• by Albert Moufarrij , January 3, 2022

For marketers, shifting technologies and consumer behaviors add much uncertainty as we head into 2022. Below are three industry trends that could make or break marketers, depending on how they choose to act. 

The shift in SEO. SEO in 2022 is going to show the growing demand for brand teams to follow Google’s understanding of intent. Thanks to improved natural language processing and knowledge graph API, a company can better connect phrases to the intent behind them. Add Google’s personalization layer and search is getting even more personal, recognizing that audience centricity, and SEO can no longer be one size fits all. 

There will be more investments in machine learning, along with running tests to see how search results get altered based on the intent of the user, such as exploring psychographic profiling on your customer base to better understand their focus and motivation drivers. Search is no longer just about words, but also context.

Knowing how Google perceives your company, as well as what led to that conclusion, is vital -- as is looking closely at what competitors and detractors are saying about your industry.

Forget followers; look at influence. There will beless reliance on follower counts and more focus on influence. It’s not who you know, it’s what you know to better engage and connect customers to brands.

Technology has only provided businesses with siloed views on who to engage with based on demographics and followership base. What matters is understanding who drives the conversation and who is at the center of your brand's universe. Brand teams should invest in the identification of the most relevant stakeholders influencing the conversation. By doing so you can understand what these stakeholders are saying in relation to you so you can engage at scale and mobilize to be at the center of the conversation. 

The rise of the corporate spokesperson.Executive branding is going to be crucial. Focusing on C-Suite marketing has the effect of humanizing the company and ultimately getting closer to customers. Putting more faces to the brand at the executive level will be a priority for years to come. This type of marketing started with tech companies and has expanded to other industries.

In 2022, those working in digital marketing will need to embrace machine learning much more strongly, emphasize influence over follower counts, and convince organizations to promote their brands by using a variety of executives (not just the founders) to better reflect a brand's ethos and values, if for no other reason than to humanize the company and its products.