Everything changes, not always for the better. New ideas, inventions, and technologies emerge every day. And so do marketing trends. Marketing is a fast-paced industry with new innovations and trends popping up almost as quickly as old ones disappear. Keeping up with these changes can be challenging. Even more so when you’re working in an industry that requires you to adapt to new circumstances on a regular basis. The world of digital marketing is no different when it comes to trends emerging and disappearing as fast as lightning. Every marketer needs to stay on top of their game in order to keep up with the latest developments and remain relevant in their field of work. These are the 6 most important digital marketing trends you need to know about if you want to succeed in 2023:

Rich Content Marketing

Content marketing has been around for decades. It has also always been a crucial part of digital marketing campaigns. With the growing competition in online businesses, however, content marketing is becoming more important than ever. Rich content marketing campaigns are built on the idea of creating valuable, useful, and engaging content that helps you achieve your marketing goals. This can be in the form of written content, images, video, or a combination of all of these. This type of marketing is a great way to establish your brand, build trust and authority, generate leads, and increase your sales volume. Equally important is the fact that it doesn’t require a big investment. This makes it an excellent choice for startups and small businesses that don’t have a large budget to spend on marketing.

Artificial Intelligence for Marketing

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, it is gradually making its way into marketing campaigns. It has already proven its worth in many industries, including finance and medicine. It is also expected to play a crucial role in digital marketing in the future. The goal of AI-powered marketing campaigns is to provide better customer experiences, generate more leads, provide more personalized content, improve campaign efficiency, and increase ROI. When done right, AI can help you with your marketing efforts in many ways:

• Create better content: AI can help you create better content by generating ideas and suggestions based on your audience’s preferences and demographics.
• Personalize your messaging: You can personalize your messaging and increase your leads by using AI to analyze your audience’s data and create personalized content for them.
• Create more leads: AI-powered marketing tools can help you automatically generate leads by engaging your customers and encouraging them to take action based on their needs.
• Improve campaign efficiency: AI can help you track your marketing activities to see what works and what doesn’t. This allows you to make adjustments and optimize your campaign based on these insights.
• Increase ROI: Investing in AI tools can help you achieve a higher ROI with your marketing campaigns. You get more value out of your budget with better results.

Video Marketing

Video marketing has been around for decades, but it is experiencing a resurgence as the go-to way to connect with customers. There are many reasons for this:

• Videos are the most popular form of content on the internet. In fact, 90% of people consume videos every month. These numbers are expected to grow even further in the near future.
• Videos generate more leads and sales than other forms of content. They are also easier to create and cheaper to maintain than other marketing campaigns.
• Video marketing campaigns can be highly profitable, especially when you consider that customers are willing to pay more for products after watching videos about them.
• 70% of customers want more video content from brands.
• 85% of people would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it.

Virtual Reality for Marketing

VR is another marketing trend that is poised to make a major impact in the near future. It has been around for decades, but only recently has it experienced a major resurgence in popularity. VR can be used to create interactive experiences that bring products to life and allow customers to try them out before they make a purchase. When done right, VR marketing campaigns can help you achieve many different business goals:

• Create better content: VR can help you create more effective product demonstrations by letting you put your customers inside your products.
• Create better customer experiences: VR enables customers to try out your products and services from the comfort of their homes and get a real feel for what it’s like to work with you.
• Increase brand awareness: VR allows you to engage with your customers and give them a taste of what it’s like to do business with you. It does this by giving customers a preview of your products and services.
• Boost sales: VR lets you offer customers a better shopping experience by letting them try out your products from the comfort of their homes. This helps you increase your sales volume by reducing returns and increasing your average order value.
• Improve lead generation: VR can help you generate leads by letting you conduct virtual product demonstrations. This allows you to target new audiences and engage your customers in new ways.

GDPR and Data Protection

A decade ago, many people didn’t think privacy was important. Unfortunately, this negligence led to some major data breaches that are still affecting people today. This has prompted lawmakers to introduce GDPR, a new data protection law that is expected to further change the face of digital marketing. With GDPR, the EU hopes to safeguard its citizens’ data and protect them from further breaches. GDPR also applies to businesses outside of the EU. This means marketers need to adhere to specific data protection requirements and collect less data when engaging with customers. This will change the way you approach digital marketing campaigns. GDPR will also make it more difficult to achieve certain marketing goals:

• GDPR will make lead generation more difficult. This is because you have to obtain permission from your customers before you can contact them. This changes the way you approach digital marketing campaigns.

