This is a slow time for marketing: end-of-year campaigns are already in the works, teams are on vacation, and there isn't much to do until the new year.
Aside from the festive cheer, growth professionals have had a challenging year. Most are still adjusting to pandemic-related changes in consumer behaviour, but Apple's new privacy settings and the looming demise of the browser cookie are making it more difficult to target the proper customers. Growth marketers have a plethora of tools at their disposal, but which ones do the experts use?
We asked two growth marketing specialists how they were preparing for 2022 and if they had any New Year's plans they wanted to share.
The responses and recommendations we received were as diverse as the people we asked, but virtually everyone said that learning — such as analytics training or getting started with AI technologies — was at the top of their to-do list. "In 2022 and beyond, Google Analytics 4 will be the default, so get ready to relearn how to build your analytics reporting in a way that makes sense for your business," stated Tuff's Richard Meyer. It's crucial to constantly improving one's talents, but growth marketers shouldn't feel obligated to become experts at everything, according to Kate Adams, SVP of marketing at Validity. "Overall, being able to define your issues and build methods to solve them is more valuable than being a technical whiz gobbling up every answer you can get your hands on."
Jonathan Martinez, founder, JMStrategy
What are your 2022 growth marketing resolutions?
The firms who unlock iOS 14 and use influencers will emerge victorious in 2022. My objective is to continue testing everything on iOS 14, including the best account structures, bids, and processes, among other things. I'm looking forward to seeing how channels/MMPs/etc. evolve and what kinds of measuring betas they all implement.
Continuing to use the power of influencers is equally vital to me. In terms of how influential influencers will be in the next decade, I believe we're still less than 10% of the way there. I'll be using TikTok's creative marketplace, platforms like Billo for user-generated content, and other strategies.
In 2021, there was a lot of talk about influencer marketing, but is it a fad or a necessity? What sorts of businesses must invest in this sector if it is a must?
While influencer marketing has received a lot of attention in the last year, I feel we're still in the early stages of this strategy. Channels will begin to develop influencer marketplaces (similar to TikTok's creator marketplace), removing obstacles to collaborating with influencers. People are viewing even more content from influencers on numerous platforms as a result of the epidemic. These same folks are growing less sensitive to traditional brand commercials and more responsive to ads with a personal voice.
Where does AI marketing fall on your list of priorities for 2022? Should marketing teams be leaning into this, or is it industry/customer-specific?
As growth marketers, we should always be on the hunt for tools that’ll either help solve monotonous tasks or increase our analysis throughput. The creative AI space is something I’m keeping a close eye on because I think this is where there’s huge room for advancement. As targeting and bidding become increasingly channel automated, creative is an area that I believe still needs the human touch. If AI platforms can help speed learnings and provide useful insights on creative launches, it’ll be immensely helpful.
Which marketing automation tools do you think are poised to take off in 2022? Should growth marketers plan to become more technical in the coming year?
Growth marketing has always been a nice blend of analytics + creativity, with distribution being dependent on the stage of the company. As data becomes less clear with industrywide privacy changes, growth marketers are being forced to be more analytical and technical than ever. Running incrementality tests, applying scalars to channels and validating data across tools will be paramount in 2022 to understanding growth efforts.
Kate Adams, SVP of marketing, Validity
What are your 2022 growth marketing resolutions?
Marketers should expect a comeback of product-led growth strategies in 2022, which have traditionally focused on producing appealing, easy-to-use, and accessible free goods. For a long time, we've believed that in order to succeed with customers, growth models must include a trial period. But what if that wasn't true? It doesn't have to be that way, thanks to the convergence of product-led development strategies and the removal of friction.
Marketers should make a resolution to embrace this rebirth this year, but in a modern, unique way. Let's reconsider our growth strategies; perhaps we don't need to offer a trial or free version of our goods, especially because not every firm can afford to devote the time and money necessary for trial items.
Another resolve is to avoid thinking that everything is back to normal – COVID is still disrupting in-person events as well as entire industries, and will continue to do so. As marketers, we must vow to pivot early and often in order to guarantee that our larger efforts and investments work regardless of the pandemic's state.
In 2021, there was a lot of talk about influencer marketing, but is it a fad or a necessity? What sorts of businesses must invest in this sector if it is a must?
Influencers have their time and place - we've all seen the Peloton commercial for "Just Like That," and it's amazing and will stick with us for a week, if not a month. But the fact is that these are fleeting moments in time, regardless of how much you pay or whatever influencer your business secures.
As a B2B marketer, I'm much more interested in making clients feel like they're part of a community and providing them with a forum to share their success stories, in which we play a role. Why not ask 1,000 individuals with 10,000 followers to talk about your product instead of one person with 10 million followers via a showy influencer programme? For the time being, not every sector has a Kim Kardashian, and even if they have, it's not a sustainable model. It's far more impactful to have a consistent, ongoing drumbeat of consumers speaking their experiences about your business than it is to invest substantially in one giant influencer, especially in the B2B industry.
Have short-form videos (less than 2:30 minutes) reached their pinnacle, or should marketers continue to use them in 2022?
Video hasn't reached its pinnacle yet, and I don't expect it to anytime soon. There is a whole generation of people who grew up watching YouTube and TikTok videos. They know how to get to what they want (including information) more quickly. These are the same people who are entering the workforce and suddenly become B2B buyers, and you must connect with them in the manner in which they are most comfortable. One of the most effective ways to do so is through short-form video content.
There's a lot more space for video. Webinars still rule supreme in our sector, but it is outdated thinking. In highly technical businesses, marketing teams should challenge themselves to come up with methods to alleviate webinar fatigue. For example, breaking down long-form material (such as webinars) into smaller, more easily digestible pieces is a simple and effective strategy to guarantee that these lessons are remembered and shared with a larger audience.
Where does AI marketing rank on your priority list for the year 2022? Is this something that marketing teams should be focusing on, or is it industry/customer-specific?
Artificial intelligence is some of the most interesting technologies I've seen in a long time. The idea that AI can accomplish any work — whether it's increasing user experience or really conversing with someone — is pretty amazing. But these things strike me as pendulums. "I simply want to talk to a person," consumers may believe after encountering AI. While employing AI to alleviate user experience concerns and having them handled automatically is excellent, there are times when you need to empower a human person and have a human dialogue.
AI is like to a home; without the proper technology and technical infrastructure in place, the building will fall apart. AI is only as good as what you put into it. The minute you try to train your machine based on bad data, it will find faulty trends or just not work at all. Right now too many people are running toward AI as the solution for all their problems without solving for the data decay already taking place in their organization.
Which marketing automation products do you believe will be the most popular in 2022? Is it necessary for growth marketers to become more technical in the coming year?
Marketing is more tough now than it has ever been. There are numerous additional solutions (over 8,000 in reality) that promise to be the panacea for all marketing problems. But they are merely assertions, since no single answer is always the be-all and end-all. While having a strong understanding of technology (and how to use it) is essential for a successful marketer, there are many other factors to consider in a marketer's skill set.
There's a marketing technologist, a marketing strategist, and the marketing execution component, for example, and in today's market, you need to be all three to be a truly effective marketer. It's difficult for one individual to master all of these talents, especially when they require the use of both sides of the brain. It's difficult to grasp not only the analytical components of a marketing campaign, but also how to develop text that grabs people's attention and conveys the message you want to convey. Overall, being able to define your problems and build methods to solve them is more valuable than being a technical whiz who devours whatever answer comes along.
