As we build 2021 reports and direct our focus to our 2022 strategies with our clients in the new year, we interviewed our powerful female founder partners in the digital marketing and advertising space, to get their key takeaways from the year past, and their key tips to scale your business in 2022.

The New Year arriving means New Year’s Resolutions, and if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, we’re sure you’ve got some business goals you’re looking to achieve in the coming 12 months. We were lucky enough to talk with two incredible female powerhouses and gathered their expertise on reaching your business goals in 2022.

Sama Ali-Berchem knows a thing or two about strategy and how to get your company or product seen by the right people as the President and CEO of Portkey SEO Solutions, a company that provides complete online marketing services, SEO, and web design services.

On the other hand, Anna Ratala works to successfully get your business into the ears of your target audience as CEO and Co-Founder of the world’s first audio influencer platform that makes it easy for brands to start podcast ad campaigns with a few clicks, Zvook. Realizing the increased popularity of podcasting within the advertising space, Zvook seeks to connect brands to their target audiences through what they listen to most.

The Big Digital Shift, Caused By COVID

As the COVID-19 pandemic took over, we’ve seen marketing tactics and attitudes shift, which has been “fruitful for those offering digital marketing services, but also allowing smaller businesses to compete against larger companies on a level playing field - where smaller companies have quicker turnaround times to hit trends and avoid lengthy approval processes that larger companies often go through.” our Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Anette Nilsen explains.

To build on this, Sama Ali-Berchem similarly saw a general spike in interest in digital marketing, but also a growing trend of potential clients doing some self-study about their own marketing practices to understand their needs, explaining that “It took much more convincing and education in regards to the value of online visibility and SEO, pre pandemic and pre lockdown. The bright side of lockdown was that [the] lack of in-person interaction actually pushed entrepreneurs and small business owners to take advantage of online marketing and compete with larger companies.“

Back to the Core Owned Tactics, You Said?

Especially in the spring and summer of 2020, the Kielo team saw a big need from local businesses, like Brooklyn Bleu, to build effective Shopify websites to counteract the fact that their physical stores were still closed, or perhaps never opening up again. Along with this came many website optimization projects for both B2B and B2C companies, where the focus on reviewing the consumer journey became key - where Kielo focused on the advertising journey and additional blog content, in collaboration with Portkey SEO to make a long-term strategy optimizing the websites for search engines.

With the lockdown-induced shift to online shopping and word of mouth via social media, many small and medium sized businesses’ internal teams of 2-10 realized that the strategy, planning and management of their social media efforts would be more successful outsourced, while they focused on adjusting their business for the “new normal,” taking the reins as business leaders, while the Kielo team operated as an extension of their team as their marketing department.

The Big Advertising Platform Shift

At Kielo, we saw a similar shift in the platforms where advertising dollars were spent. The politically strained summer of 2020 catapulted the discussion about whether it is ethical to spend millions of advertising dollars with the social media giant now known as Meta.. or our good old friends Facebook - who also own Instagram. From large companies cutting spend on both the platforms, to smaller companies testing their organic presence on TikTok and Pinterest, the shift to other platforms such as Google Search, Google Display, Geofencing, Streaming video ads, Pinterest, TikTok and interest in podcast ads has never been this clearly “due to ethical matters” versus “wanting to test a new platform.”

Anna Ratala, the Co-Founder and CEO of self-serve podcast advertising platform Zvook noticed a massive uptick in brands interested in podcast advertising explaining that “A record number of businesses are experimenting with podcast advertising. The podcast advertising market has grown by 40% in 2021 – and the overall podcast advertising spend has doubled in the past three years. Out of Zvook’s clients this year, 75% were new to podcast advertising. Podcasts are becoming a mainstream channel for brands to reach their potential customers.”

What to Change in 2022?

So...you’re eager to make some changes to your business to help it grow in 2022, but not exactly sure where to start? After speaking with these powerful female founders, one of the biggest keys seems to be: don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

Long-Term Digital Marketing Strategies: A Top Budget Priority

Sama says: “My top advice to business owners in regards to their digital marketing for 2022 is to not DOUBT but rather, 100% invest in their digital marketing as a legitimate component of their business to help them succeed and grow. Unfortunately, many business owners still hesitate in budgeting for their marketing, without realizing that they will stunt their growth and success by penny pinching and not believing in the power of SEO. This includes a regular digital marketing budget, month by month. Not one month, two months to test it out - but an ongoing strategy for continued success. SEO is not a one time deal, and must be consistent for long-term results. Entrepreneurs and business owners need to understand that marketing is an essential need for their business to grow, not just an option.”

