Time just slips away sometimes, and so does the relevancy of certain marketing trends.

Embracing lifelong learning is paramount to staying successful in our industry. Due to the fast-paced nature of the job, marketers need to be agile and able to pivot quickly to be on top of the newest digital marketing trends. If best practices are questioned based on pertinence, the answer should never be, this is what we have always done. 

As industry experts with a pulse on what’s next in the pipeline, Wild Coffee Marketing compiled a top 6 list of new digital marketing trends for 2023.

1 | Influencer Marketing

The evolution of word-of-mouth advertising is here in the form of influencer marketing. If you didn’t believe it before, believe it now, influencer marketing will stay a top brand strategy, with an estimated value of $24.1B by 2025, according to market reports. 

Here are the whys: 

• Collaboration
• Brand awareness
• Consumer trust
• Engagement

With brands collaborating with influencers and industry thought leaders, they can achieve stronger brand awareness, increase fans, and ultimately gain consumer trust. According to HubSpot, more than 56% of marketers are working with micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers with a following in their niche, between the thousands to tens of thousands. These creators are experts in their area of content with an already loyal following. This means brands can stay within their budget to work with celebrity influencers.

Some brands are even cutting to the chase and hiring creators as social media managers and creative brand strategists. As experts in content and growing strong followings, it makes sense to recruit this type of talent to your team as a more permanent partnership. It’ll be interesting to see how this trend, coupled with new platform tools and adding creators to the mix, will help develop for brands this year.

2 | Short-Form Content

Wyzowl recently published statistics that state about 90% of companies use short-form videos as a part of their marketing. Keeping informational videos snappy and to the point is more effective in the long run. It takes less time to create this content and falls in step with rapid attention spans in an assortment of demographics. Short-form content platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels found success for these very reasons.

3 | Social Media For Customer Service

Social media puts companies where their customers are. It is no surprise that brands are already using social media as a valuable tool for customer service needs when pertaining to eCommerce and engaging with Gen Z and Millennial audiences in real-time using conversational marketing strategies. This approach will only grow since it allows businesses to build relationships through community engagement and boosts customer loyalty.

Did you know that 30% of customers are more likely to visit a competitor if they are ignored on social media? More dangerous is that 36 percent claim they have gone as far as publicly shaming a company after a poor customer service experience.

Statistics like those add another layer as to why keeping social media top of mind as a customer service tool for your 2023 brand reputation strategy. 

4 | SEO – Helpful Content for Users

SEO remains a top priority for many marketers this year, the focus being on the customer. With 46% of online searches having local intent, SEO is essential to delivering tailored experiences that target users with both short-term and long-term web traffic potential. Search engine algorithms will reward efforts towards understanding customers’ needs concerning voice search and localized information – fostering positive user experience from start to finish.

Marketers who wish to enhance their visibility should begin by optimizing the brand’s Google My Business profile and weaving local keywords into their content. Doing so will ensure your business targets a wider audience while increasing its potential reach through search engine optimization.

Optimizing content for SEO isn’t only about the text – images also play an important role. By reducing image size while maintaining quality, properly labeling videos with target keywords, and creating footage around relevant topics, you can achieve faster loading speeds. This results in improved rankings on search engines, ultimately bringing more visitors to your web space.

As consumers navigate their customer journey, they spend most of their time in discovery. With multi-search technologies like Google Lens at our fingertips, marketers must optimize content to maximize this opportunity and ensure it remains relevant, informative, qualitative, and experiential across all digital touch points. This means taking advantage of various asset types, like images, videos, and more technical resources, such as entity data -all supported with tactical SEO strategies when the budget is tight.

5 | Importance in Enhancing the Mobile Experience Rises

Did you know that 46% of Gen Z and millennials value their mobile devices over their TV, spending more time on their phones or tablets? This makes the mobile screen the first screen marketers should think about, rendering optimizing brand websites and email for mobile digital strategies absolutely essential. 

With reports of millennials holding $200–$600 billion and Gen Z with $44 billion in annual potential buying power, marketers must produce relevant and enriched mobile user experiences with advanced designs and high functionality to capture these consumers. 

As we’ve previously discussed, with short-form video taking over, content needs to be adapted to grab user attention with simple and concise messages to stand out in a packed digital landscape.

6 | Brands & Social Responsibility 

As the consumer landscape continues to evolve, Gen Z and millennial audiences have made it known that they expect brands to adapt to remain competitive. This includes taking a stand on social issues like racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, gender inequality, and climate change through inclusive social media initiatives; donating products one-for-one to communities in need, and allocating portions of profit toward charity organizations or activities sponsored by the brands themselves.

With 66% of consumers willing to pay more for goods from brands that demonstrate social commitment, this is a must for brands to follow suit.

Get a competitive edge by growing your results in these key areas. If you need a plan to optimize and better results faster from your existing efforts, see how Wild Coffee Marketing can help. 

At Wild Coffee Marketing, we are your outsourced marketing team, delivering results-driven marketing strategies and programs that work. Contact us today to learn more. At Wild Coffee Marketing, we love helping companies reach their audience.