Outlook 2022 What we got right(and what we got wrong) By Victoria Albert,
VP of Marketing

Even though UX design was and continues to be a strong trend, a critical skill shortage possibly limited the capability of businesses to drive innovative user experiences for their solutions.

This is likely to continue in 2023, as a Forrester Predictions report forecasts that four in five Client Experience (CX) teams will lack critical skills. In fact, the same report discusses the 'erosion of CX' with 50% of above-average brands declining or stagnating in the field, as a result of teams becoming overloaded with more basic tasks.

The focus on UX might also have shifted with the rise of Artificial Intelligence as a medium to drive innovation (such as ChatGPT by OpenAI), shifting the spotlight toward this technology and its capability to streamline content creation and research for businesses.

Voice search is still an emerging technology that has yet to achieve mainstream appeal—even if utilised for performing searches on smart devices, it has not yet soared to the levels of popularity anticipated in 2022.

As smart devices continue to rise in popularity in households (such as appliances with Internet of Things [IoT] features), this may help to pave the way for voice search becoming more popular by remote B2B buyers to facilitate their searches whilst they multitask.

Another possibility for why voice search did not gain as much traction as expected could be the return of B2B buyers to offices, as many businesses prioritised a hybrid or 100% in-person work model in 2022—particularly for essential staff, who are more likely to have the authority to action purchases.

Interactive emails can be associated with spam by users, which is why in the past year brands noticed, and therefore focused on prioritising writing shorter email copy with fewer graphical elements. The success of this approach can be attributed to how more direct and accessible cold emails demonstrate an appreciation of the reader’s time. Supporting sales, this also focuses teams on highlighting the essentials, often resulting in a message that resonates with prospects better. This is a trend that we believe will continue, with the continued interest in 'snackable' content.

Even so, video has risen as a format to engage readers and increase click rates by breaking through the noise. Engagement with videos remains a constant across multiple channels and has brought many success in email strategies, likely due to the open loop of curiosity that videos present recipients.

Companies are successfully utilising heatmaps and eye-tracking tools to evaluate the engagement of users with digital products, which then informs adjustments to enhance their user experience (UX). Even so, neuromarketing (as a discipline), has not yet risen in popularity.

As mentioned in Outlook 2022, neuromarketing can be outsourced to agencies, however, this has not been done to the extent predicted by our leadership. Even so, it is safe to say that when marketers wish to effectively assess the emotional responses caused by their campaigns, neuromarketing will be the best investment to achieve this. Surveys can assess emotion, but they are often strongly influenced by the bias of the respondent that neuromarketing is better able to overcome due to its non-invasive nature.

Whilst hiring remained strong in the first two quarters of the year, the war in Ukraine, along with other events that challenged the global economy in 2022, led businesses to reduce hiring to the most critical roles—especially in Q3 and Q4 as The Great Resignation lost traction and layoffs became rampant.

The return of teams to offices also affected this prediction, as some companies preferred to grow their talent domestically rather than worldwide.

Finally, it is also likely that in what turned out to be a turbulent year for businesses, the time and risk associated with expanding internationally dissuaded leaders from setting up operations and hiring overseas (although there are global employment platforms that overcome these challenges).

Businesses built a talent bench during the first two quarters of 2022, led by multiple factors, including hiring up to meet an expected post-COVID spike in demand by clients, as well as to retain talent in face of The Great Resignation.

However, this hiring spree became detrimental in the last quarter of 2022, as the demand for services did not meet forecasts with a considerable slowdown in the global economy.

Therefore, although the prediction is technically correct, its outcomes are different from what we anticipated when writing Outlook 2022.