Remember those good old days when using third-party data was one of the hottest trends in the advertising industry? Or when Apple didn’t ask their users whether they wanted an application to track their activity or not?
With Google’s third-party cookie phaseout (scheduled in 2022) and Apple’s revolutionary App Tracking Transparency feature, advertisers are finding it incredibly difficult to run strategic, highly converting ad campaigns.
Businesses completely relying on third-party data or even Facebook advertising now need to change their approach. While you don’t necessarily need to ditch Facebook advertising, it’s extremely important for businesses and advertisers to build a fool-proof strategic plan that’ll help them put their ads in front of the right people without facing any hurdles.
Seems the good old days will never come back.
And that’s how things run in the realm of digital marketing.
New trends emerge. While some old ones fade away. And with rapid technological advancements, you may expect some trends to take the digital marketing world by storm in 2023.
To help you stay ahead of your competitors and ace your marketing efforts, we’ve put together the four most important digital marketing trends you should capitalize on in 2023.
4 Digital Marketing Trends Businesses Should Capitalize on in 2023
Following are the four 2023 digital marketing trends we’ll be talking about in this blog post:
- The Era of Voice Search
- Building a Privacy-First Web
- Increased Focus on Marketing Automation
- Looking at the Bigger Picture
The Era of Voice Search
Over 55% of households across the globe will reportedly own at least one smart speaker by the end of 2023. And with an ever-increasing popularity of smart speakers, it’s not uncommon for people to say “I Love You” to their smart speakers.
Some people treat their smart voice assistants, namely Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant just like family members. About 61% of people between the age of 25 and 64 have claimed that they are highly likely to increase their voice search usage over the course of the next few years.
As of this writing, about 65% of people that currently use smart assistants have reported that they can’t imagine going back to the time when they didn’t have smart assistants to help them with their daily activities. By the end of 2023, voice has been predicted to be a $40 billion industry.
And that’s huge.
That’s the reason it’s really critical for businesses to ensure that their websites, as well as content, are voice-search friendly. That’s because the way we type on Google and the way we use voice search are completely different.
For example, if we want to look up “Time in Boise,” we’ll use the term “boise time” on Google search. Whereas, while speaking with our voice assistant, we’re likely to use, “{Voice Assistant}, what’s the time in Boise?”
We are used to keyword-based searches. But in a world where voice search is huge (2023), our searches will be conversational. And that’s the reason it’s really important to make sure that your website and content are voice-search friendly.
Building a Privacy-First Web
These days, people are extremely concerned about their privacy. People are so concerned that over 86% of Americans have tried removing or decreasing their digital footprint at least once. About 80% of people are concerned about their data falling in the wrong hands. At the same time, they are concerned about big tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies misusing their data and tracking them all the time.
And while regulations like GDPR have been imposed by government officials, it’s really important for tech giants to focus on building a privacy-first web – a place where people can actually feel secure. And it wasn’t until recently that companies like Apple and Google addressed these privacy concerns and did something about it.
We witnessed Google introducing the third-party cookie phaseout – which will be brought to life in 2023. At the same time, we witnessed Apple rolling out its new privacy-focused features like Mail Privacy Protection & App Tracking Transparency to help people have more control over their data.
And trust me on this one – it’s not the end.
In the next few years, we’ll witness companies rolling out numerous such privacy-focused features – focused on building a privacy-first web. We’re at the initial stage of the privacy revolution.
So, if your business heavily relies on the use of third-party data and can’t survive without it, you need to chart an alternate course today itself. And that’s not all. You need to future-proof your business against any potential privacy-focused features that could tamper with your growth.
Increased Focus on Marketing Automation
About 51% of organizations are currently using marketing automation. And of the ones using it, over 63% of them have reported that they have successfully managed to outperform their competitors.
Let’s say you run an eCommerce store selling leather bags. Now, different people will be at different stages of their buyers’ journey. Some may be first-time visitors. Whereas some may be cart-abandoners. At the same time, some may have already purchased your product once but didn’t interact with your business further.
Now, if you want to convert these people (people at different stages of their buyers’ journeys) into paying customers, you can’t roll out the same message. You need to strategically roll out highly-converting emails with the right message – based on your target audience’s activity.
At the same time, you don’t need to go through Google Analytics or your customer data platform (CDP) and manually send out different emails. That’ll take up a huge chunk of your time. And it’s not efficient. Instead, you can just use marketing automation to roll out these different emails to different people at different stages of their buyers’ journeys.
For example, you can send a 15% off coupon email to cart abandoners. On the other hand, you can roll out a 45% OFF coupon email to the ones who purchased from you once. Endless possibilities!
And this isn’t just applicable only to email marketing. With marketing automation, you can automate your social media marketing, ad bidding, delivering content downloads, lead generation, and much more!
Looking at the Bigger Picture
Now let’s say you are running Facebook ads and redirecting all of that traffic towards a landing page. It doesn’t matter how good your Facebook ads are, if your landing page sucks, you will have a lower lead generation or conversion rate. That’s the one big mistake most marketers make.
They often fail to look at the bigger picture. It’s important to note that marketing isn’t a one-strategy-can-do-it-all thing. Instead, it’s a systematic process.
If you want to boost your search engine rankings, you need to focus on:
- Content marketing
- Link Building
- On-Page Optimization
- Off-Page Optimization
- And more!
If you want to boost your conversion rates via strategic paid ad campaigns, you need to:
- Craft and implement highly converting ads
- Have an eye-catching dedicated landing page
- Have a lead capture form in place
- Have a fool-proof lead nurturing process in place
Think of it as a strategic process. Over the course of the next few years, marketers and businesses will realize how digital marketing actually works and focus on building a strategic process by looking at the bigger picture.
And if you want to generate the best possible results, we’d advise you to do the same.
Capitalize on These 4 Digital Marketing Trends to Ace Your Marketing Efforts in 2023
We’re just a few days away from 2023. Maybe, by the time you are reading this article, it’s already 2023. While putting together these trends, not only did we keep 2023 in mind, but we thought of the long-term. We asked ourselves – which trends will take over in the next few years? And this helped us build an actionable 2023 digital marketing trends list.
If you run a business based in Idaho and want to unlock the full force of digital marketing, feel free to reach out to our experts today. From strategic planning to implementation to reporting, we’ll help you capitalize on these trends and help you stay ahead of your competitors.
Don’t wait around!
Reach out to the #1 Digital Marketing Agency in Idaho today.
