Top 15 Digital Marketing Trends in India you Must Know in 2023

The scope of the digital market is widening with continuous change. It is making digital marketers learn new skills to sharpen their knowledge. After all, having sound knowledge of digital marketing trends in India and working with algorithms can help you offer better services. 

These trends help you develop ideas that could take your marketing campaign to new heights of success. 

Like each year, the year 2022 has also seen the rise of new trends in digital marketing. These trends tend to focus more on content visualization, customer experience, and engagement. Digital marketers use these trends to create long-term relationships so the brand can stay in business for years. 

We have talked about 15 of the best digital marketing trends you must be aware of in 2022 to upskill your game. 

The Top 15 Digital Marketing Trends in India 

1. Metaverse 

Metaverse is a new-age theory of a world within our world. This trend started gaining popularity after it was owned by Meta (Facebook). Metaverse has become so popular because it creates a digital space where augmented realities and virtual realities co-exist. This way, a better experience is created that is potentially untapped. 

Metaverse gives you the power to create a digital avatar of yourself in a futuristic world. This world lets you take all sorts of possible actions, mostly through gaming. 

Now, you must be wondering how the metaverse became one of the latest digital marketing trends? It has used a network of realities and a virtual universe to make social commerce possible. Space exists almost everywhere in this universe. 

Digital marketers saw an opportunity in the metaverse and thus, decided to fill that space with a new and impactful digital marketing medium. As metaverse is still a new concept, we haven’t unlocked its real potential, but sooner, we will reach the prime of marketing with such a space. 

2. NFTs

NFTs are another latest trend in digital marketing, but what are they? Basically, NFTs, i.e., non-fungible tokens, are digital tokens that any individual can trade. Remember that each NFT comes with a unique token, which specifies that the NFT is original and is owned by you. 

NFTs are also quite popular in art, technology, and the marketing world. Brands offer free NFTs as a raffle, which has become their main marketing goal. For instance, Marriott Bonvoy created a raffle where it decided to offer winners their NFT. 

Mostly, high-end brands use this marketing technique to attract their targeted customers. As NFT marketing shows better results, more and more brands are planning to use it in the future. 

3. Short, DIY, Videos 

Earlier, short videos were not popular, but after TikTok has shifted the social media landscape with its unique concepts, DIY videos have become a new trend. As short videos were becoming popular, other social media sites also jumped on the bandwagon to create a sensation. 

Today, short, DIY videos have become an essential part of YouTube and Instagram. Such videos try to highlight better content and engage more people in just a few seconds. 

Brands and influencers can show what they want without making the audience watch a long video. It has become a new way of learning dance, participating in surveys, joining a challenge, and more. 

One thing that makes short, DIY videos so great is their ability to deliver the message through a short video, so more and more people watch it. As these videos are short, they have room to be versatile. Some brands also use short videos to show candid content and behind-the-scenes. 

4. Personalization 

Personalization is one of the best present and future digital marketing trends playing a bigger role in current digital marketing. Personalization has a different approach. It doesn’t create catch-all content to look appealing to as many people as possible. Instead, it focuses on creating specific content that caters to the audience to generate better results. 

As a part of personalization, digital marketers also have to make sure that the audience receives the content correctly. If you want to create impactful personalized messages, you must try to understand what platform the audience uses. 

This way, you will be able to reach the right audience most amazingly. Once your targeted audience notices your personalized ads, you can expect better customer loyalty. 

You can consider personalization to interact with different locations and cultures through different social media platforms. This way, you would be able to market the same product in numerous ways. 

The personalization trend is worth the try because it makes your product seen and understood by customers. 

5. AI

AI has become one of the important parts of modern marketing. It has helped generate better site traffic, organic search, engagement, search engine optimization, etc. But artificial intelligence can offer a lot more than it has offered until now. By unlocking the true potential of artificial intelligence, we can unlock future digital marketing trends.

Earlier, digital marketers used artificial intelligence to automate tasks and campaigns. But now, they use it for predicting the customer’s nature. AI uses data to analyze how the customers will behave next. 

For this reason, brands purchase customer data, including their purchase history and similar behavior. After analyzing the behavior, brands use the information to suggest something similar to the customers. 

When brands predict their customer’s next move, they prepare themselves to offer better services and products. This kind of targeting and marketing increases the conversion rate. 

6. Voice Search Optimization 

A recent survey has revealed that around 52% of people use voice search every day. This large number of people using voice search shows that the market is ready for a future shift. 

The main reason voice search has started to become popular is that, lately, people have increased their usage of smartphones. The use of smart speakers like Google Home and Amazon Alexa has transformed how an individual operates devices. They have become accustomed to this new behaviour, so voice search has become the latest digital marketing trend. 

