Marketing Trends In The Making
1. Video Marketing
2. Influencer and brand relationships
3. UGC or user-generated content
4. Get Hold of Featured Snippets
5. New Alternatives to Cookie Tracking
Zeroing in on customer expectations
6. Putting premium on customer experience
7. Improving user-experience on multiple devices
8. Intermarriage of Voice Search and SEO
Digital Marketing Strategies To Leverage
10. Conversational marketing is In
11. Continue employing inbound marketing
12. Email marketing is here to stay
Make your brand identity known
13. Uphold consumer privacy
14. Embrace and incorporate DEI
15. Build your reputation, embrace social responsibility
Technology has caused an evolution in various fields, particularly in marketing. In fact, it has leveled it up by a hundred folds. In recent years, the emergence of social media, influencers, content, and viral marketing for business have particularly impacted how brands reach and engage with their target market.
For such a reason, it is imperative that businesses know these trends on a surface level but study and create strategies that will advance their efforts for success.
This article will explore the top marketing trends that will help entrepreneurs expand their business this 2023.
Marketing Trends In The Making
1. Video marketing
Video-based content has become a focal point in social media marketing because of its ability to capture and hold the viewer’s attention for an extended period compared to static posts.
Since most of the audiences in the digital space are millennials and GenZ, marketers are more inclined to produce bite-size videos to promote interaction and increase brand awareness.
2. Influencer and brand relationships
Word-of-mouth (WOM) is still among the best and most effective marketing strategies. If someone they follow and trust suggests a unique product or service, people following them will be more likely to give it a shot.
Influencer marketing stems from the idea and updates it to match today’s digital era by forging a partnership between a brand and an individual with a specific niche and a sizable online following.
The majority of digital marketing professionals leverage influencer marketing to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Reach out to their target market or audience
- Build trust and authority
- Drive conversions
- Generate leads
- Connect with a broader audience
Although this form of social media marketing has existed for quite some time now, brands are embracing the chance to build a more sincere bond with their target audience and, at the same time, foster a long-term relationship with their brand ambassadors.
This mutually beneficial relationship allows brands to build a lasting relationship with their partners while the influencers uphold trust and credibility with their audience by consistently promoting the same brand.
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3. UGC or user-generated content
Another form of word-of-mouth advertising is UGC or user-generated content. The beauty of this marketing strategy is that the content comes from the customers themselves. This can include unboxing videos, customer reviews, branded hashtags, or photo tags.
Anybody can produce user-generated content; hence, incorporating it into your marketing strategy can increase your brand’s credibility. Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to trust user testimonials than those single-handedly created by brands. It demonstrates the essence of authenticity; now is the perfect time to leverage this.
4. Get Hold of Featured Snippets
Another emerging trend this 2023 is that users increasingly use search engines as a last resort. Google is now using knowledge graphs and featured snippets to respond to user inquiries, which makes driving website traffic challenging for businesses.
Below are some of the action steps you can take to get hold of this trend:
- Ensure that Google’s information about your business is updated and accurate by using Google My Business.
- Optimize your content to appear in one of the three main categories of highlighted snippets.
- Try using the most common search terms that your ideal customers would use.
- Review which answers and websites are in the featured snippets
- Try to learn how they write and display their material.
You can always try to incorporate this strategy on your own. However, it is best to avail yourself of professional SEO services to evaluate your current SEO efforts and add and properly implement this tactic for your business.
5. New Alternatives to Cookie Tracking
Due to growing privacy concerns, Google plans to phase out third-party cookies.
Target marketing uses cookies to track users’ online behavior and activity so that they can provide a personalized experience. Businesses are looking into alternative targeting options to continue creating tailored content and ads.
You can also do the following to keep up with this trend:
- Leverage email marketing. Use newsletters and email-based ads to share your content since the customers who have signed up on your list have already shown interest in your products or services. It also signals that they want to be updated by subscribing to your email list.
In addition, always provide excellent and engaging content to prevent unsubscription. You can also consider sponsored content by sending out a newsletter through partnering with a non-competing business within your industry to increase your audience.
- Keep yourself updated. Follow Google’s new service when it becomes available. They will continue to allow companies to target their consumers using first-party cookies through the Google Privacy Sandbox. Although the mechanics are still unknown, marketers anticipate that they can use data like third-party cookie monitoring.
Zeroing in on customer expectations
6. Putting premium on customer experience
With the continued rise of the information age, consumers nowadays are smarter. They now expect a more personalized and tailored experience that speaks to their pain points and needs. They also do not connect with companies through a single method or channel.
This has called for marketers to rise above the challenge of becoming more creative and stop viewing every effort from a campaign-only perspective.
Moreover, marketers must know the unique interactions in the customer’s journey and concentrate on their whole experience.
How will businesses be able to put a premium on customer experience?
By mapping out a customer journey map.
A customer journey map is a valuable tool for designing a seamless customer experience since it gives businesses a visual depiction of how consumers behave, think, and feel during the buying process. Hence, it allows marketers to understand better how the customer experience should be in every stage of their journey.
7. Improving user-experience on multiple devices
This element will always be part of the marketing trends every year.
User experience or UX is more than just a buzzword. It speaks of an individual’s experience navigating your website or application.
A user with a positive experience with a product or brand will remain loyal to it no matter what. Your website or app is your most essential marketing resource, and a strong UX can make a whole world of difference as you persuade TOFUs (top-of-funnel users) to become customers.
The secret? Keep everything easy and simple.
Ensure that your website is easy to navigate. Keep the layout straightforward, and avoid bombarding consumers with too much information on your key landing pages. In addition, ensure that your website is mobile-friendly since more than 50% of internet users are on their mobile phones when browsing.
