“Where there is a woman, there is magic” - Ntozake Shange. The achievements of women and how far they have come in the struggle for their rights within the cultural, political, and social spheres are honoured as International Women’s Day on 8th March every year. Furthermore, organisations big and small come together to show women just how valuable they are in today’s society.  Read on to learn how #ARM is celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 and how we support the ‘Women of Today, Tomorrow, and Every day’: 

Values Instilled at Core

To make gender equality a reality, from the boardroom and C-suite to front-line employees — we need to shift our thinking around values. Values and beliefs drive culture within an organisation. The past years have been a growth story for our organisation. We are proud of our story as we enter the 10th year to state that this journey began and continues with females just alongside males in all processes and activities.  In a bid to promote women’s empowerment at the workplace, #ARM Worldwide is overjoyed to have a workforce ratio of 50-50. Furthermore, 50% of our senior-level management are powerful women.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Holding and creating a safe space within the organisations takes time, willingness, and energy. We need to believe that it is part of our work and not a separate time-consuming activity. Having a combination of leadership buy-in and trail-leaders at our organisation is the magic ingredient that makes up for a beautiful recipe. However, it takes time. Diversified hiring programs, women support groups under the larger scope, flexibility, and many other similar initiatives have truly helped move our diversity ratio upward. 

360-degree Commitment

A conversation about healthy boundaries is never too early. Even with young children, these are the building blocks of how little boys consider personal space and boundaries as they grow older. By nurturing an environment of trust and freedom (with responsibility, of course), ARM spreads positivity throughout the workforce. People are observed to be much more productive and committed to the team’s boundaries within a safe work culture by conducting workshops and brainstorming sessions that set expectations for performance.

Personality & Career Development Initiatives

Upskilling programs and opportunities for women to assimilate back into the workforce faster have proved to be a great talent pool enhancer. In addition, peer coaching, networking workshops, leadership talk sessions, self-paced learning modules, and opportunities for visibility are some initiatives that have been rewarding for our teams. We host a week-long women’s day celebration every year by inviting powerful female leaders to share their stories and experiences to inspire and educate our workforce. This year, we are honoured to have Sonali Dutta and Ashruti Baranwal as keynote speakers on 8th March. 

Here’s to all the ladies!

Prioritising the inclusion of women in the workplace brings society closer to normalising the experiences of all women. Furthermore, creating a culture of psychological safety and inclusion is a critical component to attract and retain the best female talent, which is definitely worth celebrating. So let’s raise a toast to the strong women — may we know them, may we raise them, may we be them!

With more and more brands targeting the consumers online, digital continues to be deeply implanted in the communications strategy of brands. As a result, businesses today must not only plan for the future of their marketing efforts but also be prepared to take advantage of them. So it’s that time again when we all collectively look at the digital trends and opportunities for 2022.  Let’s revisit some of the must-have trends in your arsenal for this year: 

Social Media Trends

According to Sprout Social, 71% of people are using social media now more than ever before. As a result, brands that meet or exceed their audience’s expectations on social media will be rewarded with massive spikes in engagement. 

• Into the Metaverse with Augmented Reality
• Power of Hyper-Personalisation
• Whatever you say, say only in Video
• If it’s Organic, it has to be Local
• Valued Niche Social Experience

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Paid Media Trends

With paid media offering instant traffic and results compared to other forms of digital and traditional marketing, digital advertising is essential for every business. Whether you’re selling a product or offering services, paid media can benefit every business if used correctly.

• Move Towards Effectiveness in Planning Models
• Coming Soon ‘Cookieless’ Existence
• The Rise of AI and ML
• Gaming Platforms will Reign Display & Discovery
• Digital Eyes Everywhere

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

PR Trends

As a business, your role is to steer your customers in the right direction — both with your PR strategy and your holistic approach to marketing recommendations. To do that, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of PR and learn what’s out-of-date, what’s upcoming, and what’s hot right now. 

• Personal Branding: #1 PR Strategy
• Quantifying Metrics for PR Performance 
• Exclusive Media Pitching
• Representing DE&I
• Culturally-Relevant PR Content

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

UI/UX Trends

As the world moves markets online, UI/UX design has become more important than ever. In addition, as new technologies arise, there is potential for UI/UX to become much more innovative in 2022 than in the last couple of years.

• Hello ScrollyTelling
• Contactless Search: Voice User Interface
• Configuring Mega-Footers
• Brutalism vs Minimalism
• Inclusive Design For All
• SPECIAL: Into The Metaverse

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Influencer Marketing Trends

Beyond their role as effective brand ambassadors, influencers are also great marketers. And business marketers can stand to learn a few things from them. So stay on top of these top influencer trends to ensure you’re getting the most out of your partnerships.

• Rise of Social Commerce
• Power of Micro-Influencers
• Inclusivity Matters
• Think System, Not Silos
• Always-on Marketing Strategy

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Marketing Automation Trends

2022 will be all about creating engaging, unique experiences that add value to the evolved, to make user engagement feel super-connected, always-online consumer, and Marketing Automation will act as a catalyst in making it all happen.

