Wondering what the major trends in Digital Marketing this year will be? Look no further, in this article based on Sean Kenny’s´ webinar Top Digital Trends in 2023, we´ll deep dive into digital marketing trends, AI tools and how to leverage them, how Google Ads uses Machine Learning to enhance new features, SuperApps and of course video trends – do´s and don´ts.
First let´s have a look at AI tools, and how they can help you create content and elevate SEO.
What’s most meaningful with AI tools to a marketeer is generative AI. In short words, generative AI are able to generate new content or data based on input. For example it could generate images, text, video or other types of data.
Examples of existing AI tools include:
Images – Dall-E and Midjourney, which based on text input give a visual output. Tips is to ask for certain styles, like art deco, cartoon, different artists (Picasso or Degas), close ups, special emotions and so on. The more specific you are in input, the better output you´ll get.
Text – ChatGPT, Bard, Stable Diffusion, Jasper, Notion, Canva, Copy. Ai. Same as images also applies for input – only in this case you ask for certain writing styles, like humor, facts, essay, email, social media posts, a certain comedian perhaps – experiment away.
So, how can these, or similar tools help you as a marketeer in the future?
One of the best advice Sean had in his webinar was – EXPERIMENT! Have a look at your workflow, break it down, and identify areas where AI tools might be useful for you and your business. Is there any areas where AI can enhance your productivity or skills?
Marketeers current use AI tools to create:
Blogpost, product descriptions, social media posts, emails, ad copy, service descriptions and web copy. ChatGPT can be a great as a first copy, and help get your writing going in no time, but please remember to work with the text before publishing.
Video trends
Video on social media is trending, and all the social platforms is fighting for viewers with shorts, reels, TikToks, live stream – let´s leverage this and make content for the viewers.
Some do´s in videos for 2023 includes:
Full screen immersive mobile first video. Previously videos took up a small part of the screen, but now you can get a full screen experience. TikTok only show the vertical videos, but to also get value for you money on platforms like Facebook/Instagram, then mobile first video is the way to go.
Video Trends Across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube
Full screen, immersive, mobile-first video. Previously it took up a small part of the screen, but now it’s taking a lot of the time.
Optimize your videos with text, Sean especially gives the hint of using text that gets the users attention, ex. “Wait for it” or “revealed at the end” – and finish the video with a snappy surprise. Videos watched to full or rewatched will have a higher number of viewers.
Experiment with both paid and organic campaigns. If you make content that reach and engage your audience, you don´t necessarily need to put money on it.
Invite followers and users to make user generated content (USG). Behind the scenes work well, same with explain or education videos.
Research trends is a great tip – TikTok have a trends exploration where you can see what’s trending by locations, by creators, or in the last 7 days. Explore what’s works in your market.
Play on trends, humor, jokes.
Keep it short – 15-30 seconds.
Sounds on videos – what will we hear more of?
An increasing amount of trending sounds are now commercially available, due to remixes or more open music licensing – meaning you can use this in your videos.
Sound can make or break a video on TikTok or Insta Reels.
You don´t have to use trending music, it could be an original sound such as a voiceover or remixed song that gains popularity – you can set the trend.
In 2023 we´ll see brands create campaigns using original sound – with the idea of it being reused over and over again.
Things to think about this year for your video content:
Long form content still belongs to YouTube, but remember they are losing younger audiences to TikTok.
LinkedIn is seeing huge success with video and is now launching new ways to create long form within the platform.
LinkedIn Live will become a more accessible tool as B2B video content improves quality.
Stop using lockdown conversations – expect professional, studio-shot, high quality insight.
Google ads – all you need to know:
Google is making it easier to get your campaigns up and running with help of Machine Learning, automation and AI. It´s now increasing the use of these tools to help you optimize your campaigns. Some features affected by this is Smart Bidding, Smart Campaigns and Responsive Search Ads. This can save a lot of time and improve performance, and help reach more relevant or new audiences.
As we know, Google Ads offer a wide range of channels for advertising, including Search (text ads), Display (banner ads), Video (video ads on ex. YouTube) and Shopping. To reach audiences across multiple channels, you can use tools like Shopping campaigns and cross-channel reporting. This will help boost brand awareness, drive conversions and improve ROI.
Broad match have now become a lot more meaningful with the use of Machine Learning, and in many occasions it can save you some time in the keyword research phase, and give you great results. There are however a couple of fall pits to be considered before doing all your campaigns to broad match.
Grouping all keywords together means losing control over your budget.
Big ad groups suffer from poor ad copy – in a testing phase this could be fine, but a recommendation is to view results, take out performing keywords and make campaigns for these.
Even if broad match have become better, it still drives lots of irrelevant queries.
Sean recommends testing different strategies first, and wait for conversion data to justify the change – so let your campaigns run before applying Google Ads recommendations. And please, don´t be afraid of manually setting your CPC to reset the automated bid algorithm. A best practice worth mentioning is wait 2-3 days before adding negative keywords, and then add negative keywords regularly. Be prepared to lose visibility and a level of control with testing these changes, it might take a few weeks to find out, then revert to your old structure if they are not improved within 6 weeks.
Google have the last couple of years been collecting data, observing behaviors, and now they have announced they´ll be looking for signals.
This might sound like the same thing, but there is a difference. Whereas Behaviors reflect interests, signals are when the audience is telling you what they want.
SuperApps – will this be the future?
First things first, a SuperApp is an “everything app” or a “one-stop-shop” for all of a user´s digital needs. Basically its everything at once, so you don´t have to leave the platform, you could for example in the app have news, social feeds, mail, banking and financing, games and the list goes on. WeChat in China is one example of this.
The benefits of an “everything app” for the owner is reduction of cross-site traffic, meaning you can track everything of the user´s life, and build walled gardens to capture the online life. As a marketeer you can build full-funnel campaigns (awareness to loyalty) within one platform. It might sound comfortable to do all marketing in one app, but do we want to be dependent (more so) on only one social network to understand our own customers?
This year we can expect ecommerce to look more like social media and vice versa.
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