The very common word as we head into 2023 is ‘recession’. With the unpredictable global economy, online marketers are perplexed about what plan & strategy would give the desired marketing goals. Read our blog on "Digital ad spending forecast for the US market in 2023" to know more about the advertising spend forecast. With the prevalent situation, it is critical to include the latest trends to ensure potential customers engage with the business. The digital marketing world is highly dynamic and new PPC trends, SEO trends, e-commerce trends, etc., keep evolving. The factors affecting online marketing results are constantly changing, be it search engine optimization, running PPC ads, email marketing, content marketing, etc. Let us see ahead in the blog how businesses can utilize digital marketing trends in their marketing strategy that help boost online sales and increase the conversion rate.
Why focus on trends in digital marketing?
1. To make better informed decisions - One of the essential factors to be updated with the latest trends in digital marketing is that it helps to make informed decisions. The better the users make the decisions, the better the chances of users achieving the desired marketing goals. With the help of the trends, you can work on making informed decisions to attract users to your business offerings so that none of the potential customers is left untouched.
2. To better understand your customers - Another benefit of including the trends in your marketing strategy is that it helps to understand your customers better. It helps in customer retention and acquiring new users to the webpage. Consumer behavior is ever-changing and businesses must focus on understanding this changing behavior.
3. Stay ahead of the competition - The next essential point why it is necessary to include the trends in the marketing strategy is that it helps to stay ahead of the competition. With intense competition in the digital marketing world, ranking higher on the SERPs becomes essential so the target audience sees the website for the keywords or search terms entered. In the same way, with PPC ads, the ads must have a higher rank & position so that the ads have a higher impression share, which ultimately helps in lead generation
Essential marketing trends to focus in 2023
1. Keyword research - In the digital marketing world, the essential point to focus on for any marketer is to perform keyword research. When focusing on marketing trends in 2023, keyword research becomes quite vital to focus on. With the help of keyword research, you can choose the keywords that must be included in the page content.
Whether you are running a PPC ad campaign, SEO campaign, content marketing, email marketing, etc., conducting keyword research is vital. It helps you present your business to the target audience with a high chance of taking the desired action. When the users enter any keyword or search terms for the products or services they seek, you must ensure that you have included these terms in your keyword list.
Many terms are related to the products or services you offer, and not all can be included in the keyword list. However, you need to be smart in choosing the relevant keywords that drive traffic to the landing page. In the PPC ad campaign, you separate the keyword into phrase match keywords, broad match keywords, exact match keywords, etc., so that the relevant target audience sees your paid ads. In the same way, you need to focus on preparing a keyword list that best matches the users' search intent. With the help of an SEO audit, you can perform competitor analysis and conduct SEO keyword research that matches the latest marketing trends. Similarly, with the help of a PPC audit, you get to know the users' interests and then conduct PPC keyword research to choose the relevant keywords.
In the digital marketing trend 2023, when conducting keyword research, you must focus on the primary and secondary keywords. It is also essential to focus on the secondary keywords because it matches the user's search intent. When you select the keywords based on the current market trends, there are chances that you have increased website traffic, the visitors' time on the page increases, the bounce rate is lowered, increased organic traffic, etc.
2. Engaging content - Engaging content is the next critical point in marketing trends to focus on in 2023. In online marketing, content is the first point of contact between the business and the users. With such a wide range of audiences present on search engines and social media platforms, it is quite vital to grab their attention on your business offerings. To entice the users into clicking on the business offerings, you must ensure that you have great content written on the page.
You need to focus on user-generated content that is original and unique content. The more specific the content, the higher the chances of the visitor getting converted to a customer. Whether you are running social media ad campaigns, like Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, Instagram Ads, etc., the focus is on best defining the product or service offerings. You write great ad descriptions, ad copies, etc., so that the users easily get to know what your business offers. You can also include ad extensions like callout extensions, price extensions, structured snippet extensions, etc., that create an urgency among the users to convert. In the same way, with SEO campaigns, it is essential to write the meta description, title tags, etc., that inform the users about the business offerings.