• Customer Retention will be Critical
• A Mobile-first Approach
• Optimise Content for Funnelling
• Embracing Conversational Marketing
• Emergence of AI & ML

Read the exhaustive BLOG here, 

SEO Trends

Optimising your site will improve the CX and help deliver better leads to search engines so your content can be properly indexed and exhibited within search results. SEO is about visibility and enhancing your chances of being found on the internet, and it makes sense to incorporate it into your all-around digital marketing strategy.

• User Intent Goes Deeper
• Semantic SEO Increasing Relevance
• The Popularity of Voice Search
• Growing Importance of E-A-T
• AI for Greater Impact

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

E-commerce Trends

All this buzz around E-commerce has inspired well-known retailers to up their digital game. It’s a thrilling time to be involved in online retail sales, but successfully competing in 2022 will require you to adapt and integrate some of these E-commerce trends.

• Rise of “M-commerce”
• Buyer Journey Optimisation
• Headless PWA E-commerce
• Demand for Voice & Live Shopping
• B2B E-commerce is Next Up

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Social Commerce Trends

Social commerce has transformed into a powerful sales channel. Boosting your social commerce capabilities will offer your brand a myriad of business benefits. From driving traffic to increasing sales to increasing customer engagement and website traffic.

• Future of Commerce: Conversation
• Leveraging UGC x Micro-influencers 
• Livestream Shopping will Dominate 
• Specialist Social Marketplaces
• Designing Frictionless Experiences

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Tech Trends

As technology branches out into new areas, the companies that have embraced new tech will have an online advantage. Advanced tech capabilities indicate new markets and also introduce new methods that could give you a potential lead over your online competition.

• Prioritising Decision Intelligence
• Hyperscaling your Cloud Journey
• Adopting a Total Experience (TX) Strategy
• When AI meets IoT
• Need for Cyber Resilience

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Here’s to 2022!

It’s not just about creating a big splash or sharing attention-grabbing content anymore; it’s about the overall upliftment of consumers and the business together. In a world that is still flustered with the ongoing pandemic chaos, it’s time to batten down the hatches and learn about the trends for 2022 to get ahead of the game. Take a look at the trends above and read more into them to get a complete perspective of how you could make things better for your business!

From the continuing advancement and leveraging of artificial intelligence to developments that make even online shopping a ‘hands-on’ experience, technology is composed to continue transforming the way we live and work in 2022. The confluence of technologies is completely altering how we live and transact and will ultimately drive decisions on how we make money. Looking forward to the new year, management teams should recalibrate based on the following technology trends for 2022:

Prioritising Decision Intelligence

Decision intelligence integrates a variety of decision-making techniques with artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI), automation, machine learning (ML), and forward-thinking decision-makers to drive a meaningful impact on your organisation. Study shows by 2023, more than 33% of large organisations will be practising decision intelligence and modelling. In addition, by 2025, data stories will become the most widespread source of valuable insights. 

Businesses can use decision intelligence to understand and focus on high-impact sales activities, identify sales opportunities most likely to close, and even help reps to update their sales forecasts in real-time. Like all tech-focused initiatives, understanding decision frameworks and deploying AI models is crucial. As a result, businesses will achieve a higher return on data and advanced technology investments, with the prospect of gathering actionable intelligence that powers more progressive decisions. 

Hyperscaling your Cloud Journey

At a business level, enabling the cloud is critical. The majority of organisations’ apps need to be hosted in some sort of cloud, and hence for many, this means working with a hyperscaler. For example, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, and Google Cloud had combined revenues of $86 billion in 2020. In 2021, the combined revenue of the four hyperscalers mentioned was expected to surpass $121 billion.

To aid fluctuating and high demand, data centres are built on thousands of physical servers and millions of virtual machines. The result is easily accessible, cost-effective, reliable, and scalable resources. For businesses, hyperscalers’ architecture offers next-level performance without the complexity of managing a corporate data centre. Thus, using hyperscalers offers a level of reassurance for the future.

Adopting a Total Experience (TX) Strategy

TX will seek to identify intersections of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and user experience (UX), helping organisations to deploy the most impactful solutions. A study shows that 36% of consumers tried a new brand during the pandemic, and 73% said they intended to stick with those new brands. A TX focused company can leverage this switching to their benefit by creating a winning experience across every touchpoint.

A TX strategy will improve the overall experience, breaking down silos while integrating technology and differentiating businesses in a way that is difficult to match, creating a sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, by making meaningful investments in integrated smart technology to allow cross-disciplinary engagement, teams work like a well-oiled machine while snagging higher affinity and satisfaction from customers, employees, and users.

When AI meets IoT

The consolidation of AI & IoT will redefine the way industries, businesses, and economies function. AIoT creates machines that simulate smart behaviour and support decision making with little to no human interference. Moreover, intelligent AIoT offers insights into which redundant or time-consuming processes can be fine-tuned to magnify the efficiency. E.g. Google’s reduction in expenditure to cool their data centres.

By applying AI & IoT trends, Deloitte found out that there are 20-50% reductions in their time invested in maintenance planning, 10-20% increase in equipment availability and uptime, and 5-10% reduction in maintenance costs. The AI-powered IoT ecosystem will analyse and summarise data before transferring it to other devices. It reduces large volumes of data and allows connecting a large number of IoT devices. Thus, it increases scalability.

