Who is this blog most relevant to? B2B marketers on small teams who must focus on all aspects of the customer journey

I read 20 articles/reports on 2022 marketing trends. 

I identified over 50 separate predictions from top brands and individual creators. 

Many of them can be simplified down into themes.

As a B2B marketer, working for a free consumer app, here are the themes that I’m now convinced my team must focus on this year to keep growing.

The single most mentioned theme: 

Privacy expectations are shifting and so is the technology

Over half of the reports I read mentioned the changing privacy landscape in the marketing world.

Need a refresher on the major changes coming from Google? Try this article: The Death of the Third-Party Cookie: What Marketers Need to Know About Google's Looming Privacy Pivots

The short version: Third-party data is dying, so brands must generate their own data if they want to deliver personalized ads, website experiences, product recommendations, etc. to their customers (we’ll get to Personalization in a second…). You can’t personalize something for someone if you don’t know anything about them. So the data piece is a necessity, but essentially we are now working with ONLY the data they opted into giving us. 

There are a lot of marketers that are uncomfortable with data, software integrations, and analysis. I’m no psychologist, but I assume that’s because they’re wired with a more creative brain. (Which is a necessity for 2 other themes…we’ll get there).  

To continue growing during this major shift, marketing team leads need to make sure they have both kinds of marketers on their teams. The ones that can tie together a data-centric marketing stack that drives customer personalization and the ones that can tie together a story about your brand that helps rebuild the trust that we’ve all lost by being creepy with consumers’ data. 

In my opinion, these 2 kinds of marketers are an absolute necessity to meet the needs of the modern consumer. 

Personalization

This was another theme that kept coming up in my research. 

Like I’ve already said, consumers want personalized experiences. 

But you don’t need me to tell you that because you already know it. 

We already get personalization from:

• Shopping apps
• Dating apps
• Social media apps
• News / media apps
  

Not to mention all of our connected devices, like smart watches, home assistants, and such.

Why wouldn’t we want that in our 9-5?

Balancing personalization with privacy isn’t going to be easy, but it’s doable. And the B2C platforms have set the bar high. 

Don’t take my word for it

From this Lev article, Advanced personalization will be a huge focus for many brands. Expect to see creative and thoughtful engagement campaigns (i.e. Spotify year in review) developed across all industries.

-Jenna Kienle, Director, Marketing Strategy & Services

And here’s the most insightful quote I read about the balance of privacy and personalization, from Julio Bermudez in this Amplitude report.

“But a myth continues to lurk among business leaders: personalized digital products and privacy can’t coexist. They’re wrong, and in 2022, more businesses will see privacy-centric personalization as a competitive differentiator."

Connectedness between marketing and product

To accomplish the balance between privacy and personalization, marketers need to get comfortable working with product / data teams. Based on what I’ve read, I believe that companies where marketing teams don’t work more closely with product data will slowly die out. 

Don’t take my word for it

Facilitating collaboration between product, marketing, and engineering will be more critical than ever in order to create the unified and polished experience customers crave.”

-Josh Wetzel, CRO of OneSignal in this M2I article.

According to this report, PWC found that the number of companies investing in the omnichannel experience has jumped from 20% to more than 80%. 

Digestible AND High-Quality Content

I interviewed several folks that use The Juice platform over the last few months. 

Every single one of them said they’re overwhelmed by the volume of content in the professional world. Blogs, podcasts, videos, guides, infographics, email newsletters…it’s never-ending.

To cut through that noise, experts agree that our content needs to be digestible. 

What’s “digestible”? The opinions vary. Here are some of the descriptions I saw, repeatedly:

• Low friction - make sure to use subheadings, lists, and transcriptions of video
• Visual - there’s a reason Tik-Tok is all the rage and Instagram is pouring resources into Instagram Reels this year to compete. B2B marketers MUST GET COMFORTABLE WITH VIDEO. This is one of my biggest goals for the year and TBH I’m a bit anxious about it. It’s a big shift from traditional B2B marketing and it tends to be time-consuming and expensive. Various softwares are changing that, but there’s still a learning curve.
• High-value -  Brett talks about this a lot. The modern day marketer knows that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to content. High-quality content resonates and thus builds trust with consumers. 
  

As a B2B marketer at a startup, these 4 themes are going to take up the majority of my focus for 2022. 

If you’re looking for more details on these trends, here are some of the best 2022 reports I read. Or you can go search The Juice yourself. 

22 Predictions for Digital Optimization in 2022 

This one goes beyond marketing, which I enjoyed. 

Top 3 Marketing Trends Agencies Can Expect in 2022

This one is written for agencies, but it’s applicable to all of us marketers. And the volume of stats, charts, and graphics was super helpful. 

B2B Marketing Predictions for 2022

This one is B2B specific and gets into some topics I didn’t include here, but are important, like staffing changes.