Is your digital marketing strategy ready for the fast-approaching 2023? What digital marketing trends will be important next year? Just like we did last year, we want to show you some of the most important marketing trends in 2023. Let's get right to it!

The year 2023 will be specific when it comes to marketing campaigns. For starters, customers have to deal with high costs of living and worldwide inflation. This affects their shopping habits and behaviors. Take a look at this chart showing traffic in the biggest e-commerce and DTC websites:

Source: https://influencermarketinghub.com/state-of-ecommerce-pandemic/

The year-on-year growth in web traffic has become negative during the second half of 2021, but the downward trend started to be noticeable back in April 2021. Today, in December 2022, the situation is not much better - Salesforce Shopping Index data shows a 2% decline in digital commerce growth in Q3 2022:

It doesn't mean, though, that you can't do anything about the current situation. On the contrary, you should focus on adopting the most effective techniques that will help your business survive this difficult time. And that's what we want to talk about today. We're not going to show you fancy trends that are difficult to justify from the business point of view. All the trends listed in this article will help you make more money or at least increase UX in your online store.

The marketing strategy for difficult times - focus on the current target market

When the situation in the market is far from perfect, most marketers concentrate on communication with their current target audiences, meaning mostly loyal and existing customers. It's a common marketing tactic, and this approach is fully reasonable; after all, customer retention is extremely important to your business's stability and growth, and since your target audience already knows your company, in easier to encourage current customers and users to buy more products. What can you do to make the most of your current customers, drive consumer engagement, and stay ahead of your competitors? You should concentrate on two main points.

USE PERSONALIZED MESSAGES

This strategy is almost always effective. With personalized messages, you can encourage people to buy more products because they see offers they are truly interested in. You can use push notifications and email marketing to distribute personalized product recommendations, but they should also be visible on your website, in every product tab, and in the cart.

IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE

Marketing is not only about traditional advertising but also about building long-term relationships with your customers. And that's when customer experience can make all the difference in the world. If you improve your customer service and your customers are satisfied with your company, they will be more eager to stay with your company.

How can you do that? For starters, take a look at your purchasing process. Companies lose tens of thousands of dollars because of poor customer experience, including technical difficulties with the website, long and overcomplicated purchasing process, and lack of desired features (e.g., concerning payments). Go through the purchasing process from the perspective of your customer and see if everything works as it should. Try different options on your website, reach out to your customer service, and see what your potential customers have to deal with before they can place an order.

So far, we've mentioned things that are a basis for the future development of your business, especially in online shopping but not only. Now, let's take a look at essential marketing efforts you should concentrate on in 2023 and beyond.

Marketing trends 2023

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

This point is almost always crucial to your business. Banner ads and other standard marketing tactics are no longer so effective. If you want to succeed, you have to be exactly where people are looking for your products and services - in Google search results! Optimizing your website, as well as your content marketing to search engines, will help you achieve better exposure to a wider audience.

According to a study conducted by Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers confirm organic search is the digital marketing channel that brings in the highest ROI.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING

These two technologies have a lot in common. In fact, machine learning is an AI-related technology based on the ability of machines and algorithms to improve themselves as they gain experience. Even in 2022, AI was a significant marketing trend, and we can expect it will remain this way in the near future.

Artificial intelligence powers more and more marketing tools and campaigns. In fact, some form of AI is present almost everywhere, from pricing automation tools through email marketing platforms up to content marketing solutions. And then there is, of course, conversational marketing, which also uses AI, mostly in the form of chatbots and voicebots.

Most brands use AI to gain a competitive edge by:

• Improving customer service

• Benefiting from advanced analytics

• Automating mundane, repetitive tasks (e.g., sending emails)

• Offering advanced solutions such as augmented reality and virtual reality

Thankfully, today, you don't have to create such a tool from scratch. Many SaaS platforms and tools use AI-powered features, so you can boost your marketing strategy without the need to invest a lot of money.

Chatbots are getting more and more advanced, too. We are currently on the verge of GPT-4, the most advanced language model for intelligent assistants so far. Predictions are, with GPT-4, chatbots will be able to communicate in a way that's almost indistinguishable from humans. With this human-like UX, users will be even more eager to talk to them, and they will be able to deal with more customer queries (right now, chatbots can handle up to 70% of customer queries).

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

In their report entitled "Welcome to Generation Z", Deloitte states:

"Gen Z no longer forms opinions of a company solely based on the quality of their products/services but now on their ethics, practices and social impact."