Need for Cyber Resilience

Evasion techniques such as dodging detection and working around security protocols have become top approaches, with hackers investing time and upskilling to understand security tooling better than most businesses do. Reportedly, a 300% rise in cybercrime was reported following the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, as more employees have moved their work from the office, hackers are taking advantage of this opportunity by threatening highly vulnerable business networks.

Cyber resilience aims to bolster your ability to always deliver. This includes restoring regular mechanisms or modifying mechanisms continuously even after a crisis or after a security breach. Cyber resilience is needed to identify, assess, manage, mitigate and recover from malicious attacks. A comprehensive resiliency program will help businesses maintain business operations during uncertain times. 

Looking Ahead

Although technologies are unwinding and evolving all around us, these top technology trends offer promising potential today and for the foreseeable future. With digital changeover becoming an increasingly important part of success for organisations looking to compete in the global marketplace, staying on top of these latest technology trends of 2022 for business is no longer optional. Let’s hope that the resulting innovation makes the world better for people and businesses alike!

Indian users today make up a substantial share of users on international social commerce platforms and are a key target market for such platforms to extend. And social commerce presents a cost-effective alternative for businesses reeling under the pressure of scaling customer acquisition costs and stumbling to protect these treasured customers from competitors pursuing them endlessly with deep discounts. For retailers interested in building out cohesive social shopping experiences, we have listed 5 hands-on social commerce trends to consider:

Future of Commerce: Conversation

It’s well-known that customer experience plays a major role in determining the progress and growth of any company. This is where embracing conversational commerce will change the way your business performs in the time to come. According to a social commerce survey, conversational commerce (49%) is gaining popularity in India, as 9 out of 10 people relished the shopping experience of interacting with chatbots.

Through text, chat or live video, users can interact with stores in real-time, asking questions, viewing products, and getting recommendations that encourage them to follow through with purchase transactions. As a result, it will help boost physical sales and increase foot traffic in stores. Thus, conversational technology delivers a huge opportunity for brands and retailers to sweeten the customer experience and maximise sales across various channels. 

Leveraging UGC x Micro-influencers 

User-generated content continues to be more trusted than many other forms of media, and in certain cases, much more popular. Now leverage UGC via micro-influencers to deliver your brand message even better! Study shows that at least 30% of consumers make a purchase simply because their favourite influencer promoted it. Also, 8 out of 10 consumers believe that UGC strongly influences their purchasing decision.

By involving micro-influencers in a UGC hashtag or giveaway contests, you can amplify brand visibility and reach through their dedicated follower’s network, thus scaling up UGC. To make the most of UGC, find a platform helping brands discover influencers and unique content from all corners of the internet, including TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, to engage the audience and drive sales. 

Livestream Shopping will Dominate 

Blending entertainment with instant purchasing, Livestream shopping offers retailers, brands, and digital platforms a new channel with enormous scope for creating value. It enables discovery, browsing and purchasing on one platform without the need to interact with any external websites or apps. Thus, creating seamless UX with fewer clicks, higher potential revenue, and conversion rates.

Globally, 85% of respondents who watched shopping livestreams report that they are more likely to purchase via social media. Moreover, online shoppers in India are envisioned to reach 220 million by 2025. Live commerce increases a brand’s charm and uniqueness and draws additional web traffic. In addition, it strengthens customer positioning, especially young ones keen on innovative shopping formats and experiences.

Specialist Social Marketplaces

With social exchange at the forefront of everyday interactions, it only makes sense for businesses to push marketing out through these social channels to reach the most valuable viewers possible. More than half (59%) of social buyers surveyed said they are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses through social commerce than shopping through E-commerce websites.

New-age digital-first brands are cropping up across categories prompting them to use non-traditional channels such as Facebook and Instagram for marketing. YouTube is now also on the verge of becoming the next hub for promoting online markets. Similar to influencers and vloggers, brands are coming forward and promoting their businesses on YouTube.

Designing Frictionless Experiences

Brands that offer frictionless and seamless experiences across all platforms are bound to see the increased acquisition and retention rates. 46% of consumers said they would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience, whereas 55% said they would pay more for fast and efficient services. 

More efficient devices would enable XR use cases where there is a 5G-Advanced connection, granting users the true perception of living remote and allowing them to efficiently interact in such surroundings, no matter where they are physically located. In addition, brands must aim to streamline the entire process and ease the journey to complete purchases on social commerce platforms to offer the digital convenience that users are looking for. 

Way Forward

As is evident above, from the rise of multiple platforms and advancing user needs, social commerce is here to stay. However, when it comes to planning out a social commerce strategy, it is important to look for a solution that will be cohesive and simple to manage. #ARM Worldwide can help you optimise the customer experience and tap into social shopping. We hope you decide to keep a watch on these social commerce trends and jump on the social commerce bandwagon soon!

With the continued advancements in the online shopping trends, high demand arises with a desire to enhance the shopping experience for online users. Brands and retailers must embrace technological advances if they wish to stay competitive. With that in mind, it’s worth citing what these latest E-commerce trends for 2022 tell us about evolving consumer preferences and how businesses can align with them to maximise opportunities. 

