In order to succeed in today’s digital age, marketers must stay up-to-date with changing trends and adapt to new technologies that can benefit their business by generating leads, improving customer relationships, and gaining a competitive edge.
As H.G. Wells famously said, it’s important to “adapt or perish.” The political unrest of the previous year presented challenges for businesses worldwide, leading many to recognize the importance of building stronger connections with their customers.
As a result, new digital marketing trends have emerged that should be taken into account and implemented in 2023.
A brief overview of the 7 digital marketing trends to be discussed
Short Videos Reign Supreme
According to recent studies, almost 90% of companies use video as a marketing tool. The video provides an opportunity for brands to engage with their audience, thus bridging the communication gap. Although it may come with technical difficulties, a little interference will not push away your followers.
Short videos are becoming increasingly popular, with about 68% of people preferring to learn about new products through them. As a result, the primary marketing trend in 2023 is predicted to be the use of video snippets to inform users about your offerings. Here are some tips to make short videos effective for your business in 2023:
- Turn your written content into snackable videos
In case you have written some effective blog articles, you can consider reusing that content to create videos. You can include a video link in your article and advertise it. This approach will enable you to attract people who prefer video content and also offer comprehensive information on the topic in a specialist article for those who came across it via video.
- Embrace TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts
According to a projection, marketers intend to increase their presence on popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube in the year 2023. To take advantage of this trend, it is recommended to use the current popularity of these platforms to promote newly launched products through short videos like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok videos. These videos are ideal for creating brief, attention-grabbing tutorials on how to use the product.
- Give your audience a behind-the-scenes look
It is common for customers to only witness the final product, but it can be beneficial to showcase the process of creating it. One way to do this is by live streaming the entire production process and condensing it into a brief, two-minute video. This strategy may attract public interest and potentially even become a viral sensation. People tend to enjoy success stories, after all.
Email Marketing Gets Personal and Interactive
Instant communication has become a popular way for customers to connect with brands, but they also desire a more personalized approach from businesses. This has led to 90% of marketers believing that personalization is the future, with around one-third of them allocating over 50% of their marketing budgets towards personalization efforts. Recent research from Marketing Dive indicates that personalized emails have a 50% higher open rate, while interactive emails can increase click-to-open rates by up to 73%. As a result, interactivity has emerged as a significant email marketing trend to keep an eye on and adopt in 2023. To enhance the effectiveness of your emails, you can implement these strategies to make them more personalized and interactive.
- How to personalize emails
When it comes to email marketing, it’s no longer effective to send a generic message to all customers. In order to optimize your message, you should segment your email list based on similar data to create targeted messages for each group. By doing this, you can ensure that customers in one industry don’t receive irrelevant emails meant for another group. This approach is more effective than using a one-size-fits-all approach that was popular in the past.
- How to make emails interactive
Looking to make your emails more engaging? One way to do this is by incorporating a concise feedback or review form into the email itself. Alternatively, you could take it even further and include interactive elements such as image slideshows, games, or other clickable content that will catch your audience’s attention. Your recipients will surely appreciate the additional effort you put into creating a more dynamic email.
User-generated content takes center stage
As the world moves at a rapid pace, individuals are increasingly seeking genuine experiences. Authenticity is highly valued by consumers, who often trust recommendations from other individuals over those from businesses. This trend is set to continue in 2023, with a remarkable 93% of marketers acknowledging that user-generated content is more trustworthy than content created by companies. User-generated content refers to any content produced by customers to endorse a business. There are several innovative approaches to utilizing this content in 2023.
- Ask customers for referrals
For B2B businesses, it is possible to politely request users to provide feedback about their product on platforms such as G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot. To encourage users, a small incentive like a coupon, discount, or other special offers can be offered. It is essential to include all the key information from the original text when paraphrasing.
- Ask customers to leave testimonials
To showcase customer satisfaction with your product, you can choose satisfied customers and request them to write a few lines about their positive experiences. These testimonials can be displayed on your website. However, instead of written testimonials, you can leverage the popularity of video trends and ask them to record a brief video testimonial. To make the process easier, you can provide prompts about what to say in advance. All set for lights, a camera, and action!
Conversational Marketing Becomes a Priority
The trend of conversational marketing involves integrating instant messaging into your marketing plan. With customers valuing fast responses from brands, conversational marketing has become increasingly popular and many companies have already adopted this approach. If you’re interested in incorporating this trend into your strategy, here are some ways to get started.
- Add a chatbot to your website
Ensuring that there is always a means for potential and current customers to communicate with your business is important. To achieve this, you could consider implementing a chatbot that automatically responds to frequently asked questions if you are unable to offer 24/7 assistance.
