2023 Marketing Trends to Boost Business Success
With a new year comes new opportunities for your business to grow, acquire customers and increase brand awareness with marketing trends! Before you dive into the marketing world, it’s best to have a strategy or your brand will get lost. With today’s political, social and economic climate—you’ll need to be flexible and learn how to pivot. As the world around us changes, so do buying habits, interests and conversations. While you should stay consistent with your identity, how you communicate your brand may change.
In addition to that, now is a good time to evaluate your success from last year to decide what worked and what didn’t. Determine which efforts aren’t producing results, and replace them with new strategies. So, what are the predicted changes we’ll see this new year? We can’t tell you the future, but here’s what the forecast looks like for marketing trends.
Social Media Dominates
Studies show that over 42% of marketers are using social media, making it the #1 channel for advertising. Social media is giving companies the highest return on investment, even higher than results coming from their actual website. Social media is comprised of several platforms, but these are the top ranking for advertising:
- YouTube
- TikTok
Facebook is at the top of the food chain as the most used social media platform for marketing, and right behind that is Instagram and YouTube. For the new year, we will most likely see a steady growth on Facebook and Instagram, while YouTube and TikTok are predicted to explode with rapid growth. LinkedIn has been a helpful marketing tool for B2B companies, and predictions tell us that we’ll see a continued growth in marketing on this platform as well.
As these platforms become more popular and overall user traffic increases, people are moving more toward social media shopping. With the power of influencer marketing, targeted ads, and product recommendations, people are buying products on social media platforms rather than going to websites. Instagram is leading the charge in this arena, with shopping features that encourage users to shop through the app. With every post, companies on Instagram can tag products in a photo, where users can tap and instantly purchase the products shown. This “checkout on Instagram” feature is beneficial for retail companies and is worth the new year investment.
Video Content is King
You’ve heard the phrase “content is king,” but the latest form of content that people are paying attention to is video. Your audience is overwhelmed by so much content, they tune out noise. They’re looking for entertainment, and real life stories. While most companies see video as a fun option, it is now a necessity for online marketing.
Video content is scalable. You can do anything from hiring a professional and making a branded commercial or using your phone to go “live” and talk about your products. While professional grade commercials are good for a website and landing pages, social media is a more casual platform. People are looking for real life, behind the scenes scenarios—making it easier for you!
Take advantage of Instagram Reels and TikTok. Start with videos that capture your brand, and then let things evolve from there. You can make content out of anything! Capture the behind the scenes in your office, how things are made—anything that tells a story.
TikTok has evolved from a social platform to a centralized place for learning skills and a hot spot for influencers to talk about products. The platform adds more features as they continue to grow, and users can actually find videos by typing keywords into a search bar, similar to Google Search. When you put searchable keywords in your captions, your videos will be spotted more often. The app is also using location services to populate videos based off of the user’s location. The most popular way to get noticed on TikTok is by creating a video using trending songs or audios.
Influencer Marketing Rises
As your audiences are inundated with commercials and ads, they’ve learned to tune things out. If you want to make an impression, you’ll need real people talking about your product or service, not a paid actor or fake scenario. Word of mouth is the new billboard—and if you can get your customers talking about your products as well as influencers—your brand can grow overnight.
So you need an influencer. But before you call Justin Beiber, think small, think micro influencer. People know that big influencers get paid big bucks to talk positively about brands. So the game is changing just slightly, and small scale influencers are rising in their communities. People are more likely to trust them, especially if they are local. TikTok and other platforms make it easier for micro influencers to be seen, and this will continue to improve throughout the new year.
Influencers are ideal because they influence larger groups of people. However, another slow but steady way to grow your brand online is user generated content. That means inspiring your existing customers to talk about your products in the same way an influencer would. There are many creative ways to inspire this kind of content, from contests to prizes and giveaways.
Learn, adapt, grow!
Prepare for the new year and think about implementing these trends into your everyday marketing rather than having them as an afterthought. As culture changes, so does communication and the way people receive and respond to messages. Continue to adapt your strategy and you’ll be able to target your audience more effectively.
If you need assistance with growing your Social Media presence, The Dock Line’s professional Social Media Managers can help!
Visit www.thedockline.com or email us at [email protected]
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