Make a Strategy, And Revisit It Often

Too often, we see businesses paving the way as they are driving, meaning there is no real long-term strategy in place, with tactics laid out to get you closer to each goal, on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis. “It is vital for any business to have a plan, thinking ‘big picture’ before drilling into what the year’s digital marketing efforts should be. The overarching goals, whether it be sales, app downloads, site visits, follower growth or what have you, this need to be a united goal every team and department is working towards. That’s why we have in-depth conversations with our clients on a quarterly and monthly basis about results, reviewing what the original tactics for the quarter, month and week was, so that we can review our hypothesis and optimize efforts in real time. This hands-on workflow allowed us to support Secret Atlas defy a micro-cruise season that was unlikely to happen, sell out in 2021!” Anette excitedly explains.

Sama agrees. “Strategy, strategy, strategy! It might feel scary to think so far into the future, especially with the world changing so rapidly, but the only way to see valid results is carrying out your strategy over a long period of time in order to properly measure its success.”

“Always On” Awareness Campaigns

Thinking into the future, but breaking it into digestible pieces is key, but so is the short term versus long-term advertising campaigning. Anna highlights that she recommends that brand marketers: “Move away from ‘campaign based’ advertising approach to around-the-year thinking. In podcast advertising, we at Zvook call this approach ‘always be on air’. The campaign-based approach means that you run a campaign for 2 months, pause, and run a new campaign a few months later, when you launch a new product. This is a very sales-driven approach.” This is especially important for brands still fighting for their spot in the industry or market, where you are mainly focused on building brand awareness on a longer term basis.

This would go hand-in-hand with organic efforts, such as social media posting. There should always be content coming out, touting the key selling points. So, why not add in some long-term ad campaigns as well? “I recommend having at least quarter long campaigns pushing your unique selling point at the top of funnel level, layering in retargeting efforts on a quarterly basis as well for your middle and bottom of funnel audiences. This allows you to grow and nurture your audience in a stable manner, while adding in shorter promotions and campaigns interspersed, which will give you some sales/conversion spikes at key times.” , explains Anette.

Anna agrees: “The ‘always be on air’ approach in podcast advertising means that, instead of a campaign, you work with podcasts year-round. You start with a test budget, watch which shows perform best, double down on those, drop the ones that underperform and add more shows that are similar to the top performers.”

Key Trend Predictions for 2022

These women may not be psychics, but their expertise speaks for itself! Here are some of their business trend predictions for 2022:

#1 Video Marketing - “More specifically Reels and TikTok videos. People have such a short attention span and need to see content that grabs their attention in a very short span of time. Moving towards creating quick but clever content that provides value to viewers, is a new way to capture a growing audience online.” - Sama Ali Berchem

#2 Instant Chat/Instant Video Chat as a call to action - “In keeping with the need for instant gratification, a new way to capture leads instead of long, boring website forms, is instant chat, instant messaging, instant video chats even, on our client's websites and other online platforms. Client's will need manpower to monitor, in some cases, also after hours, all of these instant messaging channels so they can grab leads right away and not make them wait long enough for them to go to someone else that does respond right away.” -Sama Ali Berchem

#3 Host-Read Podcast Ads - “This means that instead of announcer-read, pre-produced ‘jingles’, podcast ads are read as endorsements by the hosts. Over 60% of all podcast ads are already host-read. Considering the huge success of the influencer marketing market, the audio world will see a stronger shift to host-read ads because they perform better and are especially powerful for niche brands that are challenging the ‘big guys’ with new offerings.” -Anna Ratala

#4 Contextual Targeting - “This one’s becoming the real talk of the town! Traditional programmatic ad insertion has been playing on the advantages of readily available demographics data to serve the ad to a person in the right age bracket and geographic location. Today’s consumers, however, are more concerned with data privacy leading to less available and less accurate data. And how much does someone’s age or location tell about them anyway? The content your customer listens to tells way more. Targeting your message to specific, pre-selected shows based on alignment with the content, rather than just demographics, ensures that you don’t miss out on potential target audience and helps reinforce the message.” -Anna Ratala

#5 Less Shoots + Shorter Organic Reach = Influencer Ambassadors - “The biggest trend we’ve seen brew during the pandemic has been the limited interest and investment in pure ‘content shoots.’ Instead, we’re seeing budgets being combined between content creation and advertising, tapping into long-term collaborations with influencers (3 months at minimum), where they create content for the brand to post, as well for themselves to post, boosting the brand’s organic reach.” -Anette Nilsen

So, Let’s Get to Work…

You’re heard their feedback about 2021 and their trend predictions for 2022, so now it’s time to apply that advice! Interested in help with SEO & optimizing your website? Check out Portkey SEO Solutions here. Want to expand your advertising into the podcast space? Zvook’s got you covered.

By dedicating your marketing to long term, strategic campaigns, focusing on authentic messaging, catering to instant gratification attitudes with your content, and exploring new avenues of advertising, you’ll be gearing your business up for success in 2022.

Let These Female Founders Help Scale Your Business in 2022