2021… yep, we recoil in horror when we hear that year too! But, in lots of ways, it was a fantastic year for the Rebellion Marketing team, and our clients!

In 2021, we were able to celebrate a number of successes across the board, with new team members joining us (a big welcome to Callum, Jessie, and Sarah!), and a complete restructure of the business, which saw a steep increase in our sales and marketing activity.

While the global economy continued to slowly recover in some areas (and it still doesn’t feel like a full recovery), here at Rebellion Marketing things were starting to move in the right direction, with new clients coming on board every month and our existing clients beginning to see a positive shift in business.

With good news all around, the majority of our clients have seen some growth this year, either in the form of increased brand awareness or leads and revenue through the door.

So, on reflection, what shifts in the marketing world did we see last year, and what changes do we anticipate for 2022?

In 2020 and into 2021, we saw a huge swing from more traditional forms of marketing to businesses developing more digitalised strategies and seeing the need to move some of their marketing online.

This was not surprising, considering we were locked up for significant portions of time, and people were cautious about handling physical materials. In addition, we saw events and face-to-face networking completely grind to a halt, meaning businesses had to scramble to change up where they got their leads from.

Those that played a waiting-game, and didn’t change tactics, found they were soon left behind.

With more businesses moving to a digital marketing strategy, the online world has become even more noisy and competitive, meaning SME’s have had to really improve their content to stand out from the crowd. Gone are the days were a few posts on Facebook would generate leads, these days, you need a solid plan, consistency, and some budget to compete.

With digital optimisation being the forefront of most agendas over 2021, how will that translate into 2022, and what trends will we see arise?

Key trends:

1. Augmented and virtual reality

VR has been growing in popularity for some time, and as technology progresses, will we see a wider adoption of the tech? We think so, but what does this mean for marketing?

In-game advertising has been around for a few years now, ad brands have often succesfully utilised the medium to generate good-quality leads and conversions. We believe this trend will continue to grow and we’ll see more brands moving into advertising in the VR space too, especially with the launch of the Metaverse.

2. Personalisation of brands

As companies grow, there’s a greater need to focus on the small, more personalised details. There’s so much content out there to compete with, brands have had to really work hard to stand out from the crowd in recent years, and we can only see that continuing through 2022.

It’s easy to chuck some content together about you and your business but, quite frankly, your audience doesn’t care about that! What they care about is how you can help them. They want to be able to relate to a brand and form trust quickly, allowing them to purchase with ease and comfort.

3. A rise in Influencer Marketing

Yep, I know what you’re thinking… but I promise, if you get the right influencer, it can do wonders for your brand and revenue. Following on from that trust element we mentioned, using an influencer can create almost instant trust between their audience and your brand and, it doesn’t always have to cost the earth to do it.

When researching your influencers, select one whose audience, values and image align with yours, this will mean that their promotions are more likely to land well, and give you the results you are looking for.

You don’t always have to have influencers with huge followings either. A smaller influencer whose audience better aligns with your brand, it’s much better than one with a huge following that doesn’t align at all.

As for the future of influencers, we believe they’ll only become more powerful in coming years.

4. A switch back to more traditional marketing methods?

We think so! With everyone suffering from zoom fatigue, and getting tired of being glued to their screens, we believe that more traditional marketing methods will make a comeback this year.

Don’t worry, you won’t need to dust off your fax machine and don your pin-striped suit just yet (the days where the 80’s car salesman were king are long gone!) but, you might want to start thinking about how offline marketing can be included in your strategy.

Think, lumpy-mail, networking events, and maybe even the odd publication or two!

5. Sales teams aligning more with marketing teams

“It’ll never happen” we hear you say! But, we think it will (and it already is). As the younger generation gets their feet under the table in businesses, we have seen sales teams take action in the form of digital marketing, especially through Linkedin.

Now, don’t get us wrong, we don’t believe digital marketing will ever replace the good old-fashioned telephone prospecting but, more and more salespeople are realising the massive benefits of warming up their leads online first, and using their personal profiles to attract inbound leads.

And, it has to be said, we couldn’t be more pleased!

So, that’s just a few of our predictions for 2022, what would you add to the list?

Thinking you need a shake-up of your marketing strategy for 2022? Get in touch with the Rebellion team and discuss your options.