New Year, New Marketing Trends for 2023

TikTok influencers, content creators, and YouTube personalities are dominating digital engagement, creating and producing consistent, high-quality content that rivals even big brands.

For marketers to grow their brand in 2023, they need to reach customers online and adopt a more conversational and viral way of digitally marketing their brand or services.

Social media, websites and ads are great ways to drive interest and brand awareness, but with so many other companies “playing” by the same rules, getting your business noticed online, generating impact on potential customers, has proven to be a bit more challenging over the past couple of years.

In this regard, the trend is continuing; that is, brands need to continue to strive to build closer relationships with customers and potential customers and followers – both in real life and on social media.

When it comes to social media, it is no longer enough just to be where those you want to impact are; you have to create what the majority wants to consume, in the most original way possible.

Source: Pexels

In the new year, TikTok’s meteoric rise will only increase.

While continuing to benefit from the weaknesses of other social media platforms, it is predicted that the growth of TikTok as a communication platform for advertisers and consumers will accelerate.

There are several trends contributing to this phenomenon, most notably the Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) tools available on TikTok.

Here, we are practically talking about two digital marketing trends in one: in addition to the increasing popularity of TikTok, we are also facing the cementing of VR and AR in the mainstream sphere. In other words, by 2023, we are no longer talking about Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality as new or emerging.

And indeed, it is not only TikTok making them available in such an intuitive and accessible way to its users, since we can create similar content with Snapchat Lens, for example, but the novelty factor belonged to TikTok from the very beginning, which means that this platform is uniquely positioned today to lead in this field. Advantage: TikTok.

News on TikTok: potential to work on search strategies

More surprising news regarding this social network, may be the growing use of the network as a news source, mostly by American users.

According to Pew Research, more and more Americans are getting news on TikTok, unlike other social networks that are experiencing stagnation and, in some cases, a drop in engagement.

This is coupled with a growing comfort with the AR and VR features that TikTok is uniquely positioned to leverage.

As TikTok continues to lead in searches relative to Google and Bing for Gen Z, B2B brands will also begin to explore using TikTok for search strategies.

An advertising force that generates billions

Still in the sphere of TikTok, we must address the most obvious changes.

This social network saw its popularity explode in an epic way during the quarantine (early 2020), but if all this notoriety took place with content creators and consumers, brands quickly realized that it was imperative to be there too.

In order to meet brands’ needs, TikTok has evolved its service offering and now competes with the “big boys” for ad budgets typically targeted at digital ad platforms.

With Twitter and other major digital platforms also struggling, TikTok is out in front to capitalize on brands that are eager to invest where there is the most potential.

User growth and engagement are also on TikTok’s side. Not only is the number of TikTok users growing (it is projected to reach over 800 million by 2023), they are leveraging the app in new ways.

Net advertising revenues generated by TikTok worldwide between 2020 and 2024 (in billions of US dollars)

Source: Statista

In 2022, TikTok generated more than triple what it did in 2021. For this year, net advertising revenue on this platform is estimated to reach over $14 billion.

By 2024, TikTok is expected to reach around $18.5 billion in worldwide advertising revenue.

And since there’s no argument with facts, it’s official: TikTok is no longer just an entertainment platform; it’s an investment with a lot of potential return.

(Short) video content is king

Source: Pexels

It’s nothing new, but it’s a trend: betting on short, vertical videos.

With the undeniable evolution of TikTok, other platforms have begun to offer their version of video content in this shorter format. Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts, for example, have also reached huge levels of popularity and demand in creation and consumption. Here, again, brands have begun to make appearances as well.

In recent times, short videos have become increasingly vital to marketing strategy. Online ads, particularly those in short-form videos, are expected to generate more ad revenue than any other format by 2023.

Read also “Video is the Content King”

In a study by Influencer Marketing Hub, 85% of marketers say that videos are an effective strategy for capturing people’s attention online. It was found that customers retain 95% of the information from videos, making them essential not only for marketing, but also for establishing a strong brand. The impact of both long- and short-form video marketing has been made very evident by this data.

Source: Hubspot

Let’s look at some benefits of this format:

• Short videos convey messages in a fun and interactive way, making them more relatable to the target audience;
• They project authenticity and empathy, increasing consumers’ willingness to trust a company/brand;
• It is an excellent method to attract people’s attention and encourage them to spread the word about your brand;
• It forces marketers to reduce the time needed to deliver a message to their audience.In short, investing in this type of format will translate into high levels of engagement and an excellent ROI, due to the high conversion rates of short-format videos.