Summary

Keep these 6 digital marketing trends in mind if you want to succeed in the coming years. Investing in rich content marketing campaigns, creating more videos, and using VR technology to boost your brand awareness and interact with customers will help you achieve your marketing goals. GDPR and data protection are also important issues to keep in mind. Stay up-to-date with the latest developments in these areas and you’ll be in a good position to tackle the challenges and opportunities of the future.

In the past few years, the digital marketing world has seen social media gain increasing traction as a tool that can give maximum exposure and greater marketing mileage for any brand, product, or service. The platform has evolved from being a mere fad, or just another platform for publishing content – and has become one of the most effective marketing and advertising tools and strategies available.

Online users in the United States are spending more time on social media channels than anywhere else on the Internet, according to Small Biz Trends. As a result, 86% of marketers acknowledge that social media provides maximum exposure for their businesses. It was reported in another report published by HubSpot that companies have at least one dedicated social media person or a social media team.

However, the Small Biz Trends report also indicated that 88% of businesses using social media admitted that they have a lot more to learn about social tactics. Specifically, they are interested in learning more about strategies that would be effective to engage targeted audiences and increase brand awareness. Listed below are 10 amazing social media marketing strategies that deliver more and better-targeted results for your business.

Increase online visibility on more social media networks

Even though it seems like yesterday, social media giant Facebook turns 10 this year. Facebook is still the dominant force in social media with 757 million Daily Active Users (equivalent to 1.23 billion Monthly Active Users according to official Facebook reports). While the platform is the primary arena for social media marketing activities, it should not be your only social media outlet.

Many other social networks are also gaining ground, with many focusing on graphics, pictures, and videos as their main content. Pinterest, Instagram, Vine and Snapchat are examples of social media sites that target specific user categories and demographics. In order to gain maximum exposure for your business, you should develop a strong social media presence not just on Facebook and Twitter, but also on other upcoming and highly dynamic social media networks.

Tailor Your Content to Specific Social Media Platforms

Businesses and digital marketers often make the mistake of posting the same type of content on all of their social networks. By doing so, businesses fail to provide social media users with the unique experience they want from each platform. Every social network caters to a certain demographic and social user category, so broadcasting the same type of content to all will not produce the desired results.

Pinterest and Instagram users are more likely to be interested in content with a visual nature and more likely to click on really high-quality images and graphics telling your story. In this regard, the key to success is tailor-fitting your content to the various social media platforms and checking which format will work best.

Instead of selling stuff, tell stories

While social media is still a digital marketing tool, using it to sell your products directly to consumers will do more harm than good to your brand or business. Social media networks are full of stories and people go to them to read stories, be amazed by interesting features, and learn new things from uploads and shares. In order to use social media effectively, you need to learn how to tell a story before you can sell anything.

Your brand will get more attention if you tell stories. As a result, they would want to know more about you and read, view, or watch more stories, photos, and videos about you. As their level of interest grows, they will be able to show an interest in your business, in what you do, and in what you sell – and this will be the right time for profits to roll in.

Share more pictures, graphics, and videos

As soon as Facebook introduced a new feature that allowed Instagram videos to be uploaded, the social network experienced up to 5 million video uploads within the first 24 hours of the launch. That is the power of video and other visual elements, and learning how to use these tools and elements can give you maximum exposure for your business. Now, micro-video is gaining ground, providing another form of content that will revolutionize social media.

As the Internet becomes more accessible to smartphones and other Internet-enabled mobile devices, Snapchat, Twitter’s Vine, and the new micro-video sharing feature on Instagram will certainly gain in popularity. Pinterest is fast evolving, shedding its “women’s only network” tagline to gain more subscribers from more and more online users regardless of gender or demographics. As well as Mobli, Path, Slideshare, and Tumblr, other networks with a visual content focus are gaining traction.

Organize contests and promotional activities

Getting your targeted audiences directly involved in activities is one of the most effective strategies for social media in general. The best way to drive their interest and solicit their participation is by conducting contests and other promotional activities. You can be as creative as you like when it comes to the type of contests you can run, but using the sharing features and other viral components provided by your social network can bring your brand or business even more exposure, as more and more online users participate.

Provide more educational content

According to Social Media B2B research, businesses that use social media strategies for content marketing, such as maintaining blogs, generate 67% more leads than companies that do not. Using social media marketing, they can gain more of their target audiences’ trust, and to do so they have to create educational content that their readers will find very useful for whatever purposes or needs they have.

Using and sharing educational content is a very effective strategy if you want to gain more exposure for your business and build a bigger and more diverse audience, according to a recent HubSpot study. Through the use of educational content that your targeted customers find relevant and interesting, you can extend the reach and coverage of your brand and business.