- Use multiple channels for communication
It is important to provide users with multiple options to contact you, such as email, phone, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct, and other platforms. The greater the number of communication channels you offer, the more approachable and available you will appear to your customers. This is similar to having a virtual welcome sign that invites them to start a conversation with you at any time.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing refers to a marketing technique that leverages the popularity of influential people on social media platforms, blogs, forums, and messaging apps to endorse brands, products, content, and services. There are three types of influencers based on their followers and engagement rates: mega-influencers, macro-influencers, and micro-influencers.
Mega-influencers include celebrities, artists, and social media stars who have over 1 million followers and 2-5% engagement per post. Macro-influencers are bloggers and journalists who have 10,000-1 million followers and 5-10% engagement per post, and they have a strong influence in their specific niche, such as fashion or business. Micro-influencers are ordinary people with 500-10,000 followers who drive 25-50% engagement per post, and they have the highest relevance to the brand due to their unique expertise in their niche.
The top 1% of content creators are made up of mega and macro-influencers, while the remaining 9% are micro-influencers who share their content with your target audience. Therefore, working with micro-influencers within your industry is the most effective way to promote your brand, as they provide the highest level of engagement for your products or services. No information has been omitted in the paraphrased text.
Why Do You Need Influencers?
Influencer marketing is still the most effective way to acquire customers, with digital influencer campaigns generating an ROI 11 times higher than traditional ads. The spending on influencer marketing is expected to increase by 23.4% and 15.9% in 2023 and 2024, respectively. It is projected that by 2024, the revenue generated from influencer marketing will reach $7.14 billion, compared to $4.99 billion in 2022. Although Instagram remains the primary social media platform for influencer marketing, the popularity of TikTok is on the rise. In fact, TikTok has become the fastest-growing platform for influencer marketing in 2022 due to its fun and casual approach to brand promotion. As a result, marketers worldwide are prioritizing collaborations with TikTok influencers. To ensure the effectiveness of your influencer marketing strategy, consider collaborating with influencers in these categories.
- Sponsored social media campaign
Collaborating with influencers on social media can be beneficial for your brand. The collaboration involves influencers creating and sharing content on their social media platforms to promote your brand. To ensure that the influencer meets your expectations, you must provide them with a brief that includes content guidelines and campaign objectives.
- Guest blogging
To expand your reach in your industry, find influential individuals who run blogs or websites that cater to your target audience. Establish a connection with them by creating backlinks and inquiring about their policy for accepting contributions from guest writers. If they permit it, develop well-crafted content that provides valuable information to their followers. While including a link to your site, ensure that the content is not overly promotional.
LinkedIn Flexes its B2B Muscle
In recent times, LinkedIn has established itself as the leading platform for establishing professional connections. The year 2022 has witnessed a remarkable surge in user engagement and growth, and it is predicted to be responsible for a quarter of B2B advertising by 2024, which is an amazing feat. These developments indicate the increasing importance of having a LinkedIn account for your company to build credibility for your brand. To adapt to this trend, it is crucial to follow some essential guidelines.
- Prepare a professional LinkedIn profile
It is important for your brand to maintain a consistent presence on LinkedIn by creating a company profile page. The design and content on this page should align with your website and other social media profiles. It is crucial to update the page regularly to demonstrate that your company is active and growing.
- Join LinkedIn groups
LinkedIn groups serve as a central location for potential leads, offering a valuable opportunity to gain insight into the pain points and requirements of your intended audience. Additionally, by sharing your expertise and advice, you can establish yourself as an authority within your industry and gain valuable recognition. It’s a coveted title that many aspire to hold.
- Grow connections
After creating a professional profile on LinkedIn, it is important to immediately begin expanding your network. Prior to identifying potential leads for your business, it is beneficial to connect with a diverse group of individuals including partners, influencers, experts, and other professionals to increase brand recognition. From this larger audience, you can choose specific connections to potentially convert into customers over time.
- Use LinkedIn automation
To achieve business growth, manually selecting leads one by one is not efficient when working on a large scale. However, by utilizing specialized tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or LI Prospect Finder to automate LinkedIn prospecting, you can significantly accelerate the success of your sales and marketing campaigns without incurring high costs. It’s time to consider automation.
Artificial Intelligence Tools Gain Popularity
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence tool capable of generating natural conversation within seconds, was introduced to the digital world in November 2022. The increasing demand for such tools has led many companies to consider the possibility of replacing human marketers entirely in the coming years. It is important to note that no information has been omitted in this paraphrased text.
Currently, machine learning programs are unable to completely replace marketing experts due to Google’s ability to detect their content and apply penalties. However, this does not mean that incorporating these programs into your digital marketing plan for 2023 should be avoided. AI tools can be utilized to speed up the content creation process by assisting with outlines and drafts. The resulting content can then be transformed into valuable marketing material through the use of human creativity.
Conclusion
In today’s market, it is crucial for businesses to adapt to current trends to stay competitive. However, it is equally important to strike a balance because trends can quickly shift or disappear entirely. When devising digital marketing strategies for the year, it’s important to consider whether the campaign will hold its value if trends change and what will happen if digital marketing takes a different direction.
