2022 Marketing Predictions: Ten Lists

By Chris Lemmond

2022 Predictions are in! I’ve compiled lists from ten different publications, analysts, and consultants. Most are interesting reads (follow the links). Some are actual predictions (see Gartner), while the rest identify trends that seem to be accelerating. Read my (wise!) take on all of this at the end, and then forward to your friends and colleagues.

Ad Age (Focus on the Marketing Function)

https://adage.com/article/opinion/marketing-2022-5-trends-watch/2395826

1. You (Marketers) are going to be more important

2. Your purpose will help you win customers

3. Your martech spend is going to get smarter

4. You’ll say good-bye to long-term planning

5. You’ll use more than money to win talent

Deloitte

https://deloitte.wsj.com/articles/2022-global-marketing-trends-put-customers-first-01635352161

1. Purpose—a beacon for growth.

2. Authentically inclusive marketing

3. Building the intelligent creative engine.

4. Meeting customers in a cookie-less world.

5. Designing a human-first data experience

6. Elevating the hybrid experience.

7. Supercharging customer service with AI.

Entrepreneur

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/411180

1. Personalization, a way to win a place in the heart

2. Using video-based content, live streaming, and more

3. Discuss what matters, sustainability, goodwill, and more

4. Content that takes no effort

5. User Generated Content (UGC) at your disposal

6. Using keywords to drive traffic

7. VR and AR

8. Privacy issues need to be solved

9. Representation is key

Fast Company (Focus on Mobile Marketing)

https://www.fastcompany.com/90705789/12-mobile-marketing-trends-experts-are-eyeing-for-2022

1. Shoppable Links

2. Visual Search

3. Increased App Use In-Store

4. Real-Time Engagement Technology

5. Bump Offers

6. TikTok

7. Color Disruption

8. Removing Friction

9. Augmented Reality Shopping

10. Native Advertising

11. Social and Video Commerce

12. AR and VR Experiences

Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydevries/2021/12/14/7-marketing-predictions-for-2022/?sh=5d2d49c31da6

1. People will buy brands, not products.

2. B2B digital advertising will never look the same.

3. Marketers will look to boards of consumers to make critical decisions.

4. Increased sensitivity to marketing.

5. Marketing to toughen.

6. Attention to be the rarest commodity.”

7. Trend to teach, not sell.

Forbes (Focus on Marketing Technology)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2022/01/03/7-predictions-for-marketing-technology-in-2022/?sh=4a1809568d55

1. Privacy

2. Story

3. AI

4. Metaverse

5. Web3C

6. Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG)

7. Marketing Fortresses

Forrester

https://www.forrester.com/predictions/predictions-2022/

1. Consumers see the world as all digital

2. Tech execs leap from digital to human-centered technology transformations.

3. Brands dance and spar with marketplaces.

4. Third-party risks escalate as just-in-case supply chains gain ground.

5. Creative AI becomes a focus for innovators.

6. B2B marketers accelerate technology investments, with uneven results.

7. Brands take bold actions to advance ESG goals.

8. Accessibility becomes a major business priority.

9. Companies fail at anywhere work, and it isn’t the virus’s fault.

10. Cloud-native takes center stage in enterprise cloud.

11. Bias bounties become bountiful.

12. Smart infrastructure growth accelerates.

Gartner

https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/the-top-6-marketing-predictions-for-2022

1. By 2023, the opt-out rate for mobile app tracking will decline from 85% to 60% as consumers learn that untargeted ads increase their exposure to low-quality content.

2. By 2023, the volume of ad impressions that TV and streaming media channels deliver during traditional 9-to-5 working hours will grow by 60%.

3. By 2023, 90% of B2B social media marketing strategies will incorporate scaled employee advocacy programs.

4. By 2025, one in five B2B companies will leverage artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) to connect buyers with sales reps at key moments during digital commerce interactions.

5. By 2026, CMOs will dedicate 30% of their influencer and celebrity budgets to virtual influencers.

6. By 2026, 60% of millennial and Gen Z consumers will prefer making purchases on social platforms over traditional digital commerce platforms.

PR Week

https://www.prweek.com/article/1736269/9-martech-predictions-2022

1. Modeling, an age-old industry solution, will become table stakes.

2. Google will not grant another extension on alternative solutions to third-party cookies and IDs.

3. All eyes will be on the economy - A healthy economy is a healthy ad business

4. First party [data] center stage this year

5. Connected TV (CTV) centric agencies will emerge.

6. Clean rooms will be used to deliver insights balanced with security and privacy in 2022..

7. Gen Z will have more influence, faster on the economy and media landscape than many may have expected.

8. It will take effort for the industry to re-engineer cookie-dependent systems to be agnostic, but in the long run, it will improve operational margins.