Also, voice search provides more than 90% accuracy, which helps quickly get an answer to the search. As voice search offers better accuracy and is easy to use, people have started using it more than ever. 

Lastly, it is predicted that more than 50% of online shoppers will start conducting their searches through voice in the coming years. As voice search optimization has better opportunities, digital marketers readily use voice search to take their marketing campaigns to new heights. 

7. Programmatic Advertising 

Programmatic advertising is another digital marketing trend in India that uses the software. The main difference between traditional and programmatic advertising is that earlier methods included requests for proposals, quotes, and human negotiation. However, programmatic advertising buys ads using machines and algorithms. 

Advertisers can target the audience better as programmatic advertising includes using AI for automating processes. The automation lowers the customer acquisition cost and increases conversions as it is quick and efficient. 

One type of programmatic advertising is real-time bidding, which helps quickly and efficiently target the qualifying ads. The ads are sold and bought per-case basis to expose the targeted visitors to the ad. 

Since people widely use programmatic advertising, it is rapidly increasing. It is even predicted that this latest digital marketing trend will be used for displaying the majority of ads in the coming years.  

A brilliant example of programmatic advertising is “The Economist,” which started this campaign to persuade curious readers so they could try their publication. 

8. Micro-Influencers

Among the latest trends in digital marketing, micro-influencing has great scope as it lets digital marketers explore new horizons. It is believed that the influencer’s concept is still new, but it can be used to spread a brand’s message powerfully. 

But the audience does not appreciate macro-influencers. They do not like the hype created around them because audiences have started to differentiate between staged and real influencers. 

For this reason, companies prefer to work with micro-influencers and use their authenticity to generate better results. They also use their employees and consumers for social proofing. 

Micro-influencers can be seen as the truest brand advocates who have the power to influence people with their real stories. So, the chances of macro-influencers getting overtaken by micro-influencers are pretty high. 

9. Instagram Reels 

Instagram reels are the present and future digital marketing trends that are not going anywhere. That’s because reels provide a better platform for the content creators and marketers to convey the message. 

Instagram reels have taken over after TikTok was banned in a few countries. In fact, they have emerged as a replacement where people can continue to show their creativity. Not to mention, reels offer double engagement rates compared to the videos you normally post. 

Instagram has also launched a new feature of Instagram insights that you can use to track your performance. The insight lets you analyse your work so you can perform better. 

Digital marketers use Instagram reels to show different sorts of content, including informative, behind-the-scenes, product reviews, entertaining, and more. 

One of the best examples of viral reel creation is Louis Vuitton. Each reel that this brand creates gets an average view of 5M. The brand uses an effective content strategy to grab its targeted customer’s attention. 

10. User-Generated Content 

User-generated content has become one of the new trends in digital marketing. People like to participate in activities concerning their favorite brands, products, and services. 

User-generated content has the power to harness the customer’s excitement. It helps the digital marketer to create something unique and interesting with the concern of the product so it can become viral. 

Usually, the user-generated content uses creative submissions to run campaigns. It can be done for a product or service. The beauty of this trend is that it lets the user-generated content get a 4 times higher click-through rate than normal promotional campaigns. 

Digital marketers widely use user-generated content to reduce the effort, time, and resources required for running a successful ad. There is a bright future for user-generated content because it combines high-quality promotional materials at no extra cost. 

Also, it gets more engagements, which can help turn the audiences into leads. More engagements result from the trust factor that comes from the unpaid customer. 

11. Hyper-Local SEO

A digital marketing trend that is believed to be helpful for small businesses and start-ups is hyper-local SEO. That’s because this trend gives them the power to get local customers without any issues. 

Hyper-local SEO is a new algorithmic trend by Google that lets the marketers enjoy personalized results as it focuses on a person’s current phone number, name, and address. 

With this digital marketing trend, businesses can create a strong and better regional market. This trend can be combined with voice search to generate results for very specific people types. 

Hyper-local SEO has become an interesting marketing technique for traditional businesses and small business owners. Anyone can easily use the algorithm update and apply it to their websites. 

With the help of a Google My Business account, anyone can implement the hyper-local SEO strategy. Once you provide opening timings, addresses, and business type, your business will rank locally. This trend has created a sensation in the B2B business market. 

A successful example of hyper-local SEO is the “Whopper Detour” campaign organized by Burger King. This campaign got popular because it let the user buy whoppers for a penny. But they must be within 600m of a McDonald’s outlet. The campaign became a classic example of hyperlocal marketing and geofencing in no time. 