Rise of “M-commerce”

The boost in mobile device usage has contributed to the uptick in mobile phone sales. People are not just using mobile devices to shop but also to explore products before determining to purchase one. As a result, sales from mobile commerce are witnessed to increase by 15% by the end of 2021. What’s more, mobile deals will account for 73% of all E-commerce sales.

Retailers must consider including things like push notifications, SMS, mobile content, a mobile E-commerce app, and a mobile-optimised website to ensure sales continue to grow in years to come. Much like customer service and E-commerce fulfillment, a well-optimised mobile user experience will build lasting relationships with customers, increase sales, and generate brand awareness. Focussing on these upcoming mobile commerce trends can benefit your online stores in a big way.

Buyer Journey Optimisation

It’s critical for E-commerce sellers to look at and improve every customer touchpoint if you want your leads to have a great experience on your site and convert them into paying customers. Likewise, retailers need to identify the places where they can reach the most customers and where they can gain a high conversion. That way, retailers can be efficient in their efforts and marketing expenditures.

Companies that succeed at lead nurturing, yield 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. Furthermore, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. To optimise your buyer paths, focus on improving product search, providing rich product merchandising, and nailing your fulfillment and return processes.

Headless PWA E-commerce

A PWA (Progressive Web App) is a web application that provides a mobile-first app-like experience for websites. It only requires some adjustment in how you’re set up. That’s the ‘headless’ part. The essence of this approach goes above increasing site speed – although the nearly instantaneous page loads of PWAs are pretty amazing. Headless E-commerce platforms allow a lot more control over the content and ensure a smooth customer journey until the checkout process. As E-commerce develops at a CAGR of 6.9% and is anticipated to reach $3.5 trillion in market size by 2025, brands are researching concepts to scale via headless commerce and service-oriented architecture.

Going headless will open up new E-commerce opportunities. To further explain, it enables you to regain data and content from backend systems and pull it into any user experience on any device or platform using APIs. These platforms aren’t constrained to what traditional E-commerce defines as the ‘right’ user experience by allowing constant changes, customisations, and deployments without disturbing the underlying technology supporting it.

Demand for Voice & Live Shopping

Delivering an immersive shopping experience via conversational or live shopping will keep the viewers engaged, creating a deeper connection with the audience helping brands distinguish from competitors. India’s live commerce scene is expected to earn a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $4-$5 billion by 2025. Thus, it’ll be an affordable way to give sales a boost, build brand awareness and find new customers.

Conversational shopping helps interact with customers in real-time. Try experimenting with voice technologies like Alexa and Siri, allowing customers to engage with your business, get recommendations, and even make purchases. Of course, adding new innovations needs to be carefully considered but, with the right technique, live shopping has the prospect to add value to brand awareness, customer service and, ultimately, an increase in orders.

B2B E-commerce is Next Up

Today’s B2B buyers demand a digitised environment to research and make business purchases. Adapting to these demands will bring in higher sales volume, increased average order value, and better customer satisfaction. Considerably 80% of B2B buying decisions depend on a buyer’s direct or indirect customer experience, whereas only 20% are based on the price or the actual offering.

Related Article : Digital Transformation Through E-Commerce

B2B E-commerce sites will allow greater insight into user buying habits, which will help businesses and suppliers to learn about buying patterns and seasonal trends and adapt production to match demand. In addition, with features such as rich content, intuitive design, and interactive functionality, B2B E-commerce websites ensure a remarkable customer experience for retail customers and B2B buyers.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, the world of E-commerce is constantly modifying to accommodate its customers’ needs. As a result, there will be a leap forward in the ways of marketing and showcasing of products. To achieve the most promising results, it’s important to utilise a modern E-commerce suite that enables you to create excellent omnichannel experiences across in-store, web, and mobile channels and support both B2C and B2B. The E-commerce trends for 2022 mentioned above will help you dominate the space. You can gain professional support in this regard if you are excited to integrate any of the latest technologies for your E-commerce business

Search engine optimization trends are an important part of any business. They can help you rank higher in the search engines and get more traffic to your website. They are the key to the success of your strategy and will become even more important in 2022. Hence, it is imperative to stay on top of the SEO game if you want your company and business to grow.  The latest SEO trends that will dominate the SEO landscape in 2022 are likely to be quite different from those that have come to define it over the past few years. So let us begin our road to mapping the top search engine optimization trends.

User Intent Goes Deeper

Satisfying search intent is a primary goal for Google, making it a major goal for SEOs. To increase ranking on SERPs, create content that best answers queries entered by users. Today, 47% of customers expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds. If your site takes longer, you risk losing critical traffic. It’s time to decrease your load time now. If we are speaking of the load time, it is crucial that your customers receive the content they want to see. Focusing on solutions that match people’s needs will bring in more organic traffic. This will ensure they stay longer on your website and help build trust with your target audience. Furthermore, businesses will need to implement responsive design throughout their sites to help content cater to their audience.

Semantic SEO Increasing Relevance

Google no longer just looks at strings of words. Instead, it is about analysing the context of the query and working on the user's search intent. Moreover, the semantic search focuses on determining the context & intent of search queries. It is critical as it prioritises delivering the best UX for your audience. Research shows that using voice commands on devices is ‘frequent’ or ‘very frequent’ among 33% of high-income households, giving rise to semantic search.  With semantic SEO, SERPs are filled with high-quality content that accurately answers the original query & organically captures what people are searching for.

