As customers become more sophisticated about the products and services they buy, brands must also factor in a global cost of living crisis in 2023.

This means it’s more important for brands to be transparent in the coming year and reflect on their messaging and research or refine their strategy. It also means that marketers need to be aware of upcoming trends so they can plan and capitalize on new developments.

1. Social Media and Influencer Marketing Trends in 2023: There are some really interesting trends in 2023 for social media. This is an area of ​​marketing that is set to change a lot and brands need to stay current to be present and use platforms effectively.

~ TikTok evolves and dominates: TikTok has become a major player in social media marketing. And that won’t change in 2023 either. TikTok generated $4.6 billion in 2021, an increase of 142% year over year with 1.8 billion monthly active users expected by the end of 2022, reported The Business of Apps.

It’s not just for consumers or creators that TikTok is permeating. The platform has a focus on usability for businesses and improving ad targeting options, which will make it a bigger and better platform for brands by 2023.

“One of the things we will see from TikTok next year is the simplicity of the business tools. They’ve already made waves by improving the usability of businesses around their advertising dashboard. I looked at some of the new targeting options they’ve rolled out for their awesome ads,” said Alison Battisby, social media consultant at Avocado Social.

~ Decentralize social networks to create a “super app”: The changes to Twitter have highlighted the vulnerability of social media platforms. Customers no longer want to deal with platforms run by billionaires and instead control their content and data.

Battisby says that “we are moving towards the need for decentralization of social networks. Among the exciting new platforms, we’re seeing is Mastodon, which has seen a huge amount of downloads over the past few weeks. And it’s an interesting tool because it’s built by the masses”.

Other apps are in the works, such as BlueSky, developed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The company describes it more as an infrastructure than a platform, as “a new foundation for social networking that gives creators platform independence, developers the freedom to build, and users choice in their experience”.

~ The Creator Economy will Grow and Change: As brand awareness becomes more of a social media focus (as opposed to pure lead generation), marketers need to find creators who have a voice and fan base (small or otherwise).

It can be difficult for brands to create content that engages customers in a timeless world. This is where content creators come in, and that doesn’t mean top-tier influencers. It can mean employees, customers, or even subject matter experts in a niche area. “Since COVID, we’ve seen a new social media culture that’s not focused on follower counts but on the content itself, in an era of what they call ‘recommended media’. This drives brands, even more, to collaborate with influencers and content creators,” said Neal Schaffer, Social Media Manager and Author.

Increased funding for content creators on TikTok, YouTube and Twitch means creators have the incentive to invest time in creating content that could benefit a brand.

2. B2B Marketing Trends – How to Use Social Media Effectively: B2B marketing can be seen as boring or at least less exciting than its B2C counterparts. But it doesn’t have to be like that. As a B2B company, it is important to be creative in marketing and use the available channels and tools to be memorable.

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

The same study revealed the variety of reasons businesses use video, with the most important being explainers, followed by social media videos and presentations. The top three channels used by companies are YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram.

~ Purpose of the Created Videos: For B2B businesses, video can play an important role in the sales and marketing cycle. This is especially true on LinkedIn, as a video has become more popular on the platform, providing a way to connect and influence customers. “LinkedIn has become a place where people can quickly create user-generated content. People do it with varying degrees of skill. Your mileage depends on your style and budget. But I think it added a lot of personality to this platform and made the content more shareable. (video) is a great way for you to act as an expert, as a connector,” says Stephen Walsh, Co-Founder of Kineo and Anders Pink.

~ Empower teams to leverage social selling: Social media is an effective way for brands and their sales team to connect with customers. This is especially true for B2B companies that have longer sales cycles and rely on digital channels to deliver useful and relevant information.

But there’s a difference between posting content that delivers a sales message and using content to interact and build connections. Julie Atherton, the social transformation expert and author, believes this will be key to business success in 2023.

“I think there will be a clear distinction between companies that enable their teams to effectively use social media to build relationships and those that see social media as just another channel to get sales messages across,” says Atherton. “Some organizations are afraid to relinquish control or to let individuals express themselves”.

