With customers continuing to journey through a changing landscape, and attention quickly becoming the new currency, it’s ever important for the agile marketer to stay on top of trends so they don’t miss the boat. However, the test ahead for marketing success is striking a balance between tech, content, customer data, trust, and personalization.
Key Takeaways
- The need for innovation grows while building value during market turbulence
- Web presence sets us apart with content and SEO best practices
- Omnichannel marketing becomes integral to engagement and collaboration
- Short-form video and influencer marketing takes a deeper social hold
- Marketers need to relieve tension between personalization and privacy
- Treating marketing as an investment means tracking metrics and KPIs
- AI and ML integration can improve efficiency where speed is essential
- Value aligned marketing builds trust and converts
Another year, another myriad of changes in the marketing world. It seems like time after time we see major variations in the way people interact with brands, but with more tech and data in the arsenal of marketers everywhere, it would seem like cake walk to nail down a strategy that wins. Alas, I’m still asked daily, “What can I do to stay ahead of the marketing curve?” I get it, it’s a challenge, especially with your role as a marketer growing side-by-side with tech stacks, budgetary constraints, and goal posts ever moving. Well, ask no more! Let’s add a bit of wind into the sails of your marketing innovation with these upcoming trends I foresee coming down the pike.
The need for innovation grows while building value during market turbulence
ROI. You’ll find this to be a common denominator across any budget spend. Nobody wants to throw money into a black hole with the expectation of zero return. The problem is that throughout its existence, marketing has been notoriously bad at attribution, with one of the modern grumblings being the subpar use of tools and technologies. With the potential for growing headwinds and limited budgets, marketers are looking to squeeze the most out of the lemon that is their current Martech stack, while leveraging new tech and strategies to stay on top of customers changing preferences and expectations. In fact, 91% of CMOs say they must continually innovate to remain competitive.
Well, there’s just too much! The growing workload and importance in our space, combined with the ever-increasing SaaS options, have made most marketing tasks lengthy and convoluted. But there’s hope. Marketers everywhere are building value by finding creative ways to automate tasks. With 78% of media planners using automation, it seems marketers are beginning to automate aspects of their day-to-day, improving timely performance and customer experience (CX). The shift to automation will likely happen when technical-based marketing moves to anticipation marketing, enabling the anticipation of what customers need, and then putting it through an automation process. For this shift to truly work, data will need to be unified effectively, and automation tools will have to be leveraged. These include CRMs, AI, machine learning softwares, CDPs, and more.
Insight: A trend that is starting to take hold in the marketing world is the inclusion of revenue operations or RevOps. The holistic approach of RevOps is designed to break down silos between departments for a better end-to-end view to maximize revenue potential.
Web presence sets us apart with content and SEO best practices
When we consider the top marketing channels from 2022, it may come as no surprise that the #2 and #6 spots are held by website/blog and SEO respectively. Producing relevant content with topical authority still wins big in the digital presence game. If you dive a little deeper, you’ll also find traffic sources suggest that direct and organic pulls the biggest numbers, showing just how important brand development and awareness really is. It’s no wonder 77% of B2C marketers and 66% of B2B marketers report using SEO to stake their claim to digital real estate, with the investment only expected to grow. It’s important to note that all web content should be responsive and optimized for all devices, including mobile that consumes 41% of traffic.
The tipping point comes when you take this relevant content and break it up into bit-sized, consumable pieces to create a concerted effort across all your social media presence. We’ll break into the social talk and trends more below.
Insight: It may be a good idea to review your SEO practices if you’ve gotten used to building content for search engines first. Google recently released the “Helpful Content Update” which aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience. It now puts more emphasis on creating experiences for people that answers their question with helpful, relevant material. No more playing the algorithm for rankings.
