Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the pandemic has disrupted many lives, affecting vulnerable people in all classes. More than the effects on health, the situation also brought a lot of challenges to the business community. Supply chains were disrupted, companies closed down, and many other predicaments severely affected the global economy. Although most people see only the adverse effects of the pandemic, some also realize how much it accelerated the digitalization processes involving the economy, politics, and society. New business digital marketing trends and models were developed. Furthermore, modern technological applications were introduced.
Marketers are able to cope and find ways to engage consumers digitally. Many industries developed digital marketing campaigns using technological innovations that helped businesses rise again. With almost everyone recovering and making the competition challenging, keeping up with the changing digital marketing trends is crucial to woe the consumers.
In this post, we will cut through the clutter and see what trends are gaining traction in digital marketing this year.
What are Digital Marketing Trends
Digital marketing trends are the significant changes that influence the direction of the digital marketing landscape. They can be the progression of different marketing techniques and underlying technologies or consumer sentiments and preferences that impact the interaction between the audience and marketers.
It is essential to stay on top of the trends in marketing, especially if you are a budding business owner. It is how you can successfully design an effective strategy to reach your target audience. Digital trends also make you relevant and current, thereby helping you stay ahead of the competition. When you follow the trends and catch the consumers’ attention, you build credibility and add value to your brand.
Digital marketing trends also refer to the latest technologies used for marketing. These innovative approaches bring many benefits, such as faster and easier communication, more efficient manufacturing techniques, and effective stock management and ordering systems.
Through these modern marketing trends, you can efficiently reach your audience and have the ability to innovate your brand. It will improve the company and help you reach your business goals.
An Overview of Digital Marketing Trends in 2023
There are a lot of exciting developments in the digital marketing industry post-pandemic. The changes in consumer behavior opened up opportunities that marketers can’t simply ignore. The number of social media users, for example, has blown up to over 3.8 billion, escalating the rise of social commerce.
Even though it seems to change now and then, three trends never die down with digital marketing. The first is personalization. The audiences are hungry for connection with brands. Customers feel more attached to the brand if it takes a genuine interest in their preferences. One way to make them feel valued is by giving them a personalized experience. They engage more with relevant content because they can relate to it.
Another constant hit trend in digital marketing is prioritizing social media channels. Marketers design their content according to the platform that their customers frequent. It is highly effective since social media engagement is higher than any other marketing platform.
The use of highly visual content is the third digital marketing trend that flourishes with time. Users tend to engage more with images, videos, and infographics than plain text content. They are also particular about the quality of visuals. Professional-looking imagery gets favored more, and the audience is more likely to trust the brand.
While these three are somewhat a constant among digital marketing trends every year, it is also important to highlight other trends you must consider implementing for your marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Trends in 2023
A distinct advantage of following marketing trends is that it can let you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently. Unlike traditional media, it is now easier to keep track of digital campaigns to see if they are effective or not. This is an advantage because it does the job of choosing which marketing channel to use easier too.
Here are the top 10 digital trends that you should implement in your marketing strategy:
1. Short Videos
Because of staying indoors for so long, consumers are quickly bored with long ads. Short video marketing is a trend where advertisements fit into shorter time frames to ensure that customers do not feel forced to watch them.
It is an effective strategy since people can quickly lose interest within seconds of watching long-form videos. They are ideal for social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok, where users scroll quickly. It is more likely to catch attention, and the users watch from end to finish making retention rates higher.
Another advantage of short videos in digital marketing is that it makes the brand appear confident. Customers will see this stance if a brand can communicate its value in under a few seconds.
2. Artificial Intelligence
AI technologies have a significant impact on marketing. With AI, it is easier for marketers to collect and analyze data. You can even use it to collect additional observations of the economic trends or the customers. This will allow you to understand the audience better to improve the customer experience. With AI, you can personalize the customer journey with much precision. It will result in a more effective marketing strategy that will lead you straight to your goals.
