Digital marketing is always evolving due to the ever-increasing population of netizens and as demand for technology rises. With more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, social media is a platform that needs to be taken advantage of by businesses. Customers expect a lot from a product or service, and their decision to purchase is highly influenced by the user experience. In the next 12 months of 2023, customer experience, content visualisation, voice search, online reviews, and social commerce will be the key focus of marketing themes for all types of businesses. Branding and advertising are not enough marketing anymore; marketers now must collaborate with other departments to focus on building long-term relationships with customers and creating unparalleled customer experience. Digital marketing is changing day-by-day, and adapting to change is key. As we are moving towards another new year, here are some digital marketing trends that are most likely to crop up in 2023 and how they could influence your marketing campaigns.
- Excellent Customer Experience - Convincing people to purchase your product or service is no longer the priority; instead, the emphasis is on providing a great customer experience that will attract them to return for more. In a customer’s buying decision, their previous experience is the most important factor. Personalized marketing helps them solve their problems. Personalized marketing is the way to listen and respond to their questions. Coordinative work with sales, the customer service team, and the digital marketing team provides quality across the customer journey. Modern marketing platforms, personalization, a simple mobile experience, brand design, and image all contribute a lot to a great customer experience. People value most the easy payment options, courteous service, and convenience of buying.
- Content Visualization - The growth of image-focused platforms like Pinterest and Instagram has shown that people consume story-driven, visual content. The fact behind that is our brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text. Some surveys suggests that 85% of people are more likely to buy your product after watching a video and reading content about it. Visual learning attracts customers' attention and hence produces more engagement. You can make your information more interesting and appealing by using data visualization, infographics, images, and video; these visuals are also easier for customers to relate.
- Voice Search - According to research by PwC, 61% of users intend to use voice search more in the future. For 2023, it is important that content be voice search optimized. Slanting your content to serve these queries and immediately responding to questions can help increase the visibility of your content in voice searches. One of the smart speaker advertising potentials that emerged in 2021 is "Branded Skills." Tequila brand Parton is an example of a business that has had great success using branded skills. Voice searches enable users to buy the product and help increase brand awareness and visibility.
- Video Marketing - According to Cisco research, 82% of online traffic is accounted for by videos. 84% of consumers in today’s market have been convinced to purchase a product after watching a video. Videos have a 53X higher chance of ranking on the first page of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). 93% of digital marketers say that video is a key component of their content strategy currently. To keep their content fresh and aligned with what consumers want, brands must integrate video content such as product demonstrations, webinars, and live video events.
- Online Reviews - Online reviews increase your brand's ability to attract new customers or clients. Having many reviews from verified sources can set your business apart from the competition and establish confidence before customers visit your website. Google Business offers the most useful reviews for businesses. Facebook is another great source for online reviews. You can provide a direct link to your Google Business Listening customers to leave a review thereby increasing the number of reviews.
- Automated Bidding in Google Ads - Every piece of data is examined, and specialists continuously tweak and adjust keywords, bids, and ad phrasing to achieve the best results from a Google Ad campaign. Automated bidding tactics allow Google to examine user data to adjust your bids in real-time using machine learning.
- Search Featured Snippets in Google - SEO is the most important aspect of digital marketing and is currently undergoing one of the biggest changes in the last decade. People are changing the way they use search engines like Google with the growth of mobile and voice search. As a result, over the coming year, expect to see an increase in the number of SEO companies offering this service, and be sure to use the most recent best practises when optimising your content.
- Social Commerce - Social commerce is now the most popular method of shopping. Influencer marketing, making advertising fit naturally into social media feeds, and connecting ecommerce systems with social media channels are all strategies that brands are using more adaptively. Instagram and Tik Tok are advancing social commerce trends. Thanks to Instagram Checkout, brands can now advertise and sell their items straight on Instagram. Tik Tok Shopping enables brands to more meaningfully engage with customers right through the app. According to research by Statista, social commerce is on the rise for 2023.
- Google Analytics 4 - The beloved Universal Analytics (UA) has been updated and improved with Google Analytics 4, or GA4, which provides the free and native option to link to Google Merchant Centre, Google Optimize, and BigQuery. You have access to deeper attribution models, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics. The well-known Universal Analytics platform will be deemed a legacy tool in 2023, according to Google.
CONCLUSION : Digital marketing trends come and go, but the basics of success remain the same: understanding your audience's needs and communicating with them in a clear and consistent manner. Digital marketing helps your brand stay in the public eye and encourages people to return time and time again. As we are moving towards a new year, now is the time to start planning your 2023 marketing strategy. Make sure you have a plan for goals and how you're going to achieve them before the new year begins.
