Regardless of years of experience, most marketers (61%) agreed to encourage the existence of brands in the metaverse in 2022. [Survey]

Key Takeaways

• Overall, 57% of marketers agreed brands should be leveraging crypto in their strategies.
• One in 4 marketers said NFTs are a great monetary opportunity in 2022.
• Thirty-seven percent of fresh marketers felt TikTok will dominate social media in 2022.
• Forty-four percent of marketers planned to reach their 2022 target through marketing in the metaverse.

Times change, as they say, and marketing must change with them. As the marketing landscape continues to develop and new spaces and opportunities become available, marketers must stay up to date on trends if they plan to appeal to a modern audience. Learning a craft like marketing takes time, and what you may have valued as an approach in your early years, you may discover no longer works. Or maybe even approaches you didn’t seek out as a beginner become commonplace once you’re a veteran of the business. 

Marketing requires the ability to adapt to changes, and we wanted to know how levels of experience might affect marketing strategies as the landscape continues to shift in the coming year. We surveyed 843 marketers of varying experience levels to find out how they plan to approach new trends and adapt to new changes; who they plan to market to; and where exactly they plan to do it. Read on to find out what we discovered!

New Habits for Seasoned Veterans

Approaches to marketing strategies have come a long way since billboards, magazines, and television dominated the industry, and marketers are still dealing with developments to the landscape that require them to be constantly evolving.

Among marketers we surveyed, the most popular spaces for marketing opportunities in 2022 were social media and content marketing, no matter the experience level. That said, 61% of all marketers encouraged brand presence in the metaverse in 2022, with experienced marketers seeing more opportunities in new platforms like these. In fact, marketers with six or more years’ experience were much more likely (64%) to encourage a brand’s existence in the metaverse than those with less than two years of experience (53%). There was a similar gap in willingness between experience levels when it came to leveraging cryptocurrency in their strategies. However, 57% of marketers of all experience levels believed leveraging cryptocurrency should be a part of their 2022 marketing plans. One in 4 marketers surveyed saw great monetary opportunity in NFTs, which have burst on the scene in the last year and were also the fourth most popular trend among newer marketers. 

What Happens When the Cookies Crumble? 

Cookies have long been a tool used by marketers to provide a targeted and personalized marketing experience. That sounds nice in theory, but user privacy concerns have turned this into a hot topic. This has led some companies to allow users to opt-out, but some companies, like Google, plan to move away entirely. Although Google Chrome has delayed its plan to end the use of cookies on its browser, they still plan to halt the practice by the end of next year, leaving marketers searching for options. 

While 65% of marketers felt prepared overall for this phase-out plan, that number got much smaller when broken down by experience level. Less than 10% of marketers with six or more years of experience felt unprepared about their ability to track the right data in a post-cookie era. That sentiment more than doubled for those with two or fewer years of experience in the field. People-based marketing was the No. 1 replacement option for marketers despite experience levels, yet respondents with less experience still reported being unsure of what other approaches to take. More than 1 in 4 marketers with less than two years of experience were unsure of what other options they had besides cookies, even when given options to choose from. 

Marketing Gone Social

If you’ve scrolled through your feed on any social media platform over the years, you’ve been a witness to the development of the marketing evolution and monetization of these companies. Many may still remember a time when some major platforms didn’t even have ads. But as the marketing world has tapped into these platforms, some companies have more potential than others to succeed in the space. 

There seemed to be a generational connection with each platform. After all, each one has emerged individually over time, and the perceived future marketing potential of these was split among both experience levels and age groups. Marketers with six-plus years’ experience favored Facebook’s potential, while those with three to five years favored Instagram, and those with less than two years favored TikTok. If age does correlate to experience, then Gen Z, the youngest generation queried, preferred TikTok just slightly more than the least experienced marketers, with similar results between millennials and Instagram. In that same vein, older generations, like Gen X and baby boomers, preferred an older social media platform like Facebook. The overall top three platforms marketers had plans to follow in 2022 were Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Who is the Target Audience?

Huge priorities for any marketing company are figuring out who their audience is, what demographics they need to target, and how they’re going to reach them most effectively. Deciding who to reach and how to reach them requires not only identifying an audience but also understanding what they want.

Despite experience levels, many marketers saw potential in the metaverse space, which continues to grow rapidly, with 44% of marketers planning to utilize the space to reach audiences. That number was even higher (49%) among marketers with three or more years of experience. Marketers newer to the industry tended to focus more on younger generations, and those with more experience focused on older generations. The acceptance of cryptocurrency, which has continued to grow in popularity this year, was favored by 38% of marketers, signaling possible future growth in the industry and further underscoring the importance of metaverse adoption in future strategies.

Marketers Must Adapt

Remaining flexible and being able to adapt to change is paramount in marketing. If you take your finger off the pulse of the industry, you could find yourself not even understanding the marketing space, much less managing the content effectively. Many marketers have taken these changes in stride and have embraced new spaces, like the metaverse, as places with seemingly endless possibilities. That isn’t, of course, true for everyone, but nothing happens overnight. As the landscape of internet marketing evolves after cookies, marketers are going to be forced to get creative. Whether that is through the metaverse or engaging with cryptocurrency, NFTs, or other strategies, decisions must be made. The new-school ship is preparing to leave the proverbial dock, whether they like it or not.

Deciding what the right moves are for your company requires having the right tools and info at hand to make the right decisions. At Unsupervised we specialize in making complex data easy for you to access and put to work for your company. Whether it’s marketing, customer experience, or sales, we can help you utilize data to optimize your business and drive growth. Visit www.Unsupervised.com for more information. 

Methodology and Limitations

We surveyed 843 marketers in different phases of their careers to explore their sentiments on the current marketing landscape. For breakdowns by years of experience, sample sizes were as follows:

• 2 years or less: 179
• 3 to 5 years: 350
• 6 years or more: 314

Survey data have certain limitations related to self-reporting. These limitations include telescoping, exaggeration, and selective memory. We didn’t weight our data or statistically test our hypothesis. The margin of error was +/- 3% with a 95% confidence interval.

Fair Use Statement

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