It’s time to get ready for 2022 and all the changes that are coming with it! We’ve compiled the digital marketing and business trends we believe are the most important for small and medium businesses to implement in 2022. Read on and get ready to equip your business for a fantastic 2022!
Quick breakdown:
- Mobile website loading speed matters more than ever
- SEO isn’t enough without a flawless user experience
- Create virtual experiences
- Optimize for voice search
- Excellent customer experience is a must
Let’s dive in…
1. Mobile website loading speed matters more than ever
As consumers’ expectations for how quickly they find the information online rises, more pressure is on business owners and their marketing partners to make sure their online presence is performing.
Here’s how important optimizing your website for mobile: If your business’s website takes even a couple of seconds to load, that’s enough time for a user to abandon interacting with your business and take their search or purchase elsewhere.
Think about the last time you were looking for information or to make a purchase online. If the website loaded too slowly, or wasn’t mobile friendly, odds are you jumped off and started looking elsewhere. Subconsciously, you might’ve even felt suspicious of the website since it had poor performance!
Avoid giving new customers a poor first impression of your business and make sure your website is up to speed! With a mobile-friendly website, you’re giving your business the best chance for real growth.
2. SEO isn’t enough without a flawless user experience
Similar to making sure your website’s loading speed is lightning fast, you must make sure that every aspect of how a user interacts with your website is smooth and engaging.
Search engine optimization (SEO), isn’t going anywhere in 2022. However, there are some new pieces needed to make your SEO most effective. If you have an optimized online presence, from your website, to content, to social media, but your user experience isn’t flawless, your overall online presence takes a hit.
User experience could be anything from having an easy to navigate menu on the home page, having your contact information easily accessible, to having a smooth and secure checkout process.
Consumers demand a flawless online experience now more than ever. So, once they find you through your excellent SEO, make sure to keep them with a seamless user experience.
Don’t let all the hard work you’ve done on SEO go to waste because your user experience drops the ball. It’s time to shift your efforts and watch the results!
3. Create virtual experiences
This one isn’t just for live event centers or webinar hosts; a virtual experience can be anything pertaining to your business model!
For example: if you run a nail salon, consider adding a feature to your site where a potential customer can upload a picture of their hand and nails and virtually try on different styles and colors of manicures! You could create your own Instagram filter and share whenever a user applies it.
Virtual experiences help customers feel known, engaged with and like they have something fun to share online and talk about with their friends. Customers feeling connected to brands is a huge factor in purchase decisions these days. Virtual experiences are one way to meet that need and give your business a competitive edge. The possibilities are endless and of utmost importance for getting ahead in the 2022 digital marketing landscape.
4. Optimize for voice search
If you haven’t yet optimized your online presence for voice search, now is the time! Voice search is continually growing in popularity as Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots like Siri, Alexa and Google become commonplace technology.
Optimizing your online content for voice search means making sure your content can be easily crawled during a voice search. Just like there are best practices for SEO, there are best practices for voice search optimization.
Right now, 71% of Americans say they would rather use voice search than type a query into a search bar on a phone or desktop. That percentage will only grow so make sure your business is ready to catch those potential customers!
5. Excellent customer experience is a must
One study found that the number one thing that turned a consumer off to a business was negative employee attitudes. In other words, poor customer service alone is enough to lose customers even if every other part of your business is running at peak performance.
If your business model involves in-person or over the phone interactions between customers and your staff at any point in the sales funnel, it’s worthwhile to do a little year end check in with your employees before the start of 2022 and do an overall audit of the customer experience your business offers.
A great customer experience delivered by your employees is one of the best ways to build trust with your customers. That trust can be built in a number of ways. It could be when an associate genuinely cares for and helps a customer in the store or via an online chat session. It could be through personalization in an email campaign where the customer’s name is in the text or their favorite past purchases are discounted.
Trust is key in increasing the likelihood of return customers. Customers will also feel more comfortable sharing their data with your business when there's trust built. Lastly, building brand loyalty becomes much easier when your business communicates trustworthiness up front.
Whatever you can do to empower every customer facing aspect of your business is a worthwhile investment in 2022!
Final thoughts…
Hats off to you for rounding out a challenging 2021 year with flying colors!
2022 is just around the corner and these trends have already sprung up and are in full force. Remember, even if you don’t know how to implement these important updates for your business, you can reach out to someone who does! Here’s to you and your success in 2022!
If you’re interested in learning what it’s like to have RevLocal as your business’s digital marketing partner, contact us to speak with one of our experts. Check our other resources to stay up to date on digital marketing trends, how to’s, and other digital marketing lifesavers.