It seemed like January would never end! But it’s finally time to admit that we are well and truly into the new year. For small businesses and start-ups, it’s time to plan your next steps in order to make the most of the upcoming months.
Staying up-to-date with effective digital marketing trends is the surest way of putting your business on the right path and in front of the competition.
Let’s get right into it.
1. Content Marketing
For 2023 it’s time to start dedicating more of your time to content creation. There are two main types of content that are trending and both are having an enormous impact on how your business can be better found online.
Blogs (Humans Only Please)
Content marketing is still the best way to build trust with your audience. For small businesses this can be hard to do until you start to appear higher in organic search results.
Organic reach is always worth investing in as other options come at a much higher price. The cost of PPC ads, for example, will be one of the biggest ongoing expenses for start-ups and small businesses before they grow enough authority online to show up in search results. As there will always be a mountain of opposition against you, you need to work hard to stay included and relevant.
Regular content that is written specifically with human readers in mind will show potential customers (and Google, ironically) that you are the best fit for them. As you publish more useful content on your website, you will notice your PPC ad cost start to level out.
2023 will see more written content that prioritises human engagement over optimisation. If you can commit to content marketing and answer commonly asked questions in an engaging way, Google will start ranking you much higher.
Quick Tips for Creating Blogs and Articles
- Think hard about the questions your targeted audience needs answering. Do research into this and find out what phrases and keywords are getting more hits and base your content around that.
- Don’t write your piece with optimisation in mind, write to engage your reader.
- Make sure your content is in keeping with what your business offers. Your advice and categories should reflect the service or product you offer.
- Make sure readers read your post ON YOUR SITE. Draw them away from social media so they can focus on what you do and how you can help.
- Have a content marketing strategy in place to save you time and build your online authority.
Vertical Video Content
A lot of attention is being placed on short-form vertical content – as if you didn’t know. TikTok is dominating this arena at the moment, but there are also Shorts (Youtube) and Reels (Instagram) to consider. All of which are changing the way that people are coming into contact with your business.
Interestingly, previous statistical data showed that this type of content was being consumed by younger viewers. However, the post-lockdown data indicates that older generations are happily embracing it. A recent study even showed that 42% of the users on TikTok were aged between 30 and 50.
Well over half of small retailers and restaurants that market themselves on TikTok say their organic and advertising content... is extremely valuable to their overall marketing performance, and 78% say they’ve realized a positive ROI with TikTok ads.
Viewers are spending well over an hour a day watching short-form video. If you feel like your target audience is located here you should think about advertising at the very least. If your business would actually benefit from creating short videos that lean more towards entertaining (rather than informing), why not consider making videos too?
Quick Tips For Creating Short-Form Video Content
- As with any other type of content, you need to focus on engaging material that relates to your specific audience and also to your core offerings. Keep it relevant!
- Quantity is an important factor as it seems that 1 short-form video a day (at least) is the best way to quickly push your viewing numbers up (and also subscribers).
- To allow for greater quantity, you may have to lock up your inner Spielberg. Don’t waste time trying to over-produce your videos – some of the most successful influencers use only their phone and a cheap ring light.
- Set time aside each week to plan for NEXT week. This saves you a lot of TIME and helps maintain your ‘1 video per day’ schedule.
What matters most is the type of content itself: does it appeal to your target audience? Is it in-keeping with the platform’s purpose? Does your content relate to your business’ core offerings?
2. Influencer Marketing
The outer reaches of your marketing funnel will include a variety of social media outlets. In 2023 you will start to see a greater demand for influencer-based marketing to help draw in much larger audiences. TikTok is again showing confident strides in what is available and it’s definitely worth looking into.
Influencer content and recommendations are hugely effective – in the same way that word-of-mouth is effective. If a person is recommended a product or service by someone they trust, they are 61% more likely to act on it.
Quick Tips for choosing Your Influencer
- Make sure that the influencer you are choosing is aligned with your brand’s ethos. Simply put, if you are selling high-vis kitten vests, don’t choose a beer guzzling death metal influencer who has a dog.
- Focus on the influencer’s audience. They’re the ones you need to connect with so think about how you’d like your influencer to showcase what you do.
- Size matters. The cost of using this marketing avenue will vary drastically depending on the influencer’s reach: Nano (1-10K audience), Medium (100K-1M audience), and Mega (1M + audience). Popular influencer marketplaces include Upfluence and TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, which can easily help you filter through what you require.
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3. Email Marketing
Tried and tested countless times and always coming up trumps – even in 2023. Email marketing is now an essential tool for all small businesses for four main reasons:
- Brand Touchpoints
A brand touchpoint counts as one interaction a customer has with your brand. Studies have shown that before a customer commits to your product or service, they have to interact with your brand at least a dozen times (the exception to this being a recommendation from someone they trust).
However, the amount of brand touchpoints needed will actually increase in 2023, so it’s a good idea to utilise this tool in order to keep interactions fresh and consistent.
Automated email sequences will see a big rise as they are the perfect way to get reliable brand touchpoints at regular intervals. They inform, nurture and persuade.
- The ROI is Insane
For every £1 you spend on email marketing, the average ROI is £35! This type of profit is not to be ignored and certainly helps fuel consistent business growth.
- Personalised messages
Personalising emails creates a better experience for your customers. Taking the time to organise your CRM (into first name / last name segments) is well worth it, as personalised emails nurture far quicker and receive much higher read through rates.
This all leads to positive interactions with your brand, which in turn lead to more sales and consistent growth.
- Customer Retention
One of the biggest problems to face marketers in 2022 was customer acquisition costs (CAC), which seems to increase each year with paid media outlets.
With all the focus being held on CAC, inevitably there will be a sudden turn towards customer retention. And rightly so! These are the people who already know your brand, already know what you offer and have already used your services or products. Retention is much more cost effective than acquisition.
Email marketing lets you inform previous customers about the deals you have on, provides them with news about your latest goods or services and also asks for their feedback – which plays a big part of your ‘post-sale’ campaigns.
In order to provide personal, positive and persuasive messages, email marketing is one of the most reliable ways to do it!
Quick Tip for Email Marketing
To get potential customers' contact details (an important step) you will need more website traffic and offer an engaging lead magnet. 2023 will see a much higher standard of lead magnet, utilising 'quizzes', timed challenges, polls, VR tools and interactive videos to really maximise sign-up rates.
4. Automation and AI
Automation
Automation tools save you hours and hours of time – time that’s far better used elsewhere. Self-scheduling, CRM management, profiling, and website analysis are all going to see a rise in 2023. All of these features can be automated and run in the background requiring much less hands-on attention.
Small businesses and start-up, who have less staff then their competitors, can benefit hugely from automation and gain a sharp edge over their competitors.
Artificial Intelligence - Kind Of
When talking about artificial intelligence for digital marketing, there are some tools that work and some that are still a long way from being reliable tools.
Content writing AIs are currently sweeping the market, claiming that they cut down on writing times by generating SEO ready material that’s ready to publish. Well, ‘if it sounds too good to be true…it probably is’.
In reality, AI writing software focuses too much on optimisation rather than engagement which goes against Google’s preferences. For your copywriting to succeed you not only have to engage with your readers, you also need to provoke action by highlighting specific pain points. AI writing software will always fall short until it can truly understand, or at least imitate, empathy.
Having said that, there are still many AI tools that will help businesses generate more successful marketing campaