14 Marketing Trends That Will Transform Outreach in 2023
Published on: November 22, 2022
Business and marketing are fast-changing fields that present a myriad of challenges and exciting opportunities for ambitious professionals. Pairing business with creative pursuits has always sparked rapid innovation, but we've reached a breakneck speed in the marketing sector. At this point, strategies that work one year could be entirely ineffective the next.
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While certain tenets of marketing have remained relevant for decades, the field generally moves at a fast pace. Businesses that fail to adapt risk coming across as out of touch. This could drive away prospective customers, especially given their exceedingly high expectations.
A failure to keep up may even alienate previously loyal customers, who are more likely to jump ship if they suspect that their favorite brands no longer speak to them and their concerns.
Top Marketing Trends to Expect in 2023
Internet marketing trends are about to take a significant step forward in 2023. Keep reading to learn what's in store for the year to come:
1. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing took off years ago, but it has changed a lot in the past year. While big names such as Kylie Jenner continue to hold plenty of sway, many businesses now prefer to court attention from micro-influencers.
These influencers have a far more modest following, but don't let that fool you. They're far more affordable to work with — and they provide targeted messaging that appeals greatly to specific social media users.
2. Personalization
At this point, it's common knowledge that customers and clients respond better to personalized outreach. Previously, personalizing content was primarily limited to segmenting email lists or adding names to copy. This will become more sophisticated in 2023. AI will be integrated into this effort, adjusting everything from music selection to browsing history in an attempt to create a fully-curated experience.
3. Interactive Content
Today's consumers are no longer willing to consume marketing content passively. These days, they strongly prefer interactive experiences, which help them feel closer to the brands they follow. As such, many businesses are abandoning the static content of yesteryear and opting for more creative and engaging alternatives.
Some forms of interactive content have been prominent for years. Quizzes and calculators, for example, are popular solutions for driving engagement. Increasingly, however, content that once seemed relegated to passive consumption is becoming more interactive. These elements can be added to landing pages, Lookbooks and even white papers. Interactive email content is also popular, as it brings memorable experiences right to customers' inboxes.
4. Voice Search
The vast majority of searches now take place on smartphones. Many users prefer to conduct these searches via voice. However, their phrasing often changes dramatically when they make queries out loud. Longer keyword phrases replace two or three-word searches, often taking the form of questions and including key phrases such as "near me."
Businesses need to optimize for voice to make the most of these searches. This means using conversational keywords and, when possible, adding FAQ sections. With Google, featured snippets will become especially desirable as voice search increases in prominence.
5. Livestreaming
Livestreaming is an underutilized opportunity that enables authentic engagement while helping businesses remain top-of-mind. Live shopping has proven especially popular in the past year, as it combines the best aspects of both the digital and traditional in-person shopping experience. New platforms and more viewers will make livestreaming much more prominent in 2023.
6. Improving User Experience
User experience determines whether leads ultimately become loyal customers. Websites should be easy to navigate, so visitors can move through the sales funnel and convert as quickly and seamlessly as possible. This ease of access has always been a priority, but it's become more difficult due to the aforementioned emphasis on interactive content. Rich media is slower to load and can often seem clunky on otherwise well-organized websites.
Thankfully, this no longer needs to be an either/or proposition. Many businesses have struck an impressive balance between creatively capturing leads' interest and maintaining a simple and streamlined user experience. These successes have raised the bar, so users will no longer be willing to sacrifice either interactivity or usability.
7. Increased Customer Privacy
Data privacy legislation such as GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (the California Consumer Privacy Act) have had an outsized impact, even for organizations that don't do business with customers from California or the EU. Under these laws, marketers are obliged to obtain consent when sending marketing content to leads.
The increased emphasis on customer privacy has also been influenced by tech titan Apple, which made a splash in 2021 with the release of the Mail Privacy Protection feature. This has already changed how marketers approach analytics but will also influence re-engagement efforts in the next year.
8. More Creativity
Creativity has always been crucial in marketing, but some businesses were previously able to coast by without developing any particularly groundbreaking content. However, that has changed; these days, it takes genuinely original content to capture the attention of hard-to-impress consumers. We've already touched on the importance of interactive elements, but creativity must be evident in the concepts themselves — even when interactive features are stripped away.
9. Real-Time Messaging
Brands are increasingly becoming aware that effective marketing depends largely on when messages are received, rather than what they contain. Interactions are much more impactful when they occur at the right time and place — and when this makes life more convenient for customers. Hence, the appeal of real-time messaging, which targets interactions based on customers' current wants and needs.
While this strategy has existed in some form for years, it will become more prominent as marketers discover customers' preferences (especially among Gen Z) for in-the-moment interactions that are relevant to their daily life.
10. Multilingual Content
For decades, English dominated the digital world. That's about to change as users increasingly demand that their online experience reflects their linguistic preferences. Multilingual marketing strategies are now becoming less of an option and more of a necessity. These include accommodations for several languages and adjustments to reflect regional dialects.
A genuinely multilingual approach also extends to design. While each brand's identity must always ring true, significant adjustments may need to be made to reflect cultural norms or preferences in certain regions. Even color selection can have a considerable impact.
11. Increased Automation
The marketing tactics highlighted above all take a lot of time, effort, and, often, money to execute properly. Many businesses aren't equipped to handle all this on their own — but failing to keep up could be a real liability in this competitive market.
The solution? Marketing automation, which streamlines various painstaking processes to free up marketing professionals to focus on other matters. In 2023, new and more effective sources of marketing automation will emerge. These will enable data-driven decision-making so that marketing initiatives can be more accurately cultivated based on the wants and needs of target audiences.
12. Brand Partnerships
Fierce competition has, in many cases, given way to alliances between brands with similar goals or philosophies. These partnerships allow brands to expand their reach through cross-promotional initiatives. This, in turn, can significantly boost sales and long-term customer engagement.
In the future, these partnerships will often involve unexpected brands, as evidenced by several surprising campaigns from 2022. From Yoplait/Kool-Aid to Barbie/Balmain and even Duolingo with HBO Max, a variety of unique partnerships are popping up. This proves that partnerships can take many forms when similar values (and creativity) are present.
13. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) already plays a massive role in modern marketing, but its influence is set to further expand next year. Generative AI (involving the computer-prompted creation of brand-new content) has evolved considerably in the past few years. AI content is sophisticated enough that many online users are now unable to distinguish it from its human-crafted counterparts.
Experts at Forrester Research anticipate that AI tools will be "indispensable" in 2023 — and that a significant share of major corporations will use AI tools to produce content. This will go beyond the AI-generated written content of yesteryear and include audio files, videos and infographics. AI solutions are efficient and impactful, so the ROI for new adopters will be extraordinary.
14. User-Generated Content
Even the most creative marketing experts are bound to eventually need help to generate ideas. Thankfully, loyal followers can pick up the slack. By encouraging user-generated content, brands can get customers more actively involved while sourcing fresh concepts. Some customers are far more inclined to trust user-generated content than its brand-cultivated counterparts, so this could be a key strategy for targeting untapped markets in 2023.
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Get Your Business DegreeSources
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-biggest-artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-2023-bernard-marr/
https://www.forrester.com/blogs/predictions-2023-ai/
https://thenextweb.com/news/future-of-marketing-hyper-personalization
https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
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