What are the most important digital marketing trends of 2023?

Brands will also need to respond to the global cost of living crisis in 2023 as customers become increasingly picky about the products and services they buy.

This means it’s even more important for brands to be transparent and consider their messaging and research or adjust their strategies in the coming year. It also means marketers need to understand future trends so they can plan for and capitalize on any new developments.

To help you kick off 2023 on the right foot, we spoke with industry experts on the podcast to identify the most important trends. You may also want to watch our trends webinar for more key points to watch in 2023.

Read on to learn what’s trending in 2023:

• In Social Media and Influencer Marketing, we look at TikTok and commerce, the rise of creators, and SuperApps.

• In B2B marketing, we hear about the value of video content, how to conquer social selling, and curated content.

• Content marketing looks set to see more connections, creator + brand partnerships, and an evergreen need to create valuable content.

• In 2023, you'll be hearing a lot about marketing automation, especially in terms of available tools and the much-anticipated GPT-4.

• Martech will also keep growing, with CROs further ahead. The Metaverse will not disappear.

1. Social Media and Influencer Marketing Trends

There are some very interesting trends coming to social media in 2023. In fact, this is an area of marketing that is set to change significantly, and brands will need to keep pace to effectively leverage these platforms.

TikTok continues to grow and dominate

TikTok has become a major player in the social media marketing space. This won't change in 2023. According to the App Business Report, TikTok generated $4.6 billion in revenue in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 142%, and is expected to have 1.8 billion monthly active users by the end of 2022.

TikTok is reaching out to more than just consumers or creators. The platform is focused on usability for businesses and improved targeting options for ads, which will make it a bigger and better platform for brands in 2023.

Decentralizing social media to create "super apps"

Twitter's changes highlight the fragility of social media platforms. Customers no longer want to interact with billionaire-dominated platforms but instead have control over their content and data.

Other applications are in development, such as BlueSky, developed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It's more infrastructure than a platform, which the company describes as "the new foundation for social networking, making creators independent of the platform, developers free to build, and users choose their own experiences."

The 'creator economy' will grow and change

As brand awareness becomes increasingly focused on social media (rather than pure lead generation), marketers need to find creators with a voice and a following (small or otherwise).

For brands, creating content that engages customers in a time-pressed world can be a challenge. This is where content creators come in, which does not mean high-level influencers. It can refer to employees, customers, or even subject matter experts in a specific field.

The emergence of content creator funds on TikTok, YouTube and Twitch means creators have an incentive to invest their time in creating content that brands can capitalize on.

2. B2B Marketing Trends

B2B marketing can be seen as boring or at least less exciting than its B2C counterparts. but it is not the truth. As a B2B company, it’s important to get creative with your marketing and use the channels and tools available to make it memorable.

Videos, videos and more videos

As marketers, we all know the power of a great video campaign as a way to inform and connect. After all, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 92% of businesses see it as an important part of their strategy (according to Wyzowl research).

The same research shows various reasons why businesses use videos, the most important of which are explainers, followed by social media videos and presentations. The top three channels used by companies are YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

For B2B companies, video can play an important role in the sales and marketing cycle. This is especially true on LinkedIn, as video has become increasingly popular on the platform and provides a way to connect with and influence customers.

Empower your team to use social selling

Social media is an effective way for brands and their sales teams to connect with their customers. This is especially true for B2B companies that have long sales cycles and rely on digital channels to provide useful and relevant information.

But there’s a difference between publishing content that drives sales messages and using content to engage and build connections. Social transformation expert and author Julie Atherton believes this will drive business success in 2023.

Appetite for curated content

While the company places a strong emphasis on creating original content, sharing curated content can also be effective.

If the content is relevant, it can drive conversation and show that your company is interested in solving a problem or sharing information, not just making a sale.

Useful types of content you can share include:

• Industry news
• third party research
• press release or announcement
• Interviews (videos and blogs)
• In-depth functionality
• podcast

3. Content Marketing Trends

The Content Marketing Institute found that while 78% marketers have a strategic approach to managing content, just over half have a written content strategy to refer to. In today’s content-hungry society, this is a mistake.

Use content to drive connections

As marketers, we know that content can be used to provide information and solutions at all stages of the marketing and sales funnel. But content can do more than that.

In 2023, you should be using content to connect and build community. Companies that cultivate and seek connections will be successful as customers become more interested in the values and ethos of their brands.

Refine and define creator/brand partnerships

There's a lot of noise online, which equals a lot of content. Some of the content out there is great, but a lot of it is aligned with the wrong influencers or isn’t targeting the right audience. This is where a good content creator/brand partnership can come into play.

Many creators hope to grow in 2023. This means they are looking for brand partnerships that align with their content (not just sponsorships) so that the posts feel organic and the company provides guidance and support rather than leaving them to chance!

Balance your content to provide value rather than just sales

According to marq’s “Content Effectiveness” report, more than half of marketers note that demand for content has increased significantly in recent years. But it’s not just about having more content, it’s about having content that provides value to your prospects and customers.

4. Marketing Automation Trends

As companies collect more data and need to perform more tasks to implement effective marketing campaigns, automation tools provide a way to automate routine and repetitive tasks at scale.

Shifting to signal-based marketing

By 2023, the mindset will shift from technology-based marketing to anticipatory marketing. This will allow marketers to anticipate customer needs and then feed them into automated processes.

This new way of thinking will now only make things more efficient and personalised. This applies to platforms like Google Ads, and seems to be the direction Facebook and other social channels are heading as well.

The importance of automation tools

Gartner predicts that by 2024, organizations with IT teams that understand customer needs will outperform other organizations in customer experience metrics.

This understanding will rely on tools to automate internal processes and enhance customer experience. These include marketing tools for CRM, social media, advertising, lead management or email.

Artificial Intelligence and the Launch of GPT-4

You may not have heard of GPT-4 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 4), but it is a cutting-edge tool that helps marketers automate many tasks.

Developed by OpenAI, it is a text generation deep learning model trained with content available online. It is used for question answering, text summarization, machine translation, classification, code generation and conversational AI.

5. Marketing Technology Trends for 2023

Marketing Technology – Martech – Software used to create, execute, manage and measure the performance of content (online and offline), campaigns and experiences. This is an effective way to streamline the customer journey and implement omnichannel marketing campaigns.

Martech spending will continue to grow

According to eMarketer, U.S. martech spending will exceed $20 billion for the first time in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 15%. This spending is due to companies investing in technology that enables them to collect and store data, use that data to make decisions and implement those decisions.

Interestingly, B2B companies account for more than $30% of this spending, a share expected to grow modestly in the coming years, reaching $8.5 billion by 2024.

CRO will no longer be an experiment

Every company wants to increase online conversion rates. That means more traffic, more sales, and more revenue, right?

By now, many marketers have tried conversion rate optimization (CRO) and used many testing methods. However, Chris Coomer believes the era of just seeing what happens is coming to an end because it's not just about chasing results.

Metaverse’s growth is slow but brands will still play a role

The Metaverse made a splash in 2022 and will continue to do so in the coming years, but growth is slower than expected as profits plummet and costs rise.

Despite this, Alison Battisby believes brands will start to think about what their strategy will be in 2023, a new era of immersive virtual communication world.

Summary of Marketing Trends for 2023

2023 is going to be an exciting and challenging year for marketers! The external environment means brands need to carefully consider their messaging to engage their audiences and align with creators and influencers who share the same values.

These developments demonstrate that marketing continues to evolve, both technologically and strategically. Check out the Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022 blog to see our predictions for this year.

You have time to think about which trends are important to you and which ones you can capitalize on in 2023. Happy planning!