Marketing trends to include in your business marketing anno 2023
When it comes to marketing, a new year often brings many new opportunities. At STRAREX, we analyze throughout the year which approaches have led to the best results, while at the same time keeping a constant look ahead to what is to come. By constantly monitoring and keeping an eye on emerging marketing trends within our industry, we are able to respond quickly and implement them in the marketing strategies we develop.
In this blog, we’ll share some of our acquired marketing wisdom. We give our reasoned view of what could potentially be some of the major developments in the marketing world in 2023. Some of our findings are already established values that we believe have not yet reached their full potential; others are new marketing technologies on the rise.
UGC – User Generated Content
Let’s start with a fact: many small bits make one big whole. That’s exactly what so-called “user generated content” aims to do. Almost everyone today has at least one or more social media accounts on which they frequently post content. This way, family, friends and acquaintances can stay up to date on their activities. And they’re eager to tell their loved ones about what they like!
UGC isn’t a new trend, but it’s certainly a marketing tactic that’s not going anywhere for 2023. This often entails businesses offering test products or promotional materials in exchange for posts or stories on the testers’ personal socials. Yet there are other formats of UGC, like organic content created by fans of the brand that truly stand behind the product or service and want to talk about it. Companies often share this content on their own channels to create trust and engagement with their target audience.
This technique relies on the psychological principle of reflection. For example, if a good friend advertises a new bike on her profile, and you happen to be looking for a new bike, chances are you’ll buy the same brand and/or model. Moreover, it builds trust when someone you know recommends a product.
As multiple users attach the same specified hashtags to their post, it gains popularity. When enough people do so, the social media algorithm behind it starts trending those posts, which in turn results in brand awareness for the brand or product in question.
UGC is becoming increasingly popular as a way for companies to build a sense of community and engagement among their customers. It can help to increase trust and credibility, as it is more often seen as authentic compared to content created by the brand or company itself.
Are you looking for more insights in content creation and want to discover how you can implement this for your own business? Contact us for a full marketing strategy where content can play a significant part.
AI – Artificial Intelligence
We’re at the verge of a huge paradigm shift in the way we approach marketing and tech. AI, or “artificial intelligence,” is a fascinating technology that’s currently gaining tremendous momentum. But what exactly is it, and how can you adopt this different way of working to benefit your business? Discover it here with STRAREX!
With AI, you can really imagine the once impossible. Whether you’re a business owner, marketeer or designer: the tools that are currently being developed, will truly disrupt the current market.
We’re already seeing implementations of AI all around us: think about chatbots for customer service that help avoid long waiting times, forecasters that help you finish sentences faster in Google Docs by predicting the next word, and even auto-generators that write text or create images based on your input. You can predict customer needs, give product recommendations to clients and process unstructured data. Visualize your imagination with powerful tools that can generate images for your ads or write texts from just a few keywords.
These kinds of tools use computer algorithms to train the data model and simulate human cognition and understanding. However, this doesn’t mean that it could ever replace the human mind. We should see this as an opportunity to expand our skills and spend our time even more efficiently, by learning how to train and command these tools.
While AI applications are still a costly investment and take a lot of data to be trained, this is something you shouldn’t sleep on as a business!
Influencer marketing
Long live influencers! With the emphasis on “long”.
Influencer marketing has been around before it became a hot topic during the boom and rise of bloggers and vloggers, but the way it’s being applied will drastically change.
Long-term, sustainable relationships with influencers who promote brands that mean a lot to them personally are the future.
The trend is starting to tip over in favor of long-term relationships with partners that truly understand the values of your brand and your audience. Enter brand ambassadors, often connoisseurs of a specific product category that have a more collaborative approach towards your marketing rather than being paid per post. These types of continued partnerships will set you up for long-term success! Many brands, like Harley Davidson and Sephora, even have specific ambassador programs.
Does this mean that influencer marketing is dead? Hell no!
When thinking of influencers, you’re quick to think ‘Insta famous’ users with a massive follower base. But influencer marketing really is about building a community and creating content relatable to your audience, now more than ever.
Authenticity is the keyword here. The days of just posting ‘perfect’ pictures are over, as real and raw content is becoming more popular. Content creators sharing their experiences – WITH the ups and the downs – create a lot of trust and engagement among their followers.
Champions of authenticity are apps like BeReal, where you get a notification at a random moment to share a picture of what you’re doing in real-time. Instagram is even testing with a new feature “Candid Challenges” showing many similarities.