More than the actual marketing process, AI technology is also helpful in enhancing the actual materials used for marketing. Content creation is easier with AI tools. Product image preparation, for example, is a breeze with AI-powered photo editing tools. You can also use AI algorithms to create dynamic and hyper-contextual content, like emails, based on the interactions made on the website. By recommending specific content to customers, the customer experience is more engaging and positive.
3. Conversational Marketing
Communication is a crucial factor in marketing. It is not enough to catch the attention of the audience. Consumers have all the time in the world to research products and alternatives. It would be best if you also convinced them to convert by striking up conversations. While conversational marketing is not a new concept, there are new methods that make it easier to do.
Social media and chatbots are growing, and they help businesses improve their interactions with customers. With social media, you can engage customers with thought-provoking content. Encourage discussions in the comments section, or you can create groups to have other users with the same interest interact with each other.
On the other hand, Chatbots ensure that customers have someone available to “talk to” whenever they have queries about your brand. This gives a fulfilling experience, but it will also make your brand reliable and trustworthy whenever customers get the information that they need from you.
4. Interactive Content
Text-based content is boring. Consumers look for dynamic and engaging content that they can immerse themselves in. Interactive content has been one of the growing trends in digital marketing ever since lockdowns downs began.
Some examples of interactive content polls, augmented reality ads, 360-degree VR videos, and embedded calculators. Users find it fun to try on clothes or make-up using a smartphone app. Virtual shopping is also more realistic with hyper-realistic store videos. What interactive content does is that it makes the customer journey fun and memorable experience. This will make them feel more connected to your brand, so it will be easier to convince them to patronize your products.
5. Omnichannel Marketing
With so many channels to market your brand, you must not limit yourself to using just one platform. Omnichannel marketing encourages marketers to take advantage of integrating a variety of media to interact with customers. The primary goal of this strategy is to provide a consistent brand experience no matter what channel the customer is using.
Because of the pandemic, it is challenging to use offline marketing, like physical stores, events, and call centers, for a seamless customer experience. This means that you have to think of ways to reach the audience across multiple touchpoints. You have to make your presence palpable on various platforms, such as social media, website, email, SMS, and app. Focus on providing informative content with lots of infographics and appealing design. Consumers like it when brands make an effort to improve content and make them entertaining.
6. 5G Technology
The fifth generation of mobile technology, or 5G, is a new era of digital communications. It also impacts the marketing industry since it can enhance the overall user experience accessing products and services.
With faster internet, a seamless branded experience is promised to the customers. You can include cutting-edge visuals and media in your content, and the audience will enjoy it. The buying patterns will also change since the improved, and secure connection encourages them to shop more.
7. Green Marketing
Otherwise known as eco-marketing, green marketing campaigns are a massive trend across many industries. The COVID-19 scare made everybody feel health conscious. It made people more aware of the environment that we live in.
Promoting environmentally safe products became appealing to consumers. They prefer to support eco-friendly businesses. Green marketing is also attractive to a younger market, which can be an advantage if that is your target audience. Note that this strategy can only be effective if you are fully committed. If you pretend, the customers can easily see through you, badly hurting your credibility.
There are many ways to develop sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices in your company. You can start by using renewable materials for your products. Use recyclable packaging or develop recyclable products to minimize waste. While these actions help the environment, it also makes you stay competitive.
8. Website Security
With digital banking on the rise, consumers consider website security a primary feature when shopping online. They will not do any transactions and even close your website instantly if they do not feel safe browsing through it. Aside from losing potential customers, a lower dwell time also decreases your Google ranking.
To avoid having problems regarding website security, you must consider putting up security measures to keep both your data and the customer safe. There are various ways to assure the customers about their safety, and the most basic is enabling the HTTPS protocol, which will display a green padlock icon before the URL.