The Popularity of Voice Search

Thanks to innovations like Google Assistant, Apple's Siri & Amazon's Alexa, voice search, without a doubt, is going to change the way the world interacts with search engines. The percentage of households owning a smart speaker by 2022 is estimated to be 55%. The impressive accuracy of voice search has led to a spike in google seo trends. It not only helps improve ranking on SERPs but also improves UX. With ongoing developments in AI, these will now be more refined as agents of voice search. The solution to the query obtained via voice search is much quicker, naturally reducing bounce rates & retaining the potential consumer for longer. 

Growing Importance of E-A-T

Google indicates content quality is important in determining the SERPs rankings. You must understand that “quality content” consists of 3 factors: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Expertise

It means having a high level of knowledge in a particular field. Google will look for content created by a subject matter expert.

Authoritativeness

The goal is to demonstrate that your website is an authority in your field. The number of backlinks you have from relevant, authoritative sites contributes to your website's authority.

Trustworthiness

Your website’s trustworthiness is shown by having a safe domain that protects users’ confidential information and by receiving strong customer feedback.

AI for Greater Impact

AI is changing the way people interact with online content. Thanks to this intelligent algorithm show the things that we like the most and facilitate our searches on the network.  30% of AI adopters cited a 6-10% increase in revenue after implementing the technology. AI impacts SEO by automating the process of managing and optimising digital marketing activities. The ability to quickly take action with AI-assisted content creation and optimisation means that you will meet the clients’ goals and improve inefficiency. AI is a core component of major search engine algorithms, including Google’s Rankbrain and BERT. Complex disciplines of AI & SEO boost website rankings to another level! As we are ending the first month of the new year, it is important that you start forumating the whole year. These 5 Google SEO trends are a good place to start and thrive but it all really boils down to what every SEO expert must already know: engaging content that is informative as well and offers value to your customers. These latest SEO trends are the most popular and easiest ways to rank higher in the SERPs, gain organic traffic, and increase your target audience base. Don't know where to begin with your marketing this year? Let us help you out with our risk-free methods and dedicated team of professionals. Connect with us today and see your business reap the benefits!

To survive in this new tech era, your business requires automation. From chatbots to big data, the marketing landscape is becoming more diverse and crowded every year. Automation has proven itself to be a powerful resource in the marketer’s toolbox, but in the future, it won’t be enough to have the tool itself; you’ll need to implement the best practices and optimise your use of the full power of your marketing tech stack.  Here are the top Marketing Automation trends to keep up with the constantly evolving consumer behaviour in 2022 and beyond -

Customer Retention will be Critical

Brands will push harder to understand the journey of unidentified users who haven’t transacted on their site. Tracking their paths from becoming an unknown to a known user will deliver real value in terms of growth. Brands will also be focussing more on ‘Experience Economy’ as consumers today trust the reviews and recommendations of their acquaintances much more than the brand’s own advertising. A personalised customer experience will be the major differentiator, and brands will compete to deliver maximum value to their users at scale constantly. A study shows that retaining existing customers and motivating them to buy again is five times cheaper than attracting new customers. This is because existing customers already trust the brand, which helps double the revenue. Companies will prioritise making ‘brand evangelists’ of their customers to communicate with their immediate circle. This will help with quicker conversions and higher retention rates.

A Mobile-first Approach

Mobile marketing will be a major growth driving aspect for brands as it has become the user’s primary gadget for communication with the online world. So, marketers will create elaborate mobile engagement strategies. In addition, providing seamless customer experience and engagement on mobiles will be a priority for brands looking to drive growth. This can be achieved by leveraging machine learning to deliver hyper-personalisation. Mobile phone users are expected to rise to 4.3 billion by 2023. Hence, marketers will devise mobile-first strategies like in-app ads, push notifications, etc., to hike customer engagement, retention, and experience. Moreover, this approach will eventually give birth to new channels to generate revenue (E.g. offering freemium and premium services) as mobile apps offer several monetisation strategies for different app verticals. 

Optimise Content for Funnelling

With the power of marketing automation, brands will migrate from a static to a more dynamic, behavioural approach in creating customer segments to accommodate a user’s changing needs and preferences in real-time. Through user segmentation, brands will focus more on email triggers based on customer interaction data like visiting a critical feature page or clicking on emails. This will enhance customer experience and spike the Net Promoter Scores (NPS). According to a report, targeting people with content relevant to their position in the buying cycle can yield 72% higher conversions, so marketers must take time to create content that speaks directly to the reader. Additionally, businesses will generate leads by offering low-cost and high-value products to potential customers. This will create opportunities to produce a positive emotional response and encourage subsequent purchases.

