Top Marketing Trend Predictions for 2023

“The only constant is change” might be a little trite, but like it or not, it’s all too applicable to the marketing world. Businesses and their marketing teams have to make it a practice to be agile and be able to pivot to new techniques and tricks to catch customers’ eyes and earn their way to the pinnacle of search engine results pages. 

While there is always a new tactic to getting conversions at every point of the customer journey, some trends will pick up speed in 2023, showing they have staying power. 

Here are our predictions for the top marketing trends of 2023. 

As time goes on, influencer marketing will become standard practice.

Influencer marketing took off in 2022 and will continue in 2023. Why? 89% of influencer marketers will spend more next year. Additionally, 17% of marketers will invest in it for the first time next year.

Marketers may increase brand recognition and earn followers from influencers and industry thought leaders by collaborating with them.

Need a million-follower celebrity influencer? Actually, smaller influencers can have more impact. Over 56% of influencer marketers use micro-influencers. Micro-influencers have lesser social media followings (typically, thousands to tens of thousands of followers). Due to more interaction, their postings frequently carry more impact despite fewer followers.

These influencers have discovered a niche in their sector, helping convert leads, engage with audiences, and raise brand recognition. Micro-influencers are more trusted than superstars since they are still “ordinary” people.

These influencers will likely spend their time on TikTok, a short-form video app that is increasing in popularity and influence. It’s no secret that TikTok has exploded in popularity, making it a formidable tool for promoting products and services on social media. And in 2023, we should expect that to stay the same. The Business of Apps estimates that TikTok will have 1.8 billion monthly active users by the end of 2022, up from 1.1 billion in 2021.

TikTok is expanding its reach beyond its core user base and the creative community. By 2023, the platform plans to have developed into a more generous space for brands by making it easier for companies and providing more precise targeting choices for advertisements.

Video marketing will stick to shorter videos.

Short-form videos will dominate marketing in 2023. 90% of marketers utilizing short-form video will raise or maintain their spending next year, while 20% will use it for the first time in 2023.

B2C and B2B marketers have found that short-form videos are more successful than long-form ones in conveying information about a product, brand, or service.

Short-form videos fit the fast-paced attention spans of internet consumers across demographics and need less bandwidth. TikTok, Reels, and Snapchat have snowballed and attracted marketing attention because of this.

Social media will evolve into a channel for customer support.

Social networking as a customer service tool is new but growing. Thus, 25% of marketers utilize direct messages (DMs) for customer assistance, and 15% expect to start in 2023.

This development coincides with Instagram and Facebook’s e-commerce expansion. This fact makes customer service on these platforms even more critical.

Millennials and Gen Z prefer DMs to talk to brands. According to HubSpot’s 2022 Consumer Trends Survey, 20% of Gen Z-ers and 25% of Millennials have used social media for customer service in the previous three months.

The use of search engine optimization (SEO) to compete for clicks will increase.

There are long-term and short-term traffic benefits to improving your website and content to please the search engines; thus, it is in your best interest as a marketer to do so. While search engine optimization is not a new concept, its principles are increasingly being incorporated into contemporary approaches to advertising.

Search engine optimization (SEO) comes in third place for 2023 marketing spending, behind short-form video and influencer marketing. In addition, the percentage of marketers with an SEO strategy that wants to grow or keep the same level of spending in 2023 is 88%, up from 84% in 2022.

All search optimization possibilities are expanding as the need for SEO methods increases. Because of Google’s changing algorithms, SEO is no longer only about pumping out content that answers common questions. Now more than ever, businesses are allocating funds to hire SEO specialists that can assist them with anything from creating search insights reports to optimizing their multimedia content.

The significance of optimizing for mobile devices will rise.

Increasingly, customers are relying on their mobile devices. In fact, smartphone and tablet devices now account for more than half of all yearly internet traffic.

If you’re a company owner trying to reach the always-on, always-connected millennial and Gen Z consumer demographics, mobile optimization of your digital offerings is becoming more important.

The aforementioned are just few of the reasons why:

64% of SEO marketers say mobile optimization is worthwhile, while 33% of all marketers worldwide invest in mobile site design.

In addition to the brand websites, mobile-friendly experiences are crucial for other essential marketing tactics. Consider that 56 percent of email marketers are concentrating on improving the mobile email experience for their users.

It is expected that more businesses will make social responsibility a top priority.