3. Video marketing - Video marketing is the next critical marketing trend of 2023 that needs to be focused upon. Today, users find videos more engaging and easy to understand than long-form texts. Even for businesses, it is easier to convey the message through videos. As videos continue playing, they catch hold of the users' attention which helps to convey the message easily.
In your marketing management strategy, you need to focus on choosing video marketing to promote and market your content across search engines, social media platforms, etc. and increase engagement rate. Using this marketing technique helps to convey the message easily. You need to keep updating the video content so that the users do not feel that they are presented with outdated content.
With the help of video marketing, you can inform the users, luring them to reach the landing page. It helps to inform the users about the Some of the benefits of video marketing are:
a. It helps to reach a broad audience.
b. Interactive videos help in engaging the audience.
c. Creative videos help to increase brand recognition.
d. Attract potential new customers.
e. Video KPIs help to measure success.
4. Voice search optimization - Many upgrades are constantly taking place in the online marketing world, which goes in context to SEO, PPC and content. With the marketing trends of 2023, the next essential factor you need to concentrate on is voice search optimization. Optimizing your website with the voice search option feature helps the target audience to ask any question easily. It eases the users' work and helps in getting the work done in less time.
Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. Today, many marketers are inculcating this in their strategy, which helps them save time to focus on their core business. Many voice search features are already active, easing the users' work. E.g., Siri by Apple, Google Assistant by Google, Alexa by Amazon, etc. Similarly, you can also include them in your strategy and assist your target audience with better services that help them navigate easily through different sections on the website, reach desired products or services in less time and much more.
a. Improved customer engagement.
b. Advanced search capabilities.
c. Round-the-clock assistance.
d. Can speak multiple languages.
e. Provides instant access to information.
5. Leveraging social media platforms - The next essential marketing trend to focus on is using social media platforms. The online marketing world keeps evolving with the latest marketing trends, which has led to an increase in social media platforms. Social media is becoming the need of the hour for businesses, as 2 out of every 5 people have an active social media account. So, none of the businesses can miss out on the opportunity to reach their potential customers.
When working on social media marketing, you must focus on including the social media platforms relevant to your business. In today’s world, most of the marketing process done by users is done on mobile devices. So, optimizing ads for mobile devices and optimizing websites for mobile devices becomes vital. Every social media platform has a different target goal and you need to analyze which platforms are the best for your business. E.g., Facebook is used by friends & family, LinkedIn is used by professionals and job seekers, etc. So, it is quite vital to focus on these platforms whether you are running Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads, Instagram Ads, etc. You can outsource PPC services for the best PPC management services so that the PPC experts maximize the return from the ad budget. Even when you focus on YouTube SEO, Facebook SEO, etc., it is essential to include trends in your strategy. You can outsource SEO services to determine which platforms to focus on that helps you increase traffic on the website, analyze backlink profile, improve organic traffic, etc.
6. Focus on personalization - The next digital marketing trend of 2023 includes focusing on personalization. Changes in the marketing realm have brought a focus on personalization. In today’s world, with the evolution of technology, the online marketing world presents before you the most impatient users. Users today do not wish to wait in any form of marketing like email marketing, content marketing, running PPC ad campaigns, etc., and choose other businesses quickly.
This has led to concentrating on personalization. As in the PPC ad campaign, optimizing the ads for mobile devices is essential. In the same way, you need to ensure that your website is optimized for mobile devices. All this needs to focus on personalization as the chances of the visitor changing to a customer increase. When you focus on personalization, the users think that the company thinks from the users' perspective, which increases the users' trust in the business.
Be it traditional marketing or online marketing; all the marketing efforts are made to lure the target audience into taking the desired action on the landing page. In PPC ads, you focus on ad personalization; in search engine optimization, you personalize page content; in email marketing, you focus on creating unique emails for each person on the email list and many others. All this leads to gaining users' trust in the business, and the user feels that the company thinks from the users' perspective. Some of the benefits of personalization are:
a. Increased user trust.
b. Lower bounce rate.
c. Improves brand awareness.
d. More conversions and enhanced ROI.
e. Helps in peer-to-peer marketing.
7. Include chatbots - The next essential digital marketing trend to focus on in 2023 is including chatbots. The PPC trends, SEO trends, e-commerce marketing trends, etc., keep evolving with time. So, it becomes quite essential to be updated with the latest marketing trends.
