Top five digital marketing trends you shouldn’t ignore in 2023

As we storm into 2023, marketers face a multitude of new challenges, including a global economic slowdown (and possible recession), changing buyer behaviour and the added internal pressures of generating growth with fewer resources.

For all these reasons, you need to be on top of your game! That’s why we’ve scoured the web to bring you the top five digital marketing trends for 2023. And as a bonus, we provide ways you can utilise them in your marketing plan this year.

1. Responding to a changing buying journey

Consumers are becoming more and more discerning: they want convenience, accessibility and value. Marketers are therefore concentrating on ways to offer great customer experiences. One example of this is using social media as a customer service tool. More and more businesses are using channels such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to offer customers another, arguably easier, form of contact.

In the B2B world, purchasing decision makers are getting younger. In the US, 65% of the workforce are Millennials and Gen Zers and more and more are becoming responsible for buying. Of course, this generation has grown up with social media, search engines and review sites and therefore, they’re demanding a digital-first, self-serve experience that they can manage on their own terms.

Research by Insider Intelligence shows that 60% of B2B decision makers look at websites, 52% attend a webinar and 50% evaluate a supplier on a peer review site prior to accepting a sales meeting.

How can you adapt your marketing?

• It’s critical to be engaging with your audience well before they make contact with your business e.g during their research stage of the buying journey. A great content strategy is more important than ever to help drive interest and engagement. It’s also critical to be visible where your customers are doing their research e.g. on search engines, social media and review sites.

• Make your business as easy as possible to buy from and deal with. Ensure your website’s user experience is seamless and consider introducing tools such as online chat, self-serve demos and instant meeting bookings to make engagement as easy as possible.

2. Personalisation

Personalisation has become a ‘mainstream’ marketing tactic in recent years. In its simplest form, this could be using automation to personalise email campaigns, but in 2023, marketers will be getting more advanced and turning to website personalisation. This could be creating personalised web pages for individual customers as part of an account-based marketing (ABM) approach or personalised web experiences for individual consumers based on previous buying behaviour.

The benefits of personalisation are well known: creating relevant content helps drive enquiries or sales. 77% of B2B marketers agree personalisation helps to build better client relationships, with 55% also agreeing on personalisation boosts conversion rates and growth.

How can you use personalisation in 2023?

• The simplest form of personalisation in Marketo is to use Tokens to swap out words for variables that get populated with data from your database. They’re not only great to customise copy but can also save a lot of time and resources.

• If you’re not familiar with Marketo’s dynamic content features, then 2023 is the year to become acquainted! Dynamic content allows you to segment your customer data into groups so you can then serve up different content and messages for each one in emails and on landing pages. Talk to us if you’d like to know more.

• Unfortunately, the barrier to personalisation is quality data. Without correctly populated fields to identify useful subgroups, it’s very hard to create personalised campaigns.

3. Video is king

In 2023 video will continue to grow in popularity, particularly when viewed across social media channels, as engagement hits an all time high.

A recent GWI report shows that 56% of consumers are watching more videos on social media each month with four in 10 following brands they like (and consider buying from). This could be a major reason why 70% of eCommerce brands have increased their video marketing budgets post-pandemic.

How can you make the best use of video?

• Video and social media go hand in hand, so test using video in your social media adverts on platforms where your target audience hangs out.

• Keep videos short. In a world where people’s time and attention is limited, short-form videos are great to get across your message in a concise and entertaining way.

• If you have a product or service that can be purchased online, you should be trialling shoppable videos. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all have the ability to link to ‘shops’ where purchases can be made without leaving the platform for a better user experience.

• Video must be optimised for SEO. Not only for search engines (as Google is increasingly favouring video and recently launched a new Short Video Result Type) but also across social media. Statistics show that more and more people are turning to social media platforms to search for answers and research purchases than ever before. We all know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine next to Google. But did you know that 40% of Gen-Z prefers searching on TikTok or Instagram over Google!

4. Micro-influencers

Influencer marketing is a huge B2C trend and is becoming ever more popular in the B2B world. Arguably this is due to the increasing emphasis customers are placing on a brand’s reputation and values, but also on their desire to seek peer reviews prior to purchase.

A recent report by Polaris Market Research estimates that the global influencer marketing platform revenue will reach nearly $92 billion by 2030.

However, 2023 will see a shift towards micro-influencers (creators with less than 15K followers). Marketing Chart’s study highlights that influencers with a niche have the highest engagement rate across platforms. And with budgets tight they also command a lower price tag!

In the B2B space, companies are utilising field experts to help drive sales. Thought leaders are proving very impactful at increasing engagement and gradually encouraging brand adoption.

Is influencer marketing right for your business?

Think of influencer marketing as a spin-off from thought-leadership which has been around in the world of PR for a very long time. ‘Influencers’ do not have to be celebrities or bloggers with millions of followers. Instead, you can identify people internal or external to your business who your target audience will respect and listen to. You can then align their messaging with your brand to build engagement and over time – with the objective of influencing buyers’ decision making.

5. Marketing automation is a necessity

The marketing automation market size is projected to grow from USD 5.2 billion in 2022 to USD 9.5 billion by 2027. Factors such as the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a drive for greater efficiency and a desire to adopt AI and machine learning techniques are all factors.
But even to carry out and measure basic campaigns effectively – you need marketing automation tools.

What are the implications of marketing automation?

As a marketer, automation should make your life easier – but we all know the reality is not so simple.

The adoption of any automation tool brings challenges, such as integrating it into your tech-stack, finding experts to use the technology and justifying its use. With budgets getting tighter, marketing managers are under more scrutiny than ever to show efficiencies and ROI from new technology.

At JFT Marketing, we can help in two ways:

• Firstly we can provide a Marketo audit and review your configuration, data quality, processes and campaigns. This ensures you’re not only optimising your use of Marketo for optimum campaign ROI and that you’re using it as efficiently as possible for maximum time-saving.

• Secondly, we offer both online and group Marketo training courses – so you can be sure you’re using your instance in the best possible way to support your marketing efforts.

If you’d like any support with your Marketo activity in 2023, please get in touch – we’d be happy to talk through your challenges or requirements and how we can help.