Have you set your business goals for 2023 yet?
With the new year right around the corner, the best time to nail down digital marketing strategies and growth goals was, well, probably before the holidays. Luckily, the second best time is right here, right now, and understanding the marketing trends for 2023 is essential for your company.
Acclaimed pioneers of the marketing field, NP Digital, just released data from a worldwide survey of 8,000+ marketing professionals detailing the public’s response to emerging technology. From AI integrations to podcasting, the survey uncovers how top marketers are spending their budgets, what marketing trends are fading out, and what new tech will be taking center stage in 2023.
For digital marketing professionals, staying on the pulse of an industry that evolves at a breakneck pace is crucial to effective initiatives that boost revenue and grow brand awareness. Get ahead of the trends to start the new year with a bang and start building long-term content investments that are proven to scale your business.
2023 Marketing Trends: Key Takeaways
It should come as no surprise that content, as the king of modern digital marketing, will not be dethroned in the coming year. Content creation and authentic UGC campaigns have steadily grown in popularity, partially because trust is, in many ways, the new brand equity.
UGC: an acronym for user-generated content, UGC comes in many forms — reviews, testimonials, social posts — and is created by the fans, or users, of your brand.
68% of consumers say that it’s more important that they trust the brands they buy from now than it was in the past. Building relationships and expanding your organic reach through UGC and consistent content publishing will continue to be a core facet of modern marketing strategies in 2023.
Here’s where content spending is going up:
- A staggering 83% are increasing their content production budget.
- 68% are increasing their SEO budget.
- 56% are increasing their email marketing budget.
- Overall, more businesses are increasing their total marketing budget than decreasing.
Why are most companies increasing their SEO budgets? According to the respondents of NP Digital’s global survey, it’s because search engine optimization provides a higher return on investment than traditional ad spending.
So, with the rise of one marketing best practice, comes the fall of another. Here’s where digital marketing savants are investing less than before:
- Across the board, most marketers are decreasing spending on traditional ads.
- 42% are decreasing their influencer marketing budgets.
- 56% are decreasing their ad spend on Facebook.
- 57% are decreasing their ad spend on Instagram.
- 34% of companies are decreasing their ad spend on Twitter.
For the latter of the bunch, the wily behavior of the newly inducted CEO is spelling a nosedive for the once-prominent platform. The latest reports show that by 2024, 34 million users will have abandoned Twitter due to technical issues, increased hate speech, and distrust of Elon Musk.
Many are moving their budgets over to programmatic advertising and content, but not all. While the correlation might not be immediately direct, 84% of businesses are increasing their ad spend on TikTok, because even as social media platforms fluctuate and fall from grace, sharing content remains fundamental.
Content Creation: Why Invest More?
The essential marketing goals of most businesses, from start-up to Fortune 500, are typically: expand reach, increase brand awareness, improve ROI, and scale up revenue streams. At the center of these endeavors is content creation.
In eras past, content was almost exclusively copy and type. Now, the catch-all term encapsulates everything from SEO-optimized blog posts to informational videos, quizzes, ebooks, and more.
Prioritizing branded content puts businesses in a place to reach shoppers and supporters where they are — online, and on social media. By consistently communicating the story, values, and offerings of your brand through content hotshots like blogs and closed-captioned social videos, your business is established as an authority in the industry.
Beyond boosting credibility with regularly refreshed content for returning consumers, building engagement draws in new fans, beefs up website traffic, and benefits the long term growth of your company.
Terminated Trends: Digital Marketing Practices Going Out of Style
Why are traditional ads losing so much favor in the public eye? Millennial and Gen Z consumers have had their socialization processes saturated with constant ads, pushy sales tactics, and stale, scripted quips, a la “once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.”
Brands are instead working to weave more authenticity and personality in their communications. This preference for personable, organic marketing approaches is sending sales-forward, superficial advertising on a much-expected downward trend.
What might catch some by surprise is the decrease in influencer investment, especially since the trend was once heralded as the next generation of consumer marketing. While 17% of the marketers stated their influencer budgets will remain the same, the 42% that are decreasing cite a lack of positive ROI as their deciding factor.
The macro trend of influencing might be on its way out, but micro-influencing is just about to get its time in the spotlight. Lower overhead costs make working with micro and nano influencers more accessible, and recent data shows campaigns with smaller figureheads typically yield better engagement.
Social ad spending is seeing a decrease in general, due in part to the expertise needed to make effective, revenue-driving paid campaigns. Business owners lacking a marketing department or outsourced team have less bandwidth for A/B testing, market research, and keeping up with the latest platform and privacy updates. Rather than biting off a chunk of their marketing budget for short-term pushes that might not garner results, professionals are building up their online presence with UGC and content creation.
Working with an experienced, award-winning team of organic — and paid, if that’s still your jam — marketing professionals is key to taking advantage of 2023’s digital advertising trends and setting up the year to be your most profitable yet.
Ready to jump in? Chat with the Sinuate Media team, check out our recent work, or just keep learning with our near-endless scroll of top tier marketing advice.
