholders that often sit in different timezones, which could cross country borders. Gone are the days of using customers’ data and storing it locally on an employee’s hard drive in an excel doc. There is a lot of risk in the event of a security breach, data failure, or it being used in ways that are not privacy compliant.
The real reason trust is becoming so important for marketers is they will need to rely heavily on 1st party data to effectively track, target, and convert customers in the digital world with the demise of 3rd party cookie data.
Ability to Pivot & Work in an Agile Fashion
With the advent of the global pandemic, supply chain issues, and a tight labor market, organizations have made automation of key tasks and bringing key job roles and responsibilities back ‘in house’ – for marketers to be able to quickly pivot and adapt to market conditions – a top priority.
Data democratization and a single source of truth for all data is a theme that has emerged to empower teams to collaborate in real-time to drive strategy, innovation, and business transformation.
The ability for an organization to translate data into insights and then use those insights to ‘Test & Learn’ and optimize, has become very important. “35% of marketing practitioners consider their ‘speed of getting insights’ as ‘strong/very strong’ and 34% regard their ‘speed of action on customer insights as ‘strong/very strong’.³
Marketers who excel at getting insights from their data and are able to execute against those insights in a real-time or near real time will distinguish themselves from the competition and be able to deliver a highly personalized transformative customer experience. These marketers will also be able to manage ‘risk’ by seeing what works and what doesn’t. In 2022, marketing budgets will continue to be fragile due to increased pressure from finance departments to drive lower funnel lead generation that have direct ties to measurable sales and revenue.
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¹ 2022 Adobe Digital Trends Report
² Flurry, IOS 14.5 Opt-In Rate- Daily Updates Since Launch, April
³ Adobe Digital Trends Survey, Q4 2021