9. There will be impending social and e-commerce platform competition.

10. Cloud acceleration will heat up.

Social Media Today

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/12-digital-marketing-trends-all-business-owners-and-marketers-should-know-i/616647/

1. Meta is everywhere

2. Influencers continue to grow (even for B2B)

3. Advertising is challenged by privacy

4. Marketers get more strategic

5. LinkedIn is growing, growing, growing

6. SEO is less game and more integrated

7. Experiences are the new social currency

8. Digital jobs continue to grow

9. Facebook (Meta) doesn’t go anywhere

10. Websites get faster

11. Everything is algorithm-driven

12. Less is more

Chris’ Summary

2022 marketing trends are heavily influenced by the impact of Covid, the ascendency of Generation Z’s media habits and sensibilities, and the massive strains on people’s attention in the digital economy.

The "Covid Era" has forced even the older generation to turn to digital and to become comfortable with hybrid retail models. Generation Z, with a progressive bent, and born to the Internet, e-commerce, social media and streaming video, are pushing information consumption boundaries and modes of awareness, purchasing and loyalty. As digital becomes engrained in our collective DNA, we’ve been bombarded with a massive clutter of information, content, and messaging.

Marketers are charged with discovering new ways to target and engage consumers and customers (i.e. ‘people’) through the clutter. As people, we know that every brand, product, or service doesn’t deserve our attention. However, when the time or context calls for it, marketers need to be there. Marketers will need the mega-mind skills of analytics, creativity, human psychology, technologist, agility, and….smarts.

Add the ‘Privacy Big 3’ changes into the mix, and marketers will be forced to innovate more than ever around reach, targeting, and loyalty.

2022 - quite a year!

What's Disruptive?

By Chris Lemmond

You may have read The Innovator’s Dilemma, perhaps the most influential book focused on business innovation. Here, author and guru Clayton Christensen highlights the dilemma companies face when they align too closely with their customers. They organize, invest resources, and build specific capabilities to deliver to the needs of their primary customers. Operating in a feedback loop, these companies become blind to emerging technologies and innovations where certain attributes aren't important to their current customers. Then, it’s too late. Companies get caught flat-footed and may be unable to respond or catch up to the market.

Christensen used the term 'disruptive' to describe these emerging technologies and innovations. Since then, the word has become embedded in the mainstream business vocabulary. Disruptive seems to denote anything that is new, big, different, or 'changes the game.’ With this understanding, disruptive isn't a helpful or instructive term for businesses to evaluate markets or to guide them to develop new products and services.

What's forgotten is the primary case study Christensen used to develop his insights into disruptive innovations. He focused on disk drives in the computer market of the 1980’s and 90’s. Seagate, the leading disk drive maker, had focused on developing large and high capacity disk drives demanded by its primary customers, the makers of desktops and minicomputers. It was a lucrative business. The price and value of disk drives were determined by ever-increasing capacity and performance.

Seagate became blinded, however, by the need for smaller and less expensive disk drives in the emerging markets of mobile and laptop computers. At the time, extreme drive performance and large capacity weren't as important for those products. Seagate saw small disk drives as a distraction, with a market too small to invest in. Sure enough, Seagate soon lost its market dominance in disk drives.

For Christensen, the two driving characteristics of disruptive innovations are 1) they have lower performance on the perceived primary driver of value for current products, and 2) they are much cheaper on that dimension. Disruptive innovations, in this definition, seem to start as down-market product or service options. In fact, they are bellwethers of larger trends or different market needs.

What to make of this? Christensen himself wrote several follow-ups to the Innovator’s Dilemma, clarifying his points and focusing on how companies can become more innovative organizations. My takeaway is that there are key questions businesses should always be asking to stay competitive.

The approach is to question and challenge the accepted wisdom on price, performance, and value. That seems easy until you realize that accepted wisdom is influenced by a company's current set of driving customers, who have specific needs within a current context. For the business delivering to those needs, It’s likely that many assumptions are unchallenged and deeply embedded in its operational strategies and business narratives.

The ‘forgotten’ Clayton Christensen would ask: ‘what new opportunities would be created If a new service or product reduced performance on what is believed to be the key value driver, and reduced the price of that component piece?” The reflexive response would be to assume that the result must be a market that is downscale, small, and low-margin.

This one question, however, can help to reveal rigid assumptions embedded in a business. It helps as a lens to erase artificially defined market boundaries. It helps to evaluate different trends at the margins. It is, of course, just a beginning.

We know businesses must be customer-focused and customer-centric to grow and survive. The dilemma is whether the strategies and focus necessary to support customer-centricity puts a business in a narrative bubble that limits its ability to respond and react to new market forces. Indeed, a disruption that upends the accepted 'truths' of price and performance might well be emerging! The next time you hear or read the word 'disruptive,' what will you think?