Embracing Conversational Marketing

Encouraging customers to ask questions is the first step towards a successful conversational marketing strategy. Brands that invest in this approach will be better positioned to increase loyalty and reduce churn immediately. Conversational marketing via apps is expected to increase business by a whopping 25%. Hence, brands will use this to drive higher engagement, deliver tailored experiences, and increase satisfaction. Furthermore, automated chatbots will encourage seamless interactions. Therefore, businesses will up their design game to initiate better conversations, answer FAQs, and quickly handle small concerns. Natural language processing (NLP) will gain more popularity as it helps create conversational responses and focuses on technology that comprehends the way humans speak to deliver the best experiences.

Emergence of AI & ML

Large-scale content automation is now attainable thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Brands will be investing in ML to design stronger marketing campaigns and be at the top of their game. By analysing data in real-time, AI models can predict the results of campaigns for different audiences and adjust bidding strategies to maximise ROI. Also, studies reveal that 51% of marketers will implement AI automation in the upcoming years. This will help increase efficiency, see possible improvements, and act on data accordingly. AI-assisted platforms will proliferate, and ML technologies will be used to study customer behaviour and online activity to better understand speech along with language patterns to create hyper-personalised user personas.

Final Thoughts

As every other segment of today’s marketing world continues to evolve, businesses must also adjust to keep afloat. Customer experience will not be returning to its pre-pandemic state anymore. So, to improve hybrid customer journeys, it’s important to find the perfect balance between digital and human interactions. These marketing automation trends for 2022 can help inspire your strategy moving forward as you integrate and test different methods for using marketing automation to connect with, engage, and delight your customers in new ways. As a result, you’ll gain the power to manage leads and enhance demand generation with greater impact. Related Article : Marketing Automation Trends To Pay Attention To

With users worldwide spending more and more hours online, influencer marketing has become an effective method to convey the right message to the right audiences in the most practical manner possible. The good news is that this form of marketing is becoming more data-driven than ever before, giving brands additional measurement capabilities to evaluate their campaign success. So let's dig a little deeper into some of the emerging Influencer Marketing trends for 2022: 

Rise of Social Commerce

As social media platforms double down on tools enabling in-app purchasing, business marketers will be taking a closer look at special deals with influencers with committed followers to stand out amongst competitors while driving sales. Only 4% of consumers believe in a brand's marketing tactics, so marrying social commerce and influencer marketing efforts will enable brands to create a successful influencer marketing strategy while hitting their e-commerce goals.  Brands will implement influencer marketing as part of their social commerce strategy to expand their social media audiences and deliver authenticity, resulting in tangible ROIs and increased engagement rates. Influencers and content creators will play a key role in social commerce strategies. They present maximum visibility to your brand offerings while serving as a natural route to your virtual storefront. Live-streamed shopping is the perfect avenue to leverage an influencer partnership. It can boost your content's visibility and engagement and generate more sales. 

Power of Micro-Influencers

Working with micro and nano influencers will be one of the strongest influencer marketing platforms of the moment as they are much more relatable, trustworthy, and their endorsements seem a lot more genuine and authentic. Moreover, the audience is more dedicated to the identity of micro-influencers, which makes them more attractive to potential sponsors. Therefore, they can significantly affect a brand's lead generation. A recent study indicates that micro-influencers retain 22.2 times more conversations than a distinct user. This is because they are devoted to their niche and can pick the most argumentative topics to engage followers. In addition, micro-influencers present a route to pinpoint highly-targeted audiences and reach them with personalised messaging specific to their needs. When executed correctly, this can lead to a highly-engaged and responsive audience.

Inclusivity Matters

To get your business out there, it's important that it appeals to the greatest audience possible. Therefore, marketers will need a diverse group of creators who represent a diverse target audience to humanise their brands. Research shows that 38% of consumers are more likely to trust businesses that do well with showcasing diversity in their advertisements. Be it via tokenism, perfunctory, or symbolic efforts to be inclusive to give the idea of racial and gender equality. Consumers generally count on diverse influential artists far more than they trust brands, so affiliating with an influencer who aligns with your brand's D&I principles will go a long way in establishing reliability and trustworthiness. While crafting campaigns, imagine how your TG will react to a non-diverse influencer mix. This will allow for a more positive brand sentiment and affinity as you leverage connectivity between community and influencer. In addition, online customers are much more likely to connect and associate themselves with a brand when they feel seen and represented by that business's campaigns and if their personal values align with a brand's efforts.

Think System, Not Silos

Influencer marketing has the power to create a striking halo effect on marketing channels, so by failing to give it a meaningful place in your marketing mix, you will be waving goodbye to some of its greatest benefits. By combining paid and earned influence, brands increase the likelihood for returns on long-term earned campaigns from roughly 50% to nearly 85% and also improve the quality of this earned media.  By ensuring that influencer briefs perform well within the wider campaign plan and their content is set up to be trackable, brands can virtually oversee production budgets and assess ROI against actualised business results. In addition, brands must be able to track consumers' journeys across channels through a full marketing and shopping funnel to understand where they convert and why. Influence is usually mistaken as the garnish, but it's the key ingredient to your marketing recipe. By integrating it into all your marketing efforts, you will amplify your brand's credibility and generate solid social proof. 