~ A Hunger for Curated Content: While businesses put a lot of effort into creating original content, sharing curated content can also be effective. If the content is relevant, it can spark conversation and show that your business is interested in solving a problem or sharing information rather than selling.

“If you want to get something informative and insightful, it doesn’t matter if you created that content. I think curated content can be an efficient way to get some learning and understanding and demonstrate that you have a trusted person who can add value, can be very powerful as a B2B strategy,” says Walsh.

The types of useful content you can share include:
1. Industry news
2. Third-Party Search
3. Press releases or announcements
4. Interviews (videos and blogs)
5. In-depth features
6. Podcasts

3. Content Marketing Trends in 2023: While 78 per cent of marketers use a strategic approach to managing content, only more than half have a formalized content strategy in place. In today’s content-hungry culture, that is incorrect.

~ Make connections by utilizing content: As marketers, we are aware that information and solutions can be offered through content at every point in the marketing and sales funnel. Content, however, is capable of much more. You should use content to create communities and establish connections in 2023. Companies that cultivate and seek out connections will succeed as consumers show increasing interest in the values and ethos of brands.

“While email marketing and social media still have a place in business, for me, it’s communities that are generating most of my sales. People want to be part of a community. They want to reach out and receive support from other people”, according to Kate Toon, founder of Stay Tooned, further adds, “And the community leaders must agree because this will help everyone. Customers want to believe that the companies they are purchasing from share the same values as them”.

~ Refine and clarify creator/brand collaborations: Online noise equals a lot of content, and vice versa. Some of the available content is excellent, but a lot of it is focused on the wrong audience or aligned with the wrong influencer. A successful partnership between a brand and a content creator can help in this situation.

In 2023, a lot of creators hope to develop and advance. This indicates that they are seeking brand partnerships (as opposed to just sponsorships) that are consistent with their content so that posts feel natural and businesses provide guidance and support, not just let them get on with it.

According to Deloitte research, for many creators, it’s not just about the money; other factors also matter.

~ A brand partnership that content creators are interested in: What brand partnerships appeal to content creators?
“To help them appear and cut through the noise, brands should turn more to influencers and user-generated content. Rather than from their own voice, Neal Schaffer advises people to listen to other people’s voices.

~ To provide value and not just sell, balance your content: According to the marketer’s ‘Content Effectiveness’ report from recent years, more than half of marketers cite a significant increase in the demand for content. However, having content that benefits prospects and customers is more important than simply having more of it.

“In my opinion, you need to develop your own voice and original content. More carefully chosen content can help you balance your content marketing budget than most people realize,” according to Stephen Walsh.

It demonstrates your worldliness and your awareness of current events by implying that “our ideas are the only ones” or “it always has to be something coming from us“. By showing buyers that you’re a part of a community and that it’s not always just about you, you, and you, Walsh says that you’re sending them a positive message.

4. The Importance of Automation Tools in Digital Marketing: Automation tools provide a way to scale up the automation of routine and repetitive tasks as businesses gather more data and need to complete more tasks to implement successful marketing campaigns.

A change to signal-based marketing: A mentality change from technical-based marketing to anticipation marketing will occur in 2023. Because of this, marketers will be able to predict what customers will want and then incorporate that information into automated processes.

With this new way of thinking, things will become more personalized as well as more efficient. The direction that Facebook and other social channels are moving in is consistent with this, and it also applies to platforms like Google Ads.

“In digital marketing, we have been gathering data and watching behaviours; right now, signals are what we’re looking for. Despite the fact that they may sound alike, they are slightly different”. According to Cathal Melinn, a PPC and eCommerce specialist, behaviours reflect interests whereas signals are instances where the audience is essentially telling you what they want.

~ Tools for automation are crucial: According to Gartner, organizations with IT teams that are aware of customer needs will outperform rival organizations’ customer experience metrics by 20% by 2024. This knowledge will rely on automation tools to streamline internal operations and improve customer experience. These include CRM marketing tools, social media marketing tools, advertising tools, lead management tools, and email marketing tools.

