What Marketing Leaders Are Investing in This Year

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In an ideal world, marketers would have limitless budgets to invest in experimental initiatives and new programs. After all, the customer acquisition and retention landscape are evolving faster than ever. The challenge, however, is that marketing budgets are often limited around what’s proven to work — which tends to look different from company to company.

That’s why it’s so important to have access to industry data. By knowing where we stand against our peers and competitors, we’re better positioned to uncover areas of opportunity. This is especially important considering that 48% of marketers expect their marketing budget to increase in 2022.

In this post, we’ll discuss data-backed areas that marketers are focusing their investments in 2022.

Protecting consumer privacy.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about their digital privacy and protecting their information. Given this, Think With Google says that marketers will need to increase their investments in privacy solutions and respecting peoples data choices in 2022.

This means that consumers want to know how you’re using their data for marketing purposes, and they want to be able to review and manage the way their data is used and opt-out if they want to.

When you collect information from consumers for different marketing activities, they also want to know you’re collecting it. Recent data from Google found that consumers are happy to provide their data to companies they trust, so long as they know how you will use it.

Podcasts and other audio opportunities.

As of April 2021, there are over 2,000,000 podcast shows and over 48 million episodes.

The demand for audio content has exploded, and Brands recognize this opportunity. In 2022, roughly43% of B2C marketers plan to increase their investment in podcasts in 2022, and the data is virtually the same for B2B marketers.

Marketers are also leveraging other opportunities that have risen brands to leverage, likeClubhouse and Twitter Spaces, which offer audio-only opportunities where users can participate in voice conversations with others.

Other platforms are looking into and testing creating similar options within their apps, like Instagram Live Rooms (also incorporates video). TechCrunch reported that LinkedIn is testing a similar feature as well.

Social Responsibility and Diversity Marketing

Early 2020 brought businesses to a reckoning, as increased attention to social justice issues was at the forefront of conversations during the first few months of the year. In addition, COVID-19 highlighted employees’ struggles in the workplace, and consumers care about how brands they buy from treat their employees.

Almost two years later, these issues have remained extreme topics of interest for consumers worldwide, and they care more than ever about the stances businesses take on public issues, demanding change and awareness from brands on diversity, equity, and inclusion. One of the ways they want to see this represented in business is diversity marketing and commitment to social responsibility.

Source:: HubSpot Blog