Omnichannel marketing becomes integral to engagement and collaboration
As mentioned before, attention is the new currency and being omnipresent is a must. Brands that truly understand this are finding ways to not only utilize a combination of channels, but interlinking them for real-time engagement and data consistency. The speed by which one can make a marketing insight and act on it is the formula for successfully reaching appropriate audiences, and building lasting relationships before your competition. Take this for example; Eighty-three percent of marketers say their marketing organizations engage customers in real time across one or more marketing channels, and CMOs cite customer preferences and expectations as the #1 influence on digital strategy.
Customers now expect organizations to understand their wants and needs, sighting that they have no problem leaving for another brand if the CX is subpar. However, only 27% of marketing leaders believe their omnichannel efforts truly come together, which provides a great opportunity for improvement. Some effective omnichannel tactics include personalization of comms, meeting your target market where they are (using data and analytics), consistent messaging across all channels, and having an all-hands-on deck approach to internal collaboration.
As we know, remote and hybrid work is here to stay. That means collaboration is going to need a face lift to truly achieve lofty customer facing goals. Many marketers have accepted multiple collaboration technologies into their stack, and it looks like these investments are a permanent fixture to achieve a successful omnichannel approach.
Insight: Speaking of becoming omnipresent – Google finally has your back when it comes to Paid ads. Become ubiquitous online with automated optimization to make it easier and cheaper to land your relevant content in front of the customers you’re looking for. Check out their new ads feature Performance Max Campaigns.
Short-form video and influencer marketing takes a deeper social hold
Coming in at #1 on the top marketing channels used by both B2B and B2C brands is… Drum roll please: social media! Well, I feel like that comes as no surprise. Social stamps its ticket again as not only a common path for customers to build relationships with companies, but also a route to social commerce and top-notch ad conversions for businesses. You want to talk about attention? Let’s look at some numbers from Statista. In 2021, over 4.26 billion people were using social media worldwide. Staggering. Now consider that they project this to increase to almost 6 billion by 2027! You know what makes this an even more promising opportunity for marketers and advertisers? Internet users spend nearly 2.5 hours per day on social media and messaging apps.
Let’s look at the emerging trends vital to garnering all of that social attention. First, I’m sure you’ve been scrolling over the past couple years and slowly noticed the invasion of these vertical, Short-form videos in your feed. It’s no coincidence! Attention spans are shortening, and many apps have jumped on the TikTok trend due to its dominance. “But it’s just for creators and consumers.” Well, multiple platforms are now focusing on business uses to allow for targeting options and advertising. It’s not only the most popular trend with one-third of marketing teams using it, but it also has the highest ROI.
When talking about marketing as an investment, there’s been a new kid on the block whose presence has elevated social/content marketing’s ROI. Now as it matures, influencer marketing has grown into the powerhouse that is being leveraged by most successful brands. That’s why 80% of marketers say influencer marketing is effective, and 89% say it works just as well (if not better) than other marketing channels. It’s also not just about the mega influencers any longer, but increasingly about influencers with devoted followers and industry familiarity that can create great user-generated content (UGC).
Insight: Don’t sleep on UGC that exists outside of influencer marketing. It can, at times, create higher trust compared to content put out by your social team. It may be a little sloppy at first but a dedicated effort to encourage it, with some suggested guardrails as to direction of content, can clean it up quite nicely.
Marketers need to relieve tension between personalization and privacy
So, here’s the thing… Customers want, no expect, their data to be secure. Privacy has become paramount among the masses. At the same time, personalization is a must to provide top notch experiences. According to the 2022 Gartner Customer Service and Support Survey, 71% of B2C and 86% of B2B customers expect companies to be well informed about their personal information during an interaction, but also worry how their data is being used. What’s the lowly marketer to do?
A major step forward is the concerted effort of data transparency and sweeping changes to privacy regulations across digital assets. To really build trust and a winning strategy, proper consent and data management is required. Marketing leadership is already on record stating that the number one influence on their digital approach is customer preferences and expectations, with a specific focus on building trust. That becomes a healthy challenge when considering the end of third-party cookies, but never fear, interactive lead magnets that source zero-party data are here. Source responsibly, respect the data, don’t spam, and provide actionable content that was promised and is expected.