Always-on Marketing Strategy

More and more companies are moving away from campaign-based influencer marketing. However, when talking about measuring and optimising, an always-on strategy will be critical for success and longevity in a rapidly innovating field. With this approach, you create brand ambassadors speaking authentically about your brand/products to their followers. This strategy puts your brand story in the hands of your entrusted influencers for them to add their own spin and find a unique way to connect with their audience. 42% of marketers consider influencer marketing their top revenue-generating marketing tactic, so why not implement this strategy throughout the year to maintain a constant presence in your audience's lives to make them feel valued! Always-on influencer campaigns give you more flexibility with content. For example, always-on campaigns make it easier to adjust your messaging if you want to highlight certain products/product features to align with the time of the year or current trending topics. Unlike separately targeted campaigns, always-on campaigns are established by developing relationships with your relied influencers and their devoted followers. Maximising your always-on strategy can help drive incredible, long-term results for your business.

Winding Up

Influencer marketing is an indispensable tool for increasing the trust in the customers' minds about your business. Therefore, it will be crucial to generate not only brand awareness but facilitate online sales, and influencer marketing agencies can help deliver the right message, at the right time, on the right platform, which will drive further sales. Furthermore, consumers today are drawn to authenticity and realism, so your effective influencer marketing efforts will depend on flexible content stirs rather than branded scripts. Finally, remember this: only when influencers are given flexibility by brands to be their genuine selves can they drive powerful, favourable brand associations.

Businesses must maintain their applications updated with the newest technological breakthroughs in order to make them more engaging and consumable. Staying relevant and updated on the latest trends is essential for survival. Businesses need to pick a UI/UX strategy that resonates with their brand, is user-friendly and intuitive. The design trends are developed based on technological advancements each year, and you need to be on your toes, discovering and optimising on these latest trends. Let's dive into some of the top UI/UX trends for 2022 that will force constant progress, self-learning, and differentiation of products: 

Hello ScrollyTelling

Scrollytelling transforms a long-form story into an interactive experience. It is a completely new, innovative way of visualising a story or info flow and grabbing the viewers' attention. Take Google, for instance; they do an amazing job in storytelling and engaging users to stick around till the very last word. The content is much easier to consume as users feel like active participants in the event.  The entire narrative of web designing is thought out in advance and built in the most entertaining way possible, so it is easier for users to retain information and connect with the website. Scrollytelling is a multimedia experience, stimulating deeper reflection and highlighting what can't be articulated by words alone. It's a very realistic content consumption experience that stems directly from how users interact with computers. 

Contactless Search: Voice User Interface

The trend toward VUI has been revving as processors get more miniature, and more Internet of Things (IoT) devices come online. Even the most resistant users agree that technical innovations don't bite, and one can even say that they make life easier. Utilising VUI alongside the traditional GUI could facilitate a less cluttered and more tailored experience focusing on inspiring the users, while more specific searches could be accomplished vocally. VUI execution in mobile app development will likely be among the most notable UI/UX design trends in 2022. The immediacy and versatility of voice form link the user's desire to the device's response. To reap the benefits of VUI, marketers must begin by composing detailed personas, work on potential limitations of particular devices, and make the best use of all action triggers. In addition, VUIs help companies increase customer engagement on apps with an emotional component (like exercise or productivity), providing a hands-free interactive experience like cooking, driving apps, smart home devices, etc.

Configuring Mega-Footers

Having an extended version of your header in the footer section can prove to be critical in bringing in multiple customer engagement points. They help with conversion rates by acting as a safety net at the very end of your website and provide customers with a second opportunity to interact with your website. In addition, Mega-Footers ensure easier website navigation by being a flavourful extension of your header. This helps with the overall website and E-commerce experience. Well-optimised Mega-Footers with high-ranking keywords and call-to-action buttons promote customer interaction by prompting them to react and gain valuable information. As a result, Mega-Footers function brilliantly to enhance a brand's image and act as a 'not-so-subtle' reminder to reinforce brand value. This reduces bounce rates and helps with lead generation.

Brutalism vs Minimalism

Brutalism and minimalism are web design languages that can evoke many emotions in customers, thereby triggering them to act on the CTA buttons. It promotes curiosity and improves engagement rates. By not focussing much on aesthetics but more on ruggedness and simplicity, these websites have a very straightforward and simplistic design that avoids unnecessary confusion. These design formats primarily focus on all the major elements of a website and therefore draw a lot of attention by highlighting the fundamentals with a minimal approach. For instance, let us consider Google's material design, which promoted the concept of flat designing. While the design remains sleek and minimal, the depth of experience is enhanced with movements and shadow effects.

Inclusive Design For All

Inclusivity extends to gender neutrality, culture, race, ability, and accessibility. A website should be put together in a way that anyone can get access to the content, and people also see others who they can relate to on the screen. The inclusive design shall aim to accommodate diverse experiences of users in how they interact with the world, both in the final product and in the design process itself, resulting in a universal design that all can enjoy.  The inclusive design employs coding best practices, so deciding to build an accessible site will naturally result in a decline in maintenance costs for your company and better overall usability. In addition, integrating inclusivity can act as one of the parameters to test and look into all stages of the product development, from UX prototyping to user interviews and usability testing.