9. Mobile Commerce
We are now in a mobile-centric world where devices play a huge role in the activities of daily living. Aside from having the ability to control almost everything (home security, appliances, vehicles, etc.), mobile phones also have a monumental effect on the purchasing cycle of consumers. The convenience of shopping is why many people shop online using their smartphones. You have to consider strategies that would enhance the mobile shopping experience if you want to take advantage of the mobile commerce wave.
To do this, remember that shops with online payment options are better than those with none. Offer mobile payments for a seamless checking-out process. It is also encouraged to design mobile-responsive websites because customers are more likely to use their phones to browse shopping portals.
10. Inclusivity and Diversity
Pre-pandemic, inclusivity and diversity are discussed primarily in the HR industry. Today, marketers see the big picture and recognize the need to elevate diversity and promote inclusivity in promoting brands. In the US, for example, 120 million out of a 332-million population say that they are not portrayed in advertisements. With this in mind, you need to avoid having unconscious biases. Showing more diversity in your content is a strategy that will make consumers trust your brand.
It is crucial that companies are aware of how their messages, images, voices, and values can be misinterpreted by specific demographics and lose potential customers. To make your marketing more inclusive, you have to analyze the tone of voice that you use in your content. Pay attention to the language you use and ensure that the words or phrases are neutral and not offensive to any group. You can also check whether your content reflects society and if it promotes diverse voices.
You can strengthen your connections by removing biases while fostering a positive social change culture.
Digital Marketing Trends You Should Avoid
You are already aware of what trends to follow, but it is also important to note what you must not do.
1. Do Not Be a Salesperson
Consumers are done with businesses that are pushy and sound generic. Instead, be a marketer who understands what customers need and inform them of their choices. The empathic approach will make them consider your brand.
2. Don’t be Apathetic
You do not want to sound offensive or pushy, but it does not mean that you have to be silent. A brand needs to interact with the audience no matter how turbulent the times are. Address their concerns and be transparent with your communications. This will make them see your efforts of connecting with the audience and develop a positive impression of the brand.
3. Don’t Try to Sound Cool
No matter how tempted you are to jump into the trends, it is not enough reason to stray away from your brand personality. Use a communication style that resonates with you. You spent a lot of time and effort developing a distinct brand, so you should do your best to protect it by staying true to your tune and not thriving on a fleeting personality produced by trends.
4. Do Not Stray From Your Calendar
It can be fun to react to a moment and create a flurry of content according to it. While this can help make you relevant to the times, it can cause irrelevance to your content. Stick to your content calendar and highlight the moments you consider unique to your brand. This way, you can ensure having cohesive content that will make your branding solid.
5. Don’t Meme Everything!
Memes are great for creating light content. However, overdoing will only make you look annoying to the audience. Analyze your brand and focus on developing informative and entertaining content.
Key Points
Digitalization made the world increasingly connected. This paved the way for the shift to highly integrated marketing strategies. The digital marketing trends in 2023 generally focus on enhancing the end-user experience. It is excellent that marketing tools are more innovative these days. Business owners can customize solutions to address the different needs of the digital market.
It is undeniable that the top digital marketing trends in 2023 are all about the general response of the consumers to the changes brought about by the pandemic. They want a genuine human connection, so they lean towards brands that make an effort to engage with their audiences.
Authenticity is a must, so brands must provide facts using infographics and other informative visuals. The preference for bright colors and exciting designs shows how consumers are looking out for interesting products after being locked down for months.
Instead of getting stressed out by the rapid trend shift, you can focus your strategies on using statistical techniques and best practices in digital marketing. At the end of the day, being alert to the latest digital marketing trends and being guided with analytics and data-driven social insights are what will boost your marketing strategy.
Short Bio:
Short Bio:Jenn Pereira is a Content Strategist at Kittl.com, a design platform that offers tools such as logo creator, AI image generator, and t-shirt maker to help users create designs tailored to their needs. She has extensive experience in understanding user experience and creating customized content strategies that meet users’ requirements and expectations.
Leave a Reply