If you want to grow your business or brand on social media in 2023, you must focus on creating content for the medium where consumers spend most of their time and in the format they consume the most.

Content Marketing, but Interactive

With governments tightening their GDPR laws and tech giants taking severe measures against third-party cookies, marketers are going to lose a lot of data. This may explain why interactive content is one of the big digital marketing trends for 2023.

Through interactive content marketing, brands can collect data in a less invasive and binding way. According to a 2022 survey of 1,600 marketers, 45% said interactive content was the type of content they used most on social media and 77% said it was the most effective.

Source: Wix

In addition to the benefits of data collection, interactive content also engages consumers. Data from over 230,000 sales and marketing professionals shows that interactive content receives 28% more views than static content. In addition, the average user spends 4.6 minutes more watching interactive content than static content.

Here are some examples of interactive content to implement in your marketing strategy in 2023:

• Games
• Quizzes
• Calculators
• Polls
• Virtual reality
• Surveys
• Dynamic presentations
• Explanation videos
• Simulations
• Software demonstrations
• Image slides
• Interactive maps
• Interactive infographics

Are you already having ideas to implement this strategy to your content?

Humanized brands are trusted brands

Source: Pexels

As we have already been discussing here, a lot has changed in the way brands communicate on social media. The pressure to respond to what users/potential customers want to see is increasing, but there are two communication strategies that work very well:

• storytelling method: stories and entertainment above obvious sales strategies;
• humanization of brands: use people, people’s testimonials, and faces whenever possible.

When it comes to humanization, brands can continue on the path of User Generated Content and partnerships with influencers.

User Generated Content

User generated content is more likely to be more easily seen as trustworthy than other forms of marketing, so it will continue to thrive in 2023. Authenticity is one of the main reasons behind this, as people tend to trust other consumers of the same products more than marketers.

Source: Calvin Klein (Instagram)

This is an example of user generated content created and republished by Calvin Klein on their Instagram. The photo was not taken at any of the brand’s photo shoots, but by a consumer/fan of the brand. In order to encourage UGC, Calvin Klein leaves the appeal and the hashtag #mycalvins to encourage more sharing by its fans.

If you want your brand’s customers to produce content using your products, try this same strategy: CTA + hashtag and, in return, the chance for your customers’ content to be shared on your social networks in whatever format is most convenient for you.

Partner with influencers for the long term

Influencers are great at making their followers feel like they are part of their lives. Those who follow influencers on social media can’t help but feel that they know a lot about their lives, their tastes, adventures, travels, and even their family and friends. Marketers who want to capitalize on these connections have begun to explore the true potential of influencer marketing, weaving the DNA of their companies into the fabric of these relationships.

And while initially the trend was to work with multiple influencers to post a few times about a product, brands are investing in long-term partnerships with fewer influencers. They are also prioritizing quality over quantity when deciding which influencers to work with. One no longer looks only at numbers; it no longer matters so much how large the influencers’ community and followers are, but rather – and above all – whether their content is appropriate to the brand they represent or might represent.

Shachaf Rodberg, the marketing trends analyst at Wix, thinks that it’s not just partnerships with influencers that are changing – influencer marketing seems to be changing marketing as a whole. “Social marketing channels are changing,” he explained. “They are bringing in semi-famous creators or allowing their internal creators to be the face of the company.

In Portugal, we have a good example of a brand working continuously with the same influencer:

Source: Amoreiras (Instagram)

In 2019, Amoreiras chose well-known Portuguese actress, presenter and influencer Raquel Strada to be the brand image of its shopping center and has been working with her ever since.

Bigger = Better?

“When it comes to influencers, the bigger their audience, the more successful the brands they advertise, right?”

Yeah… no.

Future trends reflect past results, which means that since there is a lot of evidence that micro influencers have higher engagement rates, the suggestion is that in 2023, bet on working with “smaller” content creators. Besides having good engagement, they are another way to reach your target audience and understand what they think about your products/services for a lower cost.

As the landscape continues to change and the quicksand of social media continues to churn, the most confident marketers will be those who spend less time worrying about trying every possible strategy and more time exploring the ones that are already proven to work. We learn from the past to continue to achieve future successes. After all, that’s the role of trend study. So in 2023, focus on creating content that is appropriate for the platforms you use in the formats that users are actually consuming. Fighting change is out of the question; the solution is to embrace it and adapt to win.