Ian Guiver's Inbound Marketing Predictions for 2022

Watch our new video to find out Axon Garside's Managing Director Ian Guiver's predictions for inbound marketing for the upcoming year of 2022.

Picture of Ian Guiver Ian Guiver

Published: 10 Dec 2021

4 minutes read

Ian Guiver's Inbound Marketing Predictions for 2022

 

The year is almost over, making way for 2022 - but what are Axon Garside's predictions for the future of inbound marketing? Join Ian Guiver, Managing Director, for his rundown of what's on the horizon for B2B business in the new year.

 "If, as a business, you haven't got the idea that you need to digitise by now, to be honest, you're never going to get it!"

Ian Guiver, Managing Director at Axon Garside

 

1. Screen Fatigue

If you're a digital marketer, a digital professional, or any other 'marketing person,' now is the time to digitise your business. In the wake of the pandemic, many people have adapted to working from home and spend a lot of their time in online meetings. We're spending a lot more time online, staring at screens, which leads to our first prediction - mass screen fatigue across the marketing world in 2022. This presents its own challenges due to a reduction in actually going out of the office and going elsewhere for external meetings.

 

2. Online Events

One positive prediction coming out of all of the talk around digitisation is the increase in online events, or rather, the death of physical events. For obvious reasons (cough, pandemic), physical marketing events have always had both positive attractions and negative drawbacks. Being able to meet your peers in real life and discuss industry trends or news face-to-face is an advantage we may have once taken for granted. However, the reality of getting into your car and driving to the NEC? I can think of plenty of other things I'd rather be doing.

Without in-person events, with the ease and practicality of online events, it seems that inbound marketing has changed forever - which will undoubtedly continue into 2022.

 

3. Digitisation

A third trend prediction is the overall digitisation of B2B companies, done through taking steps to transform their marketing, customer awareness, and website traffic. Even if you already have a website, a digital strategy for SEO and CRO experts working to optimise your site to better convert anonymous visitors into leads, there will be a significant gap in your customer's experience if the digital aspect of the customer journey ends at the point of conversion. Come 2022, there will be an increase in competition, and therefore an increase in companies looking to digitise their whole experience, from the initial awareness stage to the consideration and decision stages.

 

4. Audience Creation

This is by no means a new idea, but we predict that audience creation is set to increase in importance even more so this year. Companies that have been doing inbound marketing for the last four years (or even more) have eventually realised that, while great content is brilliant, you need to cultivate an audience for inbound to really work. It's key to focus on how you're going to create an audience that values the content you are putting out into the world, and most of the people that we talk to at Axon Garside admit to having this challenge. While they've often got the content, they're not necessarily getting the ROI, and often this is because they haven't put enough work into audience creation.

 

 

5. Integrated Data Management

Lastly, a really big aspect of marketing that is going to become increasingly important to inbound marketers in 2022 is the data management and integration process. One of the historical challenges of inbound marketing is opportunity creation, and an integrated data management system seals the gap between acquiring a lead and closing a sale (often, there is a disjoint between these two stages).

People talk increasingly about the alignment of sales and marketing teams. Many companies simply do not have a good CRM, i.e., a CRM that actually works and serves their business. Over the course of the next 12 months, CRM integration and implementation will continue to be a hot topic within the inbound marketing space.

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