12. Quora Marketing 

Quora is believed to be a question and answer platform used by a specific set of people. So, the advertising ability that this platform has is not very flexible. But it seems like Quora has emerged as a new-age advertising platform that has become a recent favorite of Google and digital marketers. 

The reason Quora marketing is becoming so powerful is that individuals do it. Comparatively, individuals are believed to carry more trust than brands. Wondering why? Because there is a direct human touch. 

When a person sees Quora advertising, they believe that they are in direct touch with the individuals. The personal connection that Quora helps establish makes it a great platform for promoting products and services. 

People have started following Quora because they like how individuals answer people’s questions in the most genuine and trustable way. 

13. Omnichannel Marketing 

Omnichannel marketing is a new trend that gives the power to the marketer to advertise a product across numerous platforms. It helps in gaining multiple touchpoints. This feature has made omnichannel marketing a digital marketing trend. 

Through omnichannel marketing, businesses can represent their brand in numerous ways in front of their target customers. Omnichannel marketing works well because more than half of the online shoppers check the price on multiple platforms before making a purchase. 

This marketing technique generates around 80% more store visits and increases the conversion rate. You can use omnichannel marketing to offer a better user experience and brand message so more and more people take action. 

14. Visual Search 

Like voice search, visual search is also becoming better. This digital marketing trend is known to offer a better user experience so they can quickly get search results. Visual search refers to conducting a simple search by uploading an image. It helps in getting specific and correct results. 

Here’s how visual search can be used:

Pinterest Lens

Pinterest has come up with a feature called Lens, which allows the users to get accurate search results. The users can click on an item’s picture and then upload it. This way, they can view pin boards or similar products. 

Google Lens

Along with Pinterest, Google has also released the visual search feature to its search engine. This Lens works as smoothly as the Pinterest lens. People can quickly use the lens feature to find objects and landmarks. 

Google lenses help people find similar products. Also, a person can use the barcode to find important information about the product and learn about animals, birds, and different species. 

Digital marketers love the visual search option as it opens new horizons of opportunities for them. 

15. WhatsApp Marketing

This digital marketing trend is believed to be the biggest because it has changed the way businesses reach and engage with their targeted customers. It allows the companies to send direct messages to the customers, so the messages reach without fail. 

WhatsApp marketing has helped in building business credibility among customers. What’s better? Well, businesses have also started taking orders through WhatsApp. They can also make and receive payments, which has made it one of the best digital marketing trends in 2022. 

How to Enhance Your Digital Marketing Career?

As digital marketing trends keep up, digital marketers need to enhance their careers. If they don’t sharpen their skills with time, the digital marketing industry might not stay relevant for them. 

Below are a few ways a digital marketer can enhance their skills: 

Create a Strong Digital Presence 

If you want to become a successful digital marketer, you must have a wide-reaching digital presence. Without a solid digital presence, you might not be hired by big companies with whom you wish to work. 

In addition, you can also create a strong personal website or blog so companies can directly see your work. This way, they will be able to decide whether or not they want to work with you. 

Take Risks 

As a digital marketing expert, if you do not take risks, you might not get successful. When you take risks, you learn about new things, which helps you get more experience.

When you take risks, step out of your comfort zone, get confident, and grow your talent. Every calculated risk will take you a step closer to your goals. 

also, read the scope of digital marketing in India

Learn to Adapt 

Digital marketing agencies change quickly. Thus, you need to learn how to adapt yourself to the changes. You must upgrade your hard and soft skills so you will be able to take charge when the team needs a reliable leader. 

Seek Feedback

Getting regular feedback from your clients will help you understand your mistakes. Seeking feedback is a part of positive growth as it brings your notice to your limitations, which you might not have noticed before. With a willing attitude to accept positive criticism, you can upgrade your skills. 

Conclusion

Technologies and trends keep evolving in the market, which provides digital marketers with a better space to execute effective marketing strategies. As a successful digital marketer, you must keep an eye on the digital marketing industry because it keeps changing. You must be ready to modify your marketing plans as per the industry’s demands.

Keeping up with the digital marketing trend can be tricky. But if you want to stay on top of the business game, you must use digital marketing trends to make a huge impact on your targeted audiences. 

FAQs

What is the future of digital marketing? 

Honestly, the future of digital marketing seems to be promising. That’s because there are regular updates in the technology space. So, anyone planning to take digital marketing as a career should do so to access limitless opportunities. 

Why must companies stay on top of digital trends?

Companies need to stay on top of digital trends to be ahead of their competitors. It has also become important for companies to identify new trends to maintain an effective and relevant digital marketing presence.