As we have reached almost half of 2023, we have seen quite a few changes in the digital marketing industry due to which marketers have altered their practices to achieve overall success. However, staying informed about all of the major changes in the marketing field and then inculcating them into your strategy is next to impossible, and that’s why we have come here to guide you on the biggest trends of 2023 and how they can be beneficial for improving your marketing campaigns. So let’s stop wasting any time and move forward with the below-mentioned trends.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) helps in creating intelligent machines that have the capability to simulate human thinking whereas Machine Learning (ML) is a subpart of AI that lets machines gain insights from the data available.
These two are the most significant introductions in the IT field, which have completely obliterated the way brands used to perform marketing. With the help of AI and ML businesses can automate their work, personalise content and save a lot of time for themselves to focus on important aspects of the business. It is expected that the AI field will hit $190 billion by the end of 2025 and this is why many major corporations, including Alibaba, Nike and BMW, have already started involving AI in their operations.
Voice Search Optimisation
Voice search optimisation is the process of making your content suitable enough to be present in voice search queries. Due to the emergence of voice assistants like Google Assistant and Siri, voice search is getting popular among young users. This, in turn, has led to brands optimising their content according to voice searches as well so that their services come out on top of SERPs even if voice search is utilised. Various studies have also been conducted in such contexts depicting that almost 33% of individuals living in the US prefer voice search over typing on search engines. Depicting that in the current scenario, brands should surely optimise their content for voice search, if they don’t want to lose customers.
Personalisation and Customisation
With so many changes in the marketing field, brands can now use multiple marketing tools to gain valuable information related to customers, which in turn helps in tailoring and customising their strategies more effectively. This process of personalising and customising content as per the gathered information helps improve customer experience and reduce bounce rates. Some of the brands that have mastery in personalisation are given below:
- Shutterfly
- Snapchat’s Bitmoji
- Target
- Vidyard
- Coca Cola
- Amazon
Video Marketing
Videos have become the best content forms for engaging customers recently. Businesses are publishing videos on different channels such as social media, advertisements and demos to make contact with customers in any way possible. This can be validated by the fact that as per Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, within a year, youtube shorts have moved up from 30 billion views a day to 50 million views a day, depicting how much scope is available for marketers to incorporate videos in their content. Some prominent brands that have already incorporated video marketing in their marketing strategies include Slack, Grammarly, Evian and Bulb.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is the process of brands collaborating with famous celebrities or influencers to promote their products and services. This has completely changed how advertising used to be done a few years back, as there are multiple benefits, such as easily reaching out to a huge potential audience and spreading awareness about the brand. Various major corporations like Adidas, Bonobos and Audible are already doing it, so to stay ahead of the curve, enrol for the top digital marketing institute near you and start influencing.
The Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report depicted that the influencer marketing domain is going to hit a hike of at least 29% this year, which accounts for approximately $21.1 billion. Seeing this number, you can understand how important it has become for brands to use influencers in 2023.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
AR and VR are revolutionary technologies that have the power to transform the way we perceive and interact with the world around us. Virtual and augmented reality have been on the rise recently as these experiences generated through technology help brands create amazing user experiences, promote sales in unique ways and increase the value of the brand in the eyes of customers. These are used in various ways, such as providing product demos online or shopping through augmented reality, offering customers new ways of checking out the products. Some of the common examples of VR and AR utilisation include Adidas Terrex’s Delicatessen, Volvo’s Virtual Reality Test Drive, Ikea’s Ikea Place and New York Times’ Using VR Tech for Storytelling.
Social Media Advertising
There exists another aspect of utilising social media instead of just posting content or acquiring data which is running advertisements on these platforms to enhance reach. Nowadays, businesses have started to use channels like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to run advertisements as these platforms offer enormous reach to marketers. The best part is that you can run any sort of ad be it sponsored, video ad or just your regular influencers promoting the brand. This has led marketers to switch from running display ads on AdWords and moving to social video ads that offer a higher rate of conversions as the whole world is addicted to these platforms. Even now, some brands including Airbnb, GoPro and Wendy’s have totally directed their marketing campaigns towards such efforts.
Chatbots
Chatbots are software that acts as conversation agents with the help of natural language processing. Recently the introduction of a chatbot called ChatGPT turned the world upside down with its magnificent capabilities and has raised the bar for currently present or upcoming chatbots like BARD and Meena from Google. Such chatbots are used to enhance productivity by reducing the wastage of time on small tasks that the AI can do, showing how much these chatbots, which are not even full-developed yet, are changing the world. Even the New York Times published an article on ChatGPT, calling it one of the seven surprises of 2023. These chatbots can also be used in performing digital marketing tasks such as meta and content creation as some of the top Brands like Spotify, Lyft, Starbucks and Fandango have already started using such chatbots to improve their digital marketing campaigns.
Interactive Content
Interactive content is content that promotes communication with the individuals reading it. Creating interactive or engaging content, such as surveys, games and quizzes, is becoming highly significant in today’s time, as it helps in gaining valuable insights. By promoting interaction through content, brands can form better relationships with their customers, which leads to forming brand loyalty. Be it, Disney, with its My Disney Experience, BBC with its WIll a robot take your job, CNN with its Marvel cinematic universe timeline or Nove Bike with its Aero X, all use interactive content to please their customers.
Customer Experience
Customer experience has become a major aspect in both brand’s digital marketing strategy and Google algorithm updates, as no marketing strategy can produce results without improving the experience of the customers. All the major Google updates this year have been focused on providing relevant and useful content to the users, which has opened a path for you to improve the overall branding of your company and follow the Google algorithms at the same time. This is because, in this digital age, customer experience has become a massive part of business strategies, for which the two best digital marketing practices include optimising for decreased site load time and providing a clear structure of the website. There are various brands that majorly focus on improving customer experiences, such as Columbia Road, TurboTax, Spotify and Amazon.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, digital marketing is a continuously evolving field that requires brands to stay updated with the latest tools and technologies that can help them achieve success. Having knowledge and expertise in all the trends and technologies lets them make interactive content that promotes forming relationships with customers and improving sales. However, just knowing these trends won’t help you come out on top of SERPs; as for that, you need to enrol with the finest digital marketing course institute near you and start learning.