“The growing use of tools for automation and personalization at scale is (one trend for 2023). It is difficult to do that unless you comprehend the data you already have, put that data into a tool, and use that tool to automate your communications with customers” according to Ken Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Digital Marketing Institute, “the next best action” could be automated based on what customers have previously done and what they might do next.

~ GPT-4’s launch and Artificial Intelligence: Although you may not be familiar with GPT-4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4), it is a cutting-edge tool that can assist marketers in automating a variety of tasks. A deep learning model for text generation created by OpenAI was trained using online content. It is utilized for text agglomeration, machine translation, classification, code generation, and conversation AI, among other things.

It might create new opportunities for marketers, says Clark Boyd, a digital strategy consultant. “With the introduction of GPT-4, specific business applications will start to appear. Startups trying to develop, for instance, social media content generation tools are currently receiving a lot of funding. Therefore, if you just entered a little bit of information about your brand, these tools would generate 50 ideas for your content, and you could then simply drag and drop the ones that piqued your interest”.

5. The Next Big Digital Marketing Trend in 2023: Software called marketing technology, or Martech, is used to plan, carry out, oversee, and assess the effectiveness of campaigns, experiences, and content (both online and offline). It works well for streamlining customer journeys and putting omnichannel marketing campaigns into place.

~ Martech spending will continue to rise: U.S. martech spending. S. eMarketer predicts that the market will reach $20 billion for the first time in 2022, up 15% annually. This spending is a result of businesses investing in technology that will allow them to collect and store data, use that data to inform decisions, and put those decisions into action.

Interestingly, B2B companies account for more than 30% of that spend, and this share is anticipated to increase gradually over the following few years to $8.5 billion in 2024.

~ Spending on technology for B2B marketing: “The Martech industry is extremely challenging to stay current in. What we continue to observe is that we work with a platform, we learn something, we identify a gap, and then a new technology platform emerges a year or six months later that resolves the issue. It’s huge, we know that,” says Chris Coomer of Neil Patel Accel.

~ The focus of CRO won’t be experimentation anymore: Every business wants to increase its online conversion rates. This should result in increased traffic, sales, and revenue, right?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) has been the subject of extensive testing and experimentation among many marketers up to this point. Chris Coomer, however, thinks that this era of simply watching what happens is coming to an end because it’s no longer just about chasing the outcome.

“In my opinion, CRO has been seen in isolation. We use it to get from point A to point B. I believe that people are beginning to view things more holistically, and clients are becoming more knowledgeable about what they want to see”, he claims.

“The questions being asked are forcing us to migrate into that larger viewpoint. (As an agency), we’ll do something, and we’ll get a better conversion rate, but how does that impact the client’s bottom line? How does that impact user experience?”.

~ While Metaverse growth is Sluggish, Brands will still participate: In 2022, the metaverse made headlines, and it will do so again in the years to come. However, growth has lagged behind expectations due to declining profits and rising costs. Despite this, Alison Battisby predicts that in 2023, brands will begin to consider their strategy for this new era of immersive virtual communication.

One of the most obvious indicators (of a new era in social technology) is Meta’s dedication to the metaverse and the way they are making headway in creating these virtual worlds and existences. It will take time for people to adjust to this new offering and change their behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any interesting innovations in the market.

Nike recently announced that customers would be able to create their own sneakers, sell them, and wear them in the metaverse. According to Battisby, “I believe that many major brands will commit to the metaverse in the coming year. You can learn more by reading “What Digital Marketing Skills Do You Need for Web 3.0 and The Metaverse?”.

~ Wrap-up of 2023’s Marketing Trends: External circumstances mean that brands need to carefully consider their messaging to engage their audiences and align with creators and influencers who have the same values. 2023 is going to be an exciting and challenging year for marketers. These developments demonstrate how marketing is constantly evolving in terms of both technology and strategies. To see what we predicted for this year, visit our blog post titled “The Next Big Digital Marketing Trends in 2022”.

The trends that matter to you and those that you can use to your advantage in 2023 can be thought about now. Enjoy your planning!