SPECIAL: Into the Metaverse

When Facebook turned to Meta and presented a vision of their future – things would turn into a serious trend. The curtain-raiser of Metaverse design is a development that will forever change our association with technology and how we think about design. We are at the brink of the Metaverse, and designers are racing to design experiences using VR, AR, and now Extended Reality (ER) that combines existing technology to give birth to an entirely new UX. To introduce an entirely new UX, Metaverse will combine common ingredients of games such as UGC, a persistent shared world, and unique digital identities to elevate the experience into something new. Brands need to build fully immersive, 3D virtual spaces from scratch. There are opportunities for brands to create virtual venues, worlds, and spaces to host events and experiences in the Metaverse.

Final Thoughts: What to Expect

Taking a deeper look into the world around us, as well as up-and-coming technological advancements, can give you a more accurate picture of what's to come in the future of UI/UX design. To effectively design solutions for modern-day problems, businesses need to have an in-depth understanding of the challenges and types of environments users encounter each day. Focusing on these genuine, industry-led insightful trends that encompass larger fields like work culture, developments in UI/UX practices, and big technological breakthroughs can give you the push needed to become an empathic, modern, and cutting-edge brand. Related Article :- Top 5 UI/ UX Trends 2018

Whether an industry giant or a newbie, every brand has one target to success – to let the whole world know about their brand. Adding to this are the massive cultural shifts society has been experiencing over the last couple of years, from social justice movements to the pandemic, to the rising climate crisis, which has significantly changed when we work, where we work, how we work, and what matters the most while we work. So it's safe to say that it has been a transformational time in our industry. As we head into a new year, most of us wonder: What will 2022 bring? Read on to find out which PR trends will be the game changers of 2022 and how your business can obtain the perfect balance in the ever-changing economic environment: 

Personal Branding: #1 PR Strategy

The idea of personal branding will become synonymous with PR in particular. With the right planning and prowess, building a personal brand will be one of the most useful weapons in your PR arsenal. To foster connections online, marketers will need to craft a personal brand that people can interact with. In addition, thought leadership is critical for the C-suite; a company will thrive when its leaders show up consistently online and offer valuable content to the industry.  Studies have found that content shared by actual people within a company receives 8x more engagement than content shared by the brand itself. Thus, the value of personal branding through PR cannot be exaggerated. The personal brand depends on the reactions a person causes in the audience they connect with. It is a tool of the PR field as it comes from a strategic plan for obtaining a communication stream that allows positioning.

Quantifying Metrics for PR Performance 

PR professionals must be open to formulating new strategies that closely align with a business environment that requires data-driven insights. The indirect impact will be measured via metrics like Awareness, Engagement, and Reputation. 

• Awareness: The first step in growing a business is building its awareness. This can be measured through an expanded customer base, potential for word-of-mouth/referrals, or expansion into other markets/regions.

• Engagement: Understanding the audience's behaviour can help determine which PR output generates interest in your business. PR pros can evaluate through active vs. passive audience, warm leads, marketing qualified leads, etc. 

• Reputation: You can determine if you've established a reputation that won't be easily shaken with any negative reviews by measuring influence on customer choices, ability to charge a premium, credibility, trust, and goodwill among audience and customers. 

Exclusive Media Pitching

Learning how to tell a well-researched, unique and concisely-worded story with a personalised pitch will go a long way and improve your hit rate by cultivating relationships with journalists and learning their areas of expertise. A study shows that 96% of PR professionals say individual emails are the most effective channel for pitching, suggesting that the future of pitching is all about personalisation for the journalist you're contacting. Just like personalising your pitches, it will be important to tailor your pitch by the medium as well. For example, pitching for TV is quite different from pitching for radio or even pitching for podcasts. Creating personalised media relations pitches will involve more than just a cursory understanding of journalists' editorial guidelines. Engage with them pre-pitch, follow their work and write compelling emails. 

Representing DE&I

There is rapidly growing awareness across industries that PR will need to take Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) seriously and actively support initiatives that root out systemic bias and discrimination within organisations. Integrating diverse opinions while solving problems will be an invaluable superpower that most businesses will begin to harness. So not only will focusing on DE&I be good for business, but it'll also be good for your brand image. You will possess the power to become change agents and inspire people to take action. A study found that businesses that embrace diversity experience a 19% increase in revenue and a 35% performance advantage. The increased emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion will not only necessarily be from an equitability standpoint, but it will also increase profitability and overall performance. 

Culturally-Relevant PR Content

In today's global economy, marketing and advertising companies will need to aim at developing culturally-sensitive content that resonates with their target audience. Being culturally aware will help your business in the long run when leaving a good impression to seize potential PR opportunities for the future to elevate your brand awareness. Businesses will need to ensure that the PR content aligns both with the brand's core messaging as well as with prospects' cultural expectations and focus on how they're contributing to the greater global narrative. Considering the global upscaling potential of content on the internet, cultural awareness strategies have to be thought through, incorporated at the strategy level, and adapted from the start of PR campaigns.

Final Thoughts

Consumers online are more brand aware and wish to know that they are spending their money to support a brand doing good things for their employees and the world. With continuous change being an unavoidable fact of life, PR firms will need to remain skillful to support businesses and deliver them with the best recommendations for ultimate visibility. Therefore, trend monitoring is more valuable than ever for PR professionals in this new world. So follow the pointers above and witness a surge in all your PR marketing efforts.