Other sources show the same approach - your company has to be sustainable and ethical in its business practices: 85% of people indicate that they have shifted their purchase behavior towards being more sustainable in the past five years.

These numbers leave no doubt - consumer behavior is changing towards eco-friendliness, and your overall marketing strategy should take this fact into consideration. Even if you run a small business, you can show that you care for the planet. Sometimes, even seemingly small efforts matter!

INFLUENCER MARKETING

Some people were predicting the end of influencers and their role as brand ambassadors, but according to the latest study, influencer marketing is still on the rise. Influencer Marketing Hub, in The State of Influencer Marketing 2022: Benchmark Report, shows that the global market size is close to $17b:

Source: https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/

As another source reports, on average, slightly over 22% of internet users follow at least one influencer, which is not a bad result at all! Countries with above-average results are, i.a., the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, India, Spain, Sweden, and New Zealand:

Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-global-overview-report

The whole idea of working with influencers and micro-influencers is based on one premise - they have developed communities highly interested in what they post online. When they recommend a product or a service, you can be sure many people will follow; of course, provided it's related to their interests and the profile of a given community.

Perhaps working with influencers should be one of your marketing goals for the coming year?

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Undoubtedly, in 2023 you should concentrate your marketing efforts on social media platforms. That's because of two reasons:

• Social media marketing gives you access to a broad target audience in its natural environment. According to the Digital 2022 report, globally, people spend around 2.5 hours on social media every day, so reaching them there can be very effective. Concentrate especially on three of the most popular social media platforms:

• Social commerce is rising dynamically - people are more and more eager to buy products via social media platforms, and you, as an online seller, should give them this opportunity, especially given the predictions are more than positive:

Source: https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/

Social media is also a natural place for video content. Just think about YouTube and TikTok. Both these platforms have hundreds of millions of active users, and more and more social platforms introduce short-form videos to their offers. It all started with YouTube, but now, you can watch and publish them on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and even LinkedIn.

We live in times of visual content, and your content strategy should take this fact into account.

CONCENTRATE ON MOBILE DEVICES

In 2023, no one should need to be conceived about the role mobile devices play. Undoubtedly smartphones constitute one of the major trends not just in marketing but the whole world. Today, smartphones are true entertainment and business centers, they help us communicate with others, buy products and services (m-commerce), and do our jobs.

According to the report mentioned above, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are three of the most downloaded mobile apps, which perfectly shows how social media marketing and mobile marketing go together.

The mobile traffic surpassed the desktop one for the first time in Q3 2019. Today, almost 60% of all the traffic online comes from mobile devices:

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices

Perhaps it's a good idea to create a mobile application for your business, especially if you work in the e-commerce sector. Such apps are increasingly popular, and all the major online stores already offer them (according to AppAnnie, 2 million apps were launched in 2021 alone!).

In 2023, everything you do has to be concentrated on mobile devices or at least be fully mobile-friendly, as the percentage of mobile traffic will only go up.

ENGAGE USERS WITH INTERACTIVE CONTENT

Today, companies are constantly looking for more options to engage users in communication. With social media and the Internet in general, communication has become two-way. Companies and brands cannot just talk; they need to listen to their target audiences. With interactive content, that's much easier. Brands can create virtual events, conduct customer surveys, polls, and quizzes, and simply ask their followers about their opinions about different things.

Live shopping

Another interesting form of interactive content is live shopping. If you work in the e-commerce sector, you should definitely think about it! In mid-2022, Shopify and YouTube launched YouTube Shopping, an interactive live-streaming platform that will enable customers to purchase products directly on YouTube’s website. Live shopping is already huge in Asia, and we can predict it will soon become a major trend in Europe and America. Take a look at this video about live shopping in China:

Live shopping combines several trends in one. It's the perfect combination of video content, interactive content, and content marketing. And the good thing is even small business owners can benefit from this technique - all you need is a smartphone and good lighting.

Summary: Digital marketing strategy for 2023

Many marketers have already started working on their 2023 strategies. Have you started working on yours as well? Take one more look at the trends we listed in this article, and see which of them will work best with your company. Hopefully, this will help you reach current and potential customers more effectively and grow your business in 2023, even though it will take a lot of work due to the worldwide situation.

Additionally, it is always a good idea to introduce new forms of communication with your customers. We encourage you to give push notifications a try! Take a look at our use cases and visit our blog to see how and why you should use the web and mobile push to stay in touch with your customers/users.