Make mobile social media marketing a priority

Facebook announced that there were an average of 556 million Mobile Daily Active Users, a 49% increase over last year. This translates into 945 million Mobile Monthly Active Users, a 39% increase year-over-year. These numbers illustrate the power of mobile social media marketing, which should encourage digital marketers to create more content and location-based advertising targeted at mobile social media users.

Response to ALL Comments, Suggestions, Inquiries, and Complaints

Social media users comment, suggest, inquire, or even complain about business pages and social profiles. In return, they expect a response or acknowledgment from you or your social media manager. Approximately 42 percent of social media users expect to receive a response within 60 minutes according to a study by Convince and Convert.

Users expect some form of interaction from business owners and digital marketers through social media. Businesses and digital marketers who respond to these comments and inquiries will be at an advantage over those who do not. Also, you should know how to handle or address complaints in a way that will satisfy online users. Don’t delete complaints, otherwise, you’ll be removed from their lists.

Also, show your gratitude for the time spent by online users reading, liking, and sharing your content. It will put you in their favor and there will be more opportunities for them to come back, read more of your content, and even tell others about you and your brand.

One of the most dynamic and fastest-growing digital marketing channels is social media marketing. These social networks are maturing to their full potential, and digital marketers need to learn how to utilize them so that they can deliver better brand awareness and maximum exposure for their business. You can start with a tweet, an upload, or a post – and let it grow from there.

With the chaos of 2020 which we have left behind us, it’s time to look forward to what we can expect from the next 12 months with all the hopes and positive aspects.

2020 was the whole unexpected year for everyone due to the pandemic, which also affected some market trends that were expected to be the best – however, they ended up the scoring average, whereas many other trends which were supposed to be under the average line are trending for being the best!

Here are some of the observations from the top marketers around the globe on which trends are on the rise in the next 12 months:

Digital business pivots may become permanent  – by Teddy Heidt, Founder of The Gauge Collective.

According to him, to gain customers’ trust you need to Diversify your social media activity in order to connect with more engaged users and this way enrich the user experience on your social profiles by leveraging shop, address, and other customers’ experiences and many more features that break down barriers towards purchasing from your company. With this in mind, the company has responded with the launch of its Instagram shop to complement its new eCommerce program.

Tirocchi, CMO and co-founder, Shapermint enlightened us with  – Social media will become a top channel for purchase, instead of just discovery.

As the social media platform is becoming more and more reliable since the platforms are being made so easy to operate and to connect with users. Social media is even providing the opportunity for e-commerce customers to buy the products without even making them hop from one platform to another creating a simple and seamless path to purchase. With the advancement in 2021, the retail brands will have to adapt to these platforms with new rules, as it has been adopted by Amazon in many ways.

Sherene Hilal, SVP, product marketing, and business operations, Bluecore, predicts that — Informed buyers want to buy from informed brands.

This as a whole says that one goes beyond the age of personalization and also entering into an age of personal e-commerce,  which means that the customers share their experience with the brand to reflect their preferences at any given moment. They expect brands to understand what they’ve bought in the past and help them to determine what they should buy next, based on all the data that they’ve consciously shared with them by engaging with their sites and channels. This in return helps the brands understand the information about their customers such as: what they need, and also when they want the product. This information is beneficial for both the customers and also the businesses.

Whereas we have Jim Kruger, Chief Marketing Officer, Veeam, and also he remarks the following: Virtual events started out of necessity, but are here to stay because of ROI and accessibility.

Due to the pandemic in 2020, many brands and companies went for virtual events which in return is the best practice to get in touch with the audiences. As with this virtual event scenario, they get to interact with entirely new audiences as virtual events are more accessible than in-person events. As these virtual events save the time of traveling, getting visas, booking tickets, finding the location of the events, and many other problems and many companies have found that this allows for higher attendance and more participation. That means lower costs for more people and a higher ROI. This seems like a good option for the companies that are restricted by the ongoing changes in the rules impacted by the pandemic and the strains it has put on their marketing budgets. In 2021 and beyond, virtual events will continue to be a popular route to engage with a broad set of customers as companies see the many benefits of online events.

And also in the opinion of Lisa Apolinski, president of 3 Dog Write Inc, Live interactions with virtual events. 

Due to the pandemic, many of the companies went for the live sessions with their audiences which in return gave them a positive approach towards their business gathering and further information about the audiences. Yes, there are complications with live events such as technical errors, but this could bring positive changes also such as the feeling of safety of attendees, ease of connection from anywhere in the world, and convenience from attending from one’s living room.

These are some of the top trends predicted for 2021.