Data and Digital Trends in 2022
At Frankly, we like to stay across the rest of the digital marketing world and have an ear to the ground, so to speak, for new developments and trends. These often include new tools and features of existing software and products, or themes and principles that are becoming new “buzzwords” and increasingly prominent in the space. Here are a few that have caught our eye over the past few months:
Shopping Keeps Going Digital
Global e-commerce sales grew by around a third last year, and that should keep going up and up. Better e-commerce technology and COVID have contributed to that growth, and e-commerce is becoming even more central for many companies around the world.
All the digital channels are being convoluted into one marketplace, such as where users can purchase products through Facebook and Youtube, while watching their favourite shows or looking at influencer content. With this knowledge, businesses should act to ensure that their digital advertising is reaching consumers where they are and providing a clear e-commerce call-to-action. With social media usage clearly spiking in the last year, and user behaviour reflecting a more direct link between scrolling their socials and purchasing products (such as through “Social Commerce” via FB, Instagram, and Tik Tok), businesses need to ensure that they are offering ads and content with a clear e-commerce purpose in mind.
Generating and Storing First-Party Data
Global privacy demands and safeguards are leading to widespread changes in the near future for digital marketing. Google is largely phasing out third-party data from its offering by 2023, so it gives businesses a year or so to plan how they will redirect marketing efforts towards a strong focus on first-party data.
What does this mean? Integrate as many channels into your marketing that collect first-party data as you can. This includes newsletters, EDMs, a range of CRM tools, and loyalty clubs as part of your customer base. Actioning efforts in these areas will allow you to collect voluntary customer data and get a good idea of the features of your loyal customer base. From there, you can tailor and personalise your marketing and comms to suit the type of people that you know you need to target.
Customer data platforms or “CDPs” are a result of the rise in prominence of first-party data. CDPs are software products that take a business’s data from multiple sources and collate it into a single, centralised customer database. This allows the business to analyse customers in proper segments and via all the available data sources, by unifying the data to create profiles for customers across channels. This boosts the accuracy of first-party data and provides the most actionable insights for businesses seeking to use such data in their decision-making and strategy. Popular CDP’s include Segment and Klaviyo.
The Key is Creating Trust
Google data shows that a third of all internet users start a place of ‘mistrust’ of all companies they come across online, and 64% mistrust companies in at least one industry. This means that the priority for most companies when it comes to acquiring new customers through digital channels is to create trust. When consumers trust a brand, they are approximately twice as likely to share their personal information, such as to sign-up to email newsletters or join a loyalty program.
What are some general principles on the road to creating trust from potential customers? Firstly, using your data to know where the most common touch points are for new customers with your business, what content and communications are they seeing (mainly the homepage of your website, or certain social channels?), and is it conducive to having new customers trust your offering and your brand.
