4 Digital Marketing Ideas All Businesses Need To Consider For 2023

By Ali English

Businesses have recently been asking us whether they should be considering focusing on some of the following digital marketing trends in their strategies for the year ahead: 

1. Chatbots
2. User Generated Content (UGC)
3. Authenticity and accountability
4. Video

While these may not all be suitable for everyone, it is important to consider how they may fit into future plans for your organisation.

Chatbots

The pandemic, leaving the EU, and the war in Ukraine have caused many delays and frustrations for consumers and businesses alike in the last few years. As a result, confidence in customer experience is at an all-time low. Providing customers with online assistance is a simple way to gain confidence and help build trust in a business. 

Chatbots can provide opportunities for businesses in a variety of ways and are evolving all the time to be used for multiple purposes. Here are a few ways in which businesses can utilise chatbots:

• Voice commerce and voice search are gaining popularity.  Chatbots in 2023 will accommodate many mobile devices, so implementing a voice-enabled chatbot will help businesses.

• AI-powered chatbots are becoming more intelligent with data. AI algorithms in chatbots can detect patterns and learn strategies to achieve customer-centric goals. 

• Organisations can deploy a chatbot with data security and information protection with the payment infrastructure to automate simple payments via live chat.
• As well as interacting with customers and solving their queries, AI-powered chatbots will have a lot to offer to an organisation internally, including streamlining workflows regardless of organisation size with the use of HR bots that are able to onboard, provide training and answer questions quickly, sales bots to book calls and appointments, workplace bots to enable employees to manage everyday tasks more efficiently, and content search bots to provide product information and find files quickly.

User Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is more trusted by consumers and B2B buyers than brand-generated content. UGC provides opportunities for increased customer engagement, stronger customer loyalty, and positive brand sentiment. In opening up and providing a platform with a more human touch, businesses can become more conversational and less rigid in their marketing and therefore become more relatable and accessible to their customers.

UGC can be gathered through:

• Testimonials
• Reviews
• Videos or images
• Case studies

UGC can be used to inform decision-making and create meaningful conversations with prospects and customers, so it is a powerful tool to pursue in 2023.

Businesses also need to monitor mentions and direct messages on social media. Conversation—whether brand- or buyer-initiated—greatly impacts the buyer’s purchase consideration during the customer journey. A business that doesn’t respond in a timely manner to a potential customer’s question on social media may find that a competitor will answer it and win the deal. 

Using social listening to find conversations where your brand or products are being mentioned but you aren’t being tagged is another important task to complete regularly.

Employee Generated Content (EGC) can profoundly impact a brand’s image. Employees can provide content that will help build confidence and demonstrate that employers value and listen to their workforce. 

Employees could write blog posts or take over a brand’s social media channels for a ‘day in the life of…’ Content that employees share and engage with on LinkedIn is also a powerful way to spread information about an organisation as posts on personal profiles over company profiles continue to gather more engagement. 

Authenticity and accountability

Social media platforms have become the fastest way for messages to spread. As a business, it is important to ensure that the messages are true and up to date. In 2023 visibility will become increasingly important as consumers seek authentic, transparent, and informative content from brands.

If even minor issues are left unaddressed, mistrust and doubt can quickly cause damage to a business. Using communication to calm fears and clearly rectify them in a timely fashion will help businesses be seen as trustworthy.

A CEO with a personal presence on social media can positively impact confidence in a business, particularly during crisis management situations.

A business's environmental impact will continue to be under scrutiny, with customers looking for the action and evidence behind the promises.

Video

2023 will continue to see the rise of video, and short-form content will dominate as the most engaging social media content. With attention spans decreasing, bite-sized high-quality video content continues to be the most engaging way to stop people from scrolling. All social media platforms continue to give video preference, so short, to-the-point content will become highly visible.

Following on from TikTok, more platforms are embracing 9:16 full-screen vertical content giving a greater opportunity to create high-quality video content. As more platforms support the 9:16 aspect ratio, the same content can be repurposed for an extended reach.

Captions are still important as most people initially watch videos with the sound off. Videos should be as authentic and as real as possible, with consistent messaging and clear storytelling. Viewers are looking for content that will give them something more than just hard selling - what can they learn or gain from watching?

Google is making video a key indicator for SEO, meaning that pages with video content are more likely to rank higher than those with only static content.

The trends that won’t change

No matter which social media platforms are in favour this year, the content created that continues to be the most popular is that which is conversational in tone. Content that is viewed as clickbait, too salesy, or not authentic is not popular. Users are looking for content that adds value, gives them something to learn, or engages them in conversation. 

Building trust and loyalty through connecting and building relationships and focusing on conversations and customer experience leads to ROI. 

Concluding remarks

Hopefully, these trends are things you are already considering or featuring in your digital marketing strategy. The overwhelming theme throughout is the need for authenticity and producing value-added content that compliments your business rather than hard selling. Businesses should be looking to build a community of like-minded people rather than building up single profiles.

 

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