There’s a reason why many brands work with nano-influencers, creators with a follower base between 1000 and 5000. Their content can be very niche, but this creates the setting for high audience engagement rates – meaning more cost-effectiveness! Their community has a very high trust in their opinion, which leads to an increase in brand awareness or sales. Realness is here to stay for 2023!
Are you looking to increase your brand awareness or focus on conversions for your products or service? Read some of our client cases and see how we can help your business grow!
Sustainability
Some have been advocating for it for decades, others are just now starting to talk about sustainability and climate change. In recent years, there has been a real turnaround in the mindset of end users.
The noticeable rise in demand for sustainability on a sociological, cultural and economical level is becoming more and more visible in our society.
Companies are increasingly responding to the precise wishes of their customers, so certain brands like to profile themselves as true champions of sustainability.
This often requires a different approach, from production to logistics to service.
It’s about not just making the product itself more sustainable, but taking the whole supply chain under the loop. Set goals for your brand that connects to a multitude of ecological aspects, of which some examples are:
- Waste avoidance & recycling
- Renewable energies
- Avoiding harmful emissions
- Restoring and maintaining biodiversity
- Efficient use of resources
Sustainability clearly isn’t just a trend, yet the concept is often linked to greenwashing by skeptics. Millennials and Gen Z are critical thinkers that question the information put out in the world by corporations and do their own research.
You need to live it, breathe it, be it. No putting labels on products just for the sake of the label.
Make it part of your brand and your marketing strategy by telling the story, so that your customers are aware of the efforts you’re making.
The other way around, this will also create more sustainable marketing strategies for your future.
Sprints aka the Agile Method: let’s make it happen!
Sprints are a very effective way for teams to get a predetermined result. By setting out the chalk lines strategically from the beginning, you increase your chances of success. But what exactly is a sprint?
In an ideal world, new projects are tackled in a strategic way with easy-to-implement next steps. This process can take up plenty of time when different teams or decision-makers are involved. To find the golden solution, current teams often rely on a hybrid method, where the old-school strategy research and tactical bits come together.
Sprints are a modern way of working and communicating within teams and projects. It’s designed to solve big problems quickly, make decisions and prioritize ideas. By focusing all attention on step by step problems, this allows teams or partners to create actionable solutions and turn problems into challenges with solutions that they can implement!
Steps you can’t skip during these sprints: setting clear expectations for all participants, making sure they can follow and efficiently participate, and setting timers – that’s how you stay within the scope of your planning. This requires some structural setup upfront depending on the type of sprint, but it’s well worth the effort and can be recreated for other projects!
Because of their structured and clear nature, sprints are an ideal method for problem-solving, creative and collaborative thinking. The team consists of individuals who each need to complete their own task within that process, in order to achieve a well-thought-out solution at the end of the cycle.
We at STRAREX strongly believe in the value of sprints and work with all of our clients in this way. Curious about how we set up strategies with our partners and implement them? Feel free to take a look at our work to see real client cases!
Voice Searches & SEO
Siri, Alexa, Cortana: decades ago, these were maybe just pretty names to anyone who heard them. Fast-forward to today: people are talking to their computers, watches, phones or cars. “Hey Alexa, can you make me a coffee?”
“Hey Siri, how can I defrost my car the fastest?”
Smart applications that connect our daily life to the world and all its knowledge are a part of our routine we can’t miss anymore.
Google took the lead in this for a long time and remains the market leader, but in the meantime competition is gradually catching up.
The days when only David Hasselhoff could speak to his sports car KITT are long gone. Speech technology is integrated into most new cars, and the concept has improved enormously in recent decades. Even with your smartphone, you can use voice search to easily perform online searches via your voice, which will lead you to the right search results.
Voice search is a trend that’s often overlooked in marketing, yet it’s a vital element of how people are navigating online. That’s why there lie tremendous opportunities for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in semantic search. Voice searches are often longer and more specific than the average search that was typed in. While a traditional search on the computer could be ‘digital marketing for newsletter’, someone who uses voice search could ask “How can I use digital marketing to get people to sign up for my newsletter emails?”
The good news for you: this is the kind of information you can analyze to benefit your business! Understand what your users are looking for and what their pain points are, so that you can offer the solution.
We also want to mention that natural phrases yield greater results for semantic search.
Be human! Use conversational keywords and tailor the text on your landing pages and ads to the most important search questions.
STRAREX analyzes your data and prepares your business for the future.
At STRAREX, we are versed in the implementation and execution of all these existing and new trends. We bet hard on adaptive and dynamic marketing, with an eye toward continuous modernization and the growth of your business. Because marketing never stands still, and neither do we.
Did you just read this blog and wonder what the possibilities are for your business? Make an appointment, and we will gladly go through the opportunities together!