As small and medium sized businesses head into the new year with high expectations, it might be important to note that many will continue deploying marketing strategies that just don’t seem to be working for them. Staying on top of your online marketing, staying abreast of those strategies that are actually working, can seen daunting. Some recently published research by Hubspot just may help you get an idea of where you may need to be in the coming new year. The following is taken directly from their report:
- While SEO was the sixth marketing trend those surveyed were leveraging, with 28% of marketers saying they currently used it. Of those marketers, 49% of marketers call it effective while 84% continue to invest the same amount or more into the tactic in 2022.
- As the interest and need for SEO strategies grow, so do all search optimization opportunities. As Google algorithms have evolved, SEO has because about much more than churning out basic posts that answer simple search queries. Now, brands are investing in SEO experts who can help them with everything from search insights reports, to multimedia optimization.
- According to our research, 53% of professionals whose companies leverage content marketing find “podcasts or other types of audio content” effective when it comes to engagement and brand awareness.
- While inbound marketing has been around for years, 27% of marketers say they will leverage it for the first time in 2022. while 11% of marketers say it will be their biggest investment in the next year.
- In 2021, 62% of marketers leveraged account-based marketing, or ABM, to win over customers. And, in 2022, 33% of marketers who haven’t used it plan to invest in it for the first time. While ABM isn’t new, it is quickly gaining more and more steam and awareness from startups and larger companies alike. For those who are just learning about it now, ABM is a smarketing (or sales and marketing) technique where marketers leverage information about prospects and customers provided by sales teams in order to cater campaigns to them.
- At least 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content prior to engaging with a sales rep, and the majority of them expect brands to create content to gain their interest. That’s why brands all around the world have only grown their investments in content marketing.
- Our survey found that 59% of survey participants use video in their content marketing strategy, while 76% of marketers that leverage video call it their most effective content format. Not to mention, one in four marketers who use video (or 27%) say it’s the content type that yields the biggest ROI.
- While 48% of companies with a content marketing strategy blog, 56% of marketers who leverage blogging say it’s effective and 10% say it’s the content type that generates the biggest ROI.
- 61% of marketers say improving search engine optimization (SEO) to grow their organic presence online is their top inbound marketing priority. Currently, 53% of marketers who leverage SEO have a strategy for optimizing videos and images. Of those marketers, 49% say image and video optimization is their most effective SEO tactic.
- Although writing highly shareable content, reaching out to share it with other websites, or ensuring that your post gets links can be time-consuming and challenging, research shows that this time and effort pays off. Of the 48% of SEO marketers that use backlinking and link building, 63% say its their brand’s most effective SEO tactic.
- Although just 12% of marketers the HubSpot Blog surveyed are currently leveraging voice search tactics in their strategy, 34% of them say voice search is the most effective trend they used in 2021 and 41% plan to increase their investments in 2022.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
SearchPro Systems
2024