Below are the 2023 UX design trends you need to take note of:
- Minimalist design and “blanding” (without too many pop-up ads)
- Wireless controls
- Animation to rouse curiosity
- Block web design
- Use of bold colors
- Use of video content
- “Scrollytelling” (telling a story as the user scrolls)
- Interfaces with voice-recognition
“8. Intermarriage of Voice Search and SEO
Voice search is a digital assistant designed to respond to quick questions requiring short answers and is now being incorporated by marketers as a technique for search engine optimization.
In response to this emerging marketing trend, businesses are altering how they frame information. Creators use simpler question-and-answer forms to respond to readers’ inquiries depending on their purpose. This way, customers who use voice search will receive thorough and accurate results more rapidly.
Digital Marketing Strategies To Leverage
9. Use interactive content
Nowadays, interactive content is in, and static content and passive content consumption are out.
Consumers now prefer engaging content, and marketers create a dynamic, two-way experience to keep up with this demand and to motivate their target audience to connect with the content actively.
Below are some examples:
- Quizzes
- Games
- Calculators
- Assessments
- Interactive maps and videos
- Interactive infographics
- Contests
In addition, approximately 80% of marketers agree that aside from being low-cost and high-impact, interactive content has numerous other benefits. Interactive content is an excellent strategy to incorporate if your content marketing goals include the following:
- Increase audience engagement
- Promote client education
- Increase conversions and leads
- Promote a cohesive and seamless customer experience
- Increase brand loyalty
10. Conversational marketing is In
In connection with interactive content, businesses should use customized messaging and artificial intelligence automation rather than sending them to lead capture forms and waiting for a real-time response.
This digital marketing trend uses machine learning and natural language processing, or NLP, to enable two-way communication between brands and customers.
Furthermore, these chatbots may gradually learn more about a customer’s preferences, allowing them to better cater discussions to their demands. Because of this, they are highly successful at increasing customer satisfaction and saving organizations money and necessary time.
11. Continue employing inbound marketing
Inbound marketing will continuously grow this 2023.
Inbound marketing aims to attract people to your website and turn them into paying customers by producing interesting, relevant, and engaging content.
Therefore, inbound marketing is all about creating high-quality material, which includes infographics, blog posts, or videos, and optimizing them for search engine distribution, and using social media to inform people of the product or services that you offer; it’s all about producing valuable content for your target audience.
In addition, you can combine inbound marketing with outbound strategies such as email marketing campaigns and PPC to reach a wider audience. Investing in inbound marketing efforts may greatly enhance a brand’s profitability and client base.
12. Email marketing is here to stay
Email marketing will never be outdated. It is still one of the most popular and effective marketing strategies; thus, it is here to stay.
Technology will never overshadow email marketing, as this is one of the digital marketing strategies that brands have complete control of. Unlike social media channels that may change at a snap any time by the platform providers, businesses have complete control of their subscribers.
To create a more personalized experience, brands must step up their email marketing strategy in response to the increased need for customization. This can be achieved through automated and triggered sequences, which includes abandoned carts and emails with customized product recommendations.
Make your brand identity known
13. Uphold consumer privacy
Currently, identity theft and data breaches have always been a problem. However, as the number of cyberattacks has increased, customers are becoming more aware of how sensitive their data is to breach.
Many reputable businesses are creating new processes to guarantee clients feel secure while sharing their personal information in light of recent privacy and security concerns.
Increased data security enables clients to confidently sign up for services, white papers, and demos without worrying about identity theft and data breaches. Although this is not exactly a marketing strategy, it is crucial to update your privacy software if you want to generate more leads.
14. Embrace and incorporate DEI
Your marketing efforts may create significant progress, but ensuring that your target audience feels a sense of belongingness or inclusion, even in marketing strategies, is more than crucial.
Approximately 70% of consumers expect businesses to inculcate diversity and inclusion in their marketing tactics.
There are two benefits involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion marketing, which include the following:
- Connecting with a larger audience through DEI marketing will build your credibility, promote brand trust, and more people will value your authenticity.
- Your business will become a positive force towards furthering diversity and inclusion causes.
15. Build your reputation, embrace social responsibility
Consumers of today are more drawn to brands that practice social responsibility. An estimated 60% of consumers are willing to spend more for goods from brands that display their sincere social commitment.
Customers want to be a part of the change and in making a difference, which makes promoting social responsibility initiatives in marketing campaigns imperative. These efforts can include the following:
- Advocating for recyclable packaging
- Spreading awareness of societal issues
- Allocating portions of the profit to charity
- Donation of products to those in need
- Community service sponsored by brands
- Promotion of social justice
How to stay-on-top of trends as a business owner
It is quite a feat to keep up with trends, especially since technology is fast evolving along with the consumers that patronize it. But do not lose heart, as there are specific ways for your business to keep up with these marketing trends:
- Be vigilant of your competitors’ marketing efforts. Pay close attention to the marketing efforts your competitors are employing.
- Build connections with industry experts. Be in the know. Follow established industry magazines and reputable marketing blogs to be consistently informed of emerging marketing trends.
- Keep track of social media trends. Make time in your schedule to look at and study marketing trends in social media that are widely popular.
- Engage with your audience. As mentioned earlier, interaction with your target audience is in; one-way interaction is out. Find out what your audiences want to see and their expectations about the brands they love, and use what you’ve learned in your marketing strategy.
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References:
https://www.shopify.com/blog/marketing-trends
https://asana.com/resources/marketing-trends
