The right marketing strategies are essential to any company’s success. An unpredictable economy, especially the post-pandemic recovery, and an abundance of new innovation will shape marketing trends for 2023.
In this article, we’ve compiled five of the top marketing trends to watch for the new year. In our rapidly evolving and increasingly digital world, the focus on customer and client retention is at the forefront. This means investing in the customer’s values, needs, and pushing user-friendliness, as well as making use of the new technologies available. Let’s have a look at what’s in store for businesses for 2023.
1. Data privacy and customer-centricity
Putting customer’s needs into focus is by no means a new strategy. In fact, it is so essential that it can barely be even called a strategy. However, what has been increasing in importance is customers’ privacy and data security. Customers need to be sure that their data is handled with care and as much as cookies helped shape targeted ads and marketing campaigns, companies need to make sure that they are compliant with data rules and communicate so effectively to their customer base. By making data protection a key focus, you will make sure your customer trust you. You can still gather data securely, for instance with a feedback or survey software that is GDPR compliant.
2. Social responsibility and brand values
In an excerpt of his influential comedy special ‘Inside’ comedian Bo Burnham hits the nail on the head on one of the most common marketing trends: using your brand to stand for something, or against something. In a satirical take, he poses as a brand consultant and argues the question is no longer “Do you want to buy this product” but “Will you support (insert brand name) in the fight against lyme disease?”
Now, this is a two-edged sword.
Of course, brands need to be advocates for the values they believe in. You wouldn’t buy children’s toys from a company that has a dark history with child labour. However, that shouldn’t be a trend in the first-place. It shouldn’t be about anything other than, well, not using child labour in the first place– not because it’s against your brand image. In other words, brands selling themselves as supporters of, say feminist movements or BLM-supporters, just to jump on a band-wagon of it as a marketing trend have missed the point of any social justice movements.
The focus on brand values has also become known as ‘purpose-driven marketing’. But the key to actually reaching a society that is asking for social justice is not a marketing trend or strategy, but a genuine and thorough investigation of whether your company actually lives up to what your brand claims to support. Therefore, it’s about implementing actions within your company that will be reflected in the image of your brand, rather than curating an idea of a brand that caters to what people fight for, without actually following through.
Otherwise, companies are acting exactly like those mocked in Burnham’s sketch– pretending to care for causes when it’s truly about profit. While this may sound harsh, all the clip points out are the limitations of companies. No one expects a cereal to solve the rise of populist politics or stop racism across the board. But we can expect the companies we buy products from as consumers to at least make sure that they implement fair and just practices that we can trust.
3. Social media trends and influencers
As we’ve seen over the past years, social media has become a key cog in any marketing strategy– and with it, videos, posts, and influencers. Social media offers countless opportunities for marketing which stray away from classic ads and towards products tests and reviews by content creators. This marketing trend will only expand in the new year. As stated in a recent Forbes marketing article, the digital sphere is the playing field on which influencers can help with brand promotion. But it’s not only up to influencers, most marketing strategies will rely on in-house content creators as well who will create content for the brand’s own socials that appeals to their customers and attracts new ones. Most on the rise, are short-form videos like Instagram reels or TikToks.
We only have to look at the idea that is ‘going viral’ to understand that those short videos can shoot up to millions of views in sheer minutes and gain incredible traction. Take for instance, the short dance clip of Jenna Ortega in Netflix’s new hit show ‘Wednesday.’ It has become such a popular TikTok with countless users recreating it to Lady Gaga’s song ‘Bloody Mary.’ Her song came out in 2011, but following the viral videos, it made its debut in the Billboard Hot 100 now in 2023, accompanied by 6.1 million streams in the US alone (udiscovermusic).
4. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
As mentioned multiple times in this article, the digital sphere continues to reign over marketing. While we already have good familiarity with the success of content-marketing on social media platforms, the rise of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) opens new doors. It is no surprise that the metaverse is a hot keyword. Be ready to immerse yourself in coming up with creative ways to adapt marketing to the new world that is VR and AR. This will not only mean keeping up with those trends, as Forbes predicts the entrance of the metaverse into the mainstream, but also unlocking new key markets. The gaming scene, for instance, will be closely intertwined with the meta-world and provide new fruitful opportunities. Content creators and influencers are not limited to the platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but to game-streaming ones like Twitch as well.
5. Adapting SEO to voice search
Finally, a more niche marketing trend that is not to be underestimated, is linked to the introduction of voice search. Great copy and SEO-focussed content have been important tools to gain traction and reach audiences for years, but the introduction of voice search on big search engines, such as Google, will mean that our SEO-focussed writing will need to be adapted to verbal search and not just written keywords.
6. Omnichannel marketing
As the prefix ‘omni,’ meaning ‘of all things’ or ‘in all ways or places,’ indicates omnichannel strategies refer to making use of all the available channels to further your marketing. Take a retail business, for instance, with a shop that customers can physically enter to shop. Omnichannel means expanding upon the shop to an online store, for instance, that can be accessed online, thus making use of all available possibilities to sell.
A Harvard Business Review study from 2017 showed that the more customers engaged with all available channels, the more valuable they were as customers. Of course, this does not only apply to retail services, but a successful marketing strategies should engage with as many (digital, as mentioned above) channels to maximise engagement at all customer journey touchpoints. In combination with the other marketing strategies from this article, customer feedback data can thus be used efficiently.
7. Artificial intelligence
AI has been assisting marketing in many ways already and is going to be a continuing trend. From implementing chat bots to deal with customer support queries to or to use it as a tool to predict growth in certain market areas. Another way to integrate AI in your marketing strategies, for instance, is to implement a text analysis software for customer feedback. From sentiment analysis to keyword extraction, text analysis can help marketers to understand and improve customer attitudes towards the brand.
Ready to get started with your new marketing strategy for 2023? Gathering data with feedback softwares is a key starting point for any campaign. Why not reach out to us via this contact form, book a demo, or start your free 30-day Netigate trial?