Almost ⅔ of buyers expect a response within 10 minutes to any marketing sales or community inquiry. Not every time are humans free to respond, so it becomes quite essential to include a virtual assistant to reply to the users' queries. Chatbots help streamline conversational marketing as the users do not have to wait long to get answers to their doubts. With the increase in artificial intelligence and machine learning, search engines like Google, Bing, etc., keep updating their ranking algorithm. It helps them to show the relevant results to the target audience and check the authenticity of the websites.
Chatbots today are becoming the need of the hour by businesses as it helps to converse with the relevant audience easily. Most big tech giants already have these bots installed on their pages, reflecting the importance of chatbots in the online marketing world. E.g., when running e-commerce PPC ads, some users may look for products at night or on holidays. At this time, there are chances that your office employees are on leave. So, to answer the users' query it becomes essential to include chatbots. With the help of artificial intelligence, it becomes easier to include the chatbots on the page. As in SEO pagination, you focus on breaking up content on multiple pages, which allows users to look for the relevant pages quickly. This eases search engine bots' crawling & indexing process so that they can easily display the relevant pages to the users' search query. So, in the chatbot, you can add messages that display the relevant pages to the users. The conversational interface helps understand complex requests, personal responses, and improves interactions.
8. Email marketing - Another essential marketing trend that needs to be focused on by marketers is email marketing. It may sound a bit different how email marketing can be a trend in today's online marketing world. If it surprises you, then the stats may surprise you.
• Email marketing revenue is expected to reach 11 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2023.
• Emails today have an ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. • 3% of marketers send weekly emails. 26% send emails multiple times per month.
• 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month.
Though email marketing may seem to be an obsolete marketing method, the statistics above depict a completely different picture. So, it is quite essential to include email marketing trends to attract users in a more personalized way.
9. Testing and optimization - The need to regularly test and optimize the performance of the SEO campaigns and the PPC campaigns will always be in trend. The method to test them may change with different marketing tools. There are multiple SEO tools and PPC tools available in the market today, like Semrush, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc., that provide deep into the performance of the essential SEO metrics and PPC metrics.
The marketing trends today focus on augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence to display the performance of the essential KPIs. E.g., when you use any of the tools to perform competitor research, then the tools today used artificial intelligence to determine the differences present on your website compared to your competitors.
10. Focus on customer relationship - The next essential digital marketing trend to focus on is customer relationships. Be it traditional marketing or online marketing, the critical point for any business is to focus on customer relationships. It is vital as once the users are engaged with your business; they need to be retained in the long run. To do so, you must answer even the slightest of the queries the user has. This helps in strengthening the customer relationship.
You need to focus on user behavior and analyze what the users are looking for on the website. With the help of Google Analytics, you can track user behavior and gain insights into their activity. This lets you know how much time the users are spending on the webpage, which subsections on the website they navigate, etc. It would give you an idea of what you need to improve so that the website's ranking on the SERPs increases.
You can work on customer retention and acquisition strategies to engage more users on your website. You can offer users discounts that lure them into taking the desired action. You need to concentrate on asking for negative reviews from the users so that you get to know the essential SEO KPIs that need to be optimized to improve the performance of the SEO campaign. Retrospecting these reviews helps in enhancing the website's performance in the long run, ultimately helping you to achieve the desired results.
Conclusion
To stay ahead of the competitors and at the same time achieve the desired marketing results not only requires focusing on the core business but many other points as well. The marketing trend is one such bedrock that must be regularly pivoted on. To significantly improve your brand offerings, you need to inculcate the latest digital marketing trends in 2023 in your marketing strategy. Earlier, we also wrote how the SEO trends, PPC trends, and e-commerce trends needed to be focused on in 2022 to maximize the marketing ROI. If you find including these digital marketing trends in your strategy a cumbersome process, you can get in touch with a digital marketing company and outsource market research services and provide marketing management services. The marketing professionals help analyze the latest trends that needs to be focused on and implement them successfully to scale the business ROI.
References:
• 5 Digital marketing trends to expect in 2023
• The top marketing trends of 2023 & how they've changed since 2022 [data from 1000+ global marketers]