Nearly twice the number from the previous year, 89% of marketers that make social responsibility content want to boost their spending in 2023.

The contemporary consumer clearly values social responsibility, ethics, and openness.

Generation Z members (50%) and Millennials (40%) are more likely to support brands that advocate for social causes, including racial and LGBTQ+ equality, gender parity, and environmental protection. Customers’ spending habits are profoundly affected by the advocacy efforts of businesses.

Given this context, businesses are shifting their social media strategy to emphasize inclusive activities, promotions, products, and the causes or missions they are working to advance. Displaying concern for the greater good is considerate and productive, even if it doesn’t boost product sales immediately.

A company’s success is tied to how well its marketing and sales departments work together.

Collaboration between sales and marketing departments is essential. When these groups work together, businesses get a more nuanced understanding of their clientele, hobbies, and demographics.

Problems arise quickly for everyone when this doesn’t occur. Specifically, it is more difficult to exchange and access data across teams, an issue that presently affects one-fifth of marketers.

Even though a strong relationship between sales and marketing is essential to business success, just 31% of marketers feel their teams are fully aligned. Almost half of all marketers plan to adjust their focus in 2023 to align sales and marketing better.

With more in-person events planned, there is hope that experiential marketing will gain popularity again.

Now that the epidemic is over, companies will once again hold in-person events to foster relationships with consumers and raise brand recognition. There are various novel methods to use this time-tested marketing tactic, such as setting up a pop-up store in your neighborhood, sponsoring a big trade show, or attending an industry conference.

In 2017, 50% of businesses said they planned to increase their attendance at live events in 2022 compared to the previous year. This pattern of online marketing is likely to persist until 2023, as companies increasingly prioritize in-person contact to convert leads and create trusting, long-term relationships with customers.

Using event intelligence, you can learn about the attendees, the topics being discussed, and the level of influence each individual in the room has before the event begins. If you work ahead of time, you’ll be able to network with other participants and make more meaningful connections with potential industry leaders.

In order to engage consumers, experiential marketing often takes place in a real-world setting or uses augmented reality or virtual reality technology to transport them there.

This immersive experience was popular in the years leading up to the worldwide pandemic of 2020 and 2021 because it was entertaining, informative, and easily shared online.

In addition, fewer smaller firms have engaged in digital, experiential marketing since creating a branded AR/VR experience is a high-risk investment that may also depend on audiences having tools like AR/VR headsets or the newest smartphone technology to access the content.

However, with the continued expansion of digitally immersive platforms to wider audiences, 2023 again holds the promise of experiential marketing.

Inbound marketing will continue to be the most effective strategy to expand a business’s brand.

With the world rapidly undergoing a digital change, inbound marketing is a brilliant strategy.

Outbound marketing strategies have grown even less successful in the previous two years as the globe has coped with extraordinary upheaval and moved farther away from traditional marketing channels.

Inbound marketing has emerged as one of the most successful strategies thanks to the transition from traditional office settings to flexible work arrangements that allow employees to do some or all of their job from home. Because of COVID-19, for instance, marketers have had to grow more innovative to grab consumers’ attention, leading to a surge in virtual events.

By shifting your marketing’s emphasis to encourage consumers to actively seek out your material rather than passively stumbling across it, inbound marketing may be a powerful tool for digitally spreading your brand’s name and gaining their trust.

For inbound marketing to be successful, you need to create high-value content that speaks directly to your ideal customers.

The marketing industry will be hesitant to embrace virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR).

Marketing experts had great expectations for virtual and augmented reality at first. In 2021, augmented and virtual reality were being used by 35% of marketers, with over half of those using them planning to raise their spending in the following year.

However, in 2023, it may slide farther down the rankings as fewer marketers commit resources to it. Almost a third of the marketing industry is considering abandoning virtual and augmented reality in favor of more traditional methods in the next year.

Although this is a growing trend, marketers have been sluggish to embrace it because of the high cost of the necessary hardware and the inconvenience of wearing the associated headsets. While this may change as virtual reality glasses and augmented reality applications become more widely available.

Form-building and other zero-third-party data collection methods will increase

The value of big data to modern enterprises has skyrocketed. The global implementation of privacy rules has, however, necessitated a shift in how we collect data. One of the most talked-about developments in digital advertising in 2023 will likely feature companies taking more preventative measures to acquire information. Form creation may be used to collect client feedback that might guide future product or service offerings.

What do you think about our predictions? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below.