Become completely sharp on the biggest online marketing trends in 2023

Are you unsure of which marketing efforts you should focus on in 2023? And how to use data in the future? Online marketing is constantly evolving and now includes far more than marketing through Facebook and Instagram. The users are critical and overwhelmed by the many impressions, so do you have a plan of how your business should position itself and with which efforts?

At Heyday, we've looked into the crystal ball, and here are our predictions for the biggest trends in online marketing in 2023.

Brænd igennem og styrk din performance gennem branding

Do consumers know that you exist? And do they know that your products align with your brand? It's always nice to have concrete and measurable results from your marketing efforts, but what if you could increase your results in the long run by implementing a branding strategy? But how do you build awareness for a brand that already exists? It's important to add Brand Equity to the company - and build it to such an extent that customers' attitudes towards your brand affect the value that is added to your products and services. In the long run, you should no longer have to explain the brand to consumers, because they know what they're getting - and they love it! It's important to sit down and figure out what creates value for your customers, and what makes your products indispensable to them. Your current loyal customers are the source of the best insights into what works for your brand - and therefore also what you should focus on when your branding strategy is formulated and implemented.

It’s time to take action to increase customers' awareness of your brand. This will lead to more sales in the long run and lift your base sales in the long term. It also gives you the opportunity to create a group of users that you can activate and turn into customers again and again.

In essence, it's about finding the balance between the short-term optimizations of your business performance and the long-term vision of moving your brand and creating a stronger brand value. Both short-term and long-term efforts require reliable data insights and to convert customers and make the right adjustments in connection with branding your business, it is crucial to have a broad and fair data collection.

Data platforms for collecting offline data

Data is and remains an important source when it comes to online marketing. It gives us the opportunity to target our messages - and reach our target audience where and when they need to be reached. However, data and tracking have over time also become a more cryptic size, especially after the iOS14-update and GDPR. One of the ways in which you can ensure that your data is more accurate is to use offline conversions. Offline conversions count all the valuable actions that your advertising efforts produce, but that can't be tracked by traditional tracking - for example, a click on an ad that leads to the customer making a purchase in the physical store. With the right setup, Facebook and Google can track the conversions made offline, so you can get an even sharper insight into your ad's performance and see if your branding effort is actually giving you more conversions. By feeding Facebook or Google with information from the offline action, such as an email address, a name, or a phone number, the platform can determine if the person has an account - and thus find out whether the sale comes from your advertising efforts. Moreover, offline conversions allow for retargeting the user for a whole year, which is more than what iOS14 allows - and thus you have a longer period to build trust with your customers.

To get a more accurate picture of your data, there is a great advantage in using a Customer Data Platform (CDP). The CDP can identify customers from your various data sources by collecting the information under an individual identifier. By implementing a CDP, your company will improve your data availability, streamline your system integration, increase the effectiveness of your marketing, and improve the general handling of your customer's personal data, so their experience with you as a brand is good, professional, and trustworthy - and their loyalty to your brand increases.

Strengthen the user experience for your customers through User Generated Content

Good marketing efforts are much more than what you bring to the table. It's about creating content that gets your users to bring your brand to the table and to share it with those who trust them. User Generated Content is value-creating, as users often have more trust in the people, they follow than in brands. You probably know it yourself; you trust a recommendation from a good friend more than a salesperson in a store. Through user-generated content from Content Creators, you get your brand and products out through spokespersons who are on eye level with your customers - and whom your customers trust. Content Creators have - compared to most influencers - a smaller but far more loyal crowd of followers, which leads to greater loyalty and engagement to your brand and your products and services.

Humans naturally act more on their emotions than acting rationally - and therefore it is important that as a company we investigate consumers' emotional expectations of our products and services, so they want to share their experiences with your brand with their followers and friends in the future.

Marketing on Social Media is much more that Facebook ads and Instagram posts

Facebook and Instagram are still important platforms for businesses as customers are on these platforms searching for brand knowledge and sharing brand experiences. However, it is becoming more common for businesses to be on these platforms, and it is likely that your competitors are here too. Other platforms such as LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat can also be effective marketing channels and have an advantage especially if your competitors are not using them. By choosing these alternative platforms, you can capture your target audience's attention before your competitors do and gain their loyalty and engagement. However, it is important to note that your competitors may also be considering alternative platforms as a way to differentiate themselves. It is important to choose the right platforms for your marketing mix and not just stick to what has worked in the past. The speed of technological development also means that businesses cannot afford to sit back and wait. Differentiating yourself by using alternative platforms can also have an economic advantage as click prices and CPM can be much lower.

It is not possible to predict if the hype of a media is just a trend or not, but if you wait too long, your competitors may already have established themselves and taken the attention. It is and will become increasingly important for businesses to strategically brand themselves on platforms where their target audience is and with content that captures their attention and engagement.

Last but certainly not least: video, video, video

Video has been increasingly popular in recent years, and it is not expected to stop anytime soon. Video is considered to be the type of content that catches users the most, and as it evokes senses and emotions in consumers, there is a greater chance of achieving an increased engagement rate and a larger reach on social platforms. Additionally, the video format allows you to tell stories in a way that still images cannot match, and in fact, studies show that 95% of consumers remember messages better if they are in video form rather than text. When consumers remember the message better, they also have a much better understanding of your business and what your products and services can do, because video format makes it easier for consumers to consume knowledge. Video creates trust, and security, and gives your target audience the opportunity to get a glimpse of who you are as a company. And hey, feelings and senses are a universal language. Where the connection between image and text can be complicated, video has the opportunity to bring it all together into a story, an overall impression, and in a universal language.

Finally ...

To create a brand that will knock the socks off your current and future users, it is important to meet them on equal footing and reach them where they are with content that appeals to them. Utilize data from both your online and offline channels to ensure you have the most accurate picture of how your users are acting and where they are located. Short-term results are important, but it's just as much about the long-term results and relationships - and with trust-based spokespersons in the form of Content Creators, new users are more likely to join in. And remember, digital development is moving fast, so take the time to nurture your users and meet them on equal footing where they are.