Marketing trends in 2023

Marketing is an endless territory of opportunities, where anyone who monitors trends and knows how to manage them gets ahead of the rest. A good marketologist doesn’t let a pandemic, an economic and political crisis, a state of uncertainty and self-isolation, stop him. He not only adapts to any changes in a timely manner, but also uses them to create new strategies for achieving business goals. Let’s see what trends in the world of marketing have already gained momentum in 2023.

1. Customer Journey Map: user experience is equal to product quality

Consumers today need a personalized experience and advertising content that best meets their needs. For 80% of customers, user experience is as important as the experience of a product or service. Customers interact with the brand in different ways, the omnichannel trend originated several years ago. This now gives rise to the need to create a customer roadmap.

What does this mean: Marketologists need to analyze all points of contact between the consumer and the company. They need to define the channels and methods of interaction they use and what information they receive from them. This objective is achieved through the Customer Journey Map: a means of visualizing the journey the buyer takes from the moment of learning about the brand to making a purchase. The Journey Map is a marketing tool that will help you understand the thoughts and feelings of a potential buyer at each stage of the funnel, including the doubts and problems that prevent them from making a purchase decision. As a result, we can increase customer loyalty, reduce the funnel and even enhance the percentage of repeat sales!

2. The era of extreme personalization

There’s no other name for it. It’s a reality now for all players in the online market, and not only for the giants – Spotify, Netflix, Amazon. It’s not a new trend. We’ve known for some years about the need for personalization. However, the consumer today has become even lazier. They don’t even need to surf the Internet. They product itself goes out and finds the consumer, even if the decision to buy hasn’t yet been made.
 When considering personalization, marketologists need to take into account a broad range of parameters for audience segmentation. For example:

• location: a window installation company should target its advertising to a specific city or area, while the manufacturer of profile systems can be advertised throughout the country;
• demographic characteristics: age and sex, marital status and children;
• occupation, profession (students, women on maternity leave, businessmen);
• lifestyle: athletes, travelers, vegans;
• interests and priorities;
• completed and planned purchases;
• technical: the type of device, operating system, browser and even Internet provider – this information allows you to adapt advertising to the desired format.

The more data you have about the target audience this year, the easier it is to build a strategy. Selecting approaches, the brand considers previous user experience and on his basis creates individual offers here and now.

3. Opting out of cookies to protect user personal data

A recent survey by Storyline Strategies, commissioned by Google, found that out of 11,000 consumers in 11 countries, 86% would be loyal to brands in exchange for the transparency of the data they collect.

Let’s not forget that Google some time ago announced it would not be allowing third-party cookies in its browser. This is due finally to happen by 2024. Instead of cookies, the new test environment called Topics will analyze behavior and determine the interests of users. This environment allows themes to be viewed and changed, and if necessary turned
 off. Such decisive actions to protect customer data have become a real challenge for brands that once used cookies for promotion. This will lead to the popularization of artificial intelligence products, since independent collection and analysis of data is a very time-consuming process. What’s more, online resources for the accumulation of customer data and firms specializing in marketing research are beginning to enter the arena.

4. User content 2023

Marketing in 2023 requires business owners to shift attention from the brand to the consumer. The audience is increasingly trusting User Generated Content. Reviews, video reviews, podcasts, unboxing videos and comments help consumers decide on a purchase more than “polished” information provided by the brand itself.

User-generated content is relevant, authentic, and useful to a potential buyer. Buyers want to see the real experience of people with real complaints and needs. UGC gives them visual proof of the quality of the product.
 For business owners, this is a way for them to diversify their content and make it interactive by communicating directly with buyers and dealing with objections. This is why companies are doing their best to implement it on their websites, social network pages and in advertising and email newsletters. We can already user content sections appearing on marketplaces and in social networks.

5. Development of the metaverse – the virtual tomorrow has already come

The metaverse is already within reach of everyone, and leaves us practically no choice. Many people already interact in the 3D immersion digital space: they buy NFT assets, create digital objects, visit digital stores and study the digital environment.
Nike is already working on the digital world with Roblox, Lego is actively developing a metaverse with Epic Games, and Gucci already has the first pair of virtual sneakers. It sounds like the plot of a movie about the future, but this future has already come. It’s time for all brands to create their own virtual world.

6. Influence Marketing

This is another trend which is smoothly migrating to the next period. Adverts by opinion leaders and popular bloggers continue to bolster their influence online.

According to statistics, the market value of influence marketing in 2022 was $16.4. This is twice as much as it was three years ago.
 A global survey conducted among marketing and PR agencies showed that 54% of companies work with 10 influencers, while another 3% collaborated with more than 1000.

7. Interactive content

In 2023, interactivity is a very current way of increasing brand awareness and audience engagement. It is used to segment and warm up users, and finally raise conversion levels. Users today like to interact, not just passively absorb text with images. So, tests, quizzes, constructors, infographics, gaming elements in the content and everything else that requires action allows the user to participate in the creation of content.

8. Boundaries between online and offline business are gradually being erased

Once again this is all a matter of personalization and omnichannel. O2O (online-to-offline or offline-to-online) is a format that assumes the “seamless” existence of offline and online business. People today who are used to shopping online are encouraged to visit physical trading platforms and vice versa. This strategy is based on data analysis of customer behavior in a supermarket close to home and in an online store. This then leads to the development of individual offers. The essence of omichannel is that communication with the customer is not interrupted when moving from the online environment to offline and vice versa.

9. Google Analytics Universal is no more

In order to finalise complex business matters, this year marketologists will have to configure the updated Google Analytics.
2023 will be the year when Google Universal ceases to exist. It will be replaced by Google Analytics 4, introduced in 2020. The updated resource for tracking business indicators has a different data collection mechanism. It allows you to collect statistics simultaneously from both sites and applications, as well as a number of other differences from classical Google analytics:

• At the moment, user sessions matter in GA, rather than actions. GA4 distinguishes between page views, app screen views, and other types of hits. Any interaction with the app or site is perceived as an event.
• Making predictions and recommendations without complex models.
• Conversion modeling.
• Emphasis on confidentiality: data is tracked using the gtag.js library without cookies, IP anonymization is configured by default.
• Expanded statistics.

10. Global automation

Time is the most valuable thing we have. Software helps to manage the team, tasks, processes, and with rational time management. Just one social media post scheduler can save you at least 6 hours a week. In 2023, you can and should automate everything:

• the customer’s journey through the sales funnel;
• maintaining social networks – from content planning to collecting analytics;
• communication with customers – setting up autoresponses, auto reports, chatbots;
• management of loyalty programs;
• search and visualization of patterns in market behavior.

Automation of business processes should exclude the human factor. To keep up with the trends this year, you will have to automate everything you can and not waste time on routine. Give yourself more time to develop new marketing strategies.

2023 trends suggest that marketing transformations are continuing. Artificial intelligence is becoming “smarter” before our very eyes. The standards of consumer experience are being redrawn, and the boundaries between real and virtual reality have practically disappeared. Today, literally every trend shows us that success awaits those who are ready to change something. Change with the world today, there will be no better time for change.

Time to start earning!