Insight: Email marketing is definitely not dead, just lost in the privacy spam sauce. In fact, it’s still the most dominant and perhaps profitable if done right. Considering multichannel engagement, more and more marketers are utilizing mobile and push notifications to complement their email strategy as well. Just make sure you are using ethical practices when collecting customer data for outreach. Try interactive lead magnets to source zero-party data for your best buyer personas and make the content transformational, not just informational spam!
Treating marketing as an investment means tracking metrics and KPIs
The misconceptions of marketing are plentiful. I’m sure you’ve heard a few, or possibly believe some yourself. The most damaging of all is “it’s just another cost with no ROI.” You can’t blame that thought process when in the past, marketing has been notoriously bad at tracking any kind of useful data to prove its worth. However, marketers are now tracking more metrics than ever before mentioning that being quick to an insight helps to create a competitive advantage.
For organizations hoping to capitalize on value through more effective data-backed decisions, recognizing the right KPIs to track is crucial. The second biggest challenge facing marketers today is measuring attribution and simplifying the process of reporting ROI. We’ll see many new strategies in 2023 that attempt to forego budget scrutiny by providing better analytics to leaders, with insights needed to optimize marketing spend.
Insight: Missing out on marketing attribution? Check out this description and example by Google to get a jump off point to start your journey to further prove the value of marketing.
AI and ML integration can improve efficiency where speed is essential
Want to make a bet with me? I bet you’re already using some form of machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI)! It’s here, folks, and I think it’s going to stick around. Immunity to change is a real thing, especially with something that has a chance of changing the world of marketing (among many other things) as we know it. That’s scary, but also has the opportunity, if used correctly, to massively impact the effectiveness and efficiency of our day-to-day. At its simplest, think chatbots! Instead of directing people to lead capture forms and waiting for a response, conversational marketing uses targeted messaging and AI/ML automation to engage with people when they’re on your website.
AI and machine learning can be used to produce rich data insights in a fraction of the time, optimize content, understand your target audience better, improve SEO, streamline operations, and much more — saving time and money. It’s no wonder that 43% of marketers agree that automation and AI have been the most effective trends for their organization’s growth. This is likely to rise significantly this year.
Insight: Want to see some of the scary truths and incredible possibilities of real, transformative AI? Give ChatGPT by OpenAI a spin. It’s already being used to create some Eye-opening possibilities across many industries.
Value aligned marketing builds trust and converts
Consumers today feel that when they deal with a socially responsible company, whether through a purchase of a product or service, they are doing their part. They want their values reflected in the brands they interact with. It’s part of a culture shift where consumers are increasingly aware and concerned about social responsibility across all facets of life. Almost half of US online adults report that they regularly purchase from companies that align with their personal values. As a result, we’re seeing Eighty-five percent of marketers say their public facing messages reflect corporate values.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is when companies choose to do what’s right to build trust, not just to impact their bottom line. CSR has become a central pillar for responsible marketing strategies considering that the more socially responsible the messaging, the more supportive their community becomes. Expect to see more marketing teams participate in socially responsible practices that reflect their values, and benefit the public perception of their company in 2023.
Insight: Here are three steps to kickoff your value-based marketing strategy: Match your values with those of your target audience, make sure your stance is crystal clear, and use your values to build community. Don’t forget to be authentic and speak about your actionable steps to fulfilling those social responsibility goals.
Final Thoughts
When breaking down your marketing plan this year, make sure to take a comprehensive look at it in its entirety, and understand that being agile is necessary for timely success. So much has changed, and so much will continue to, but being willing flow with market trends and make data-backed decisions will set you ahead. Let’s not forget to be authentic and creative, while testing everything and taking a few calculated risks along the way. Don’t be afraid to experiment with a few new marketing channels as well.
If I could leave you with one formula for success, it would be to use your head in conjunction with your heart, where data meets creative. Pair that with a human approach to caring about experiences that matter and make a difference, both internally and externally, and I think you’ll truly find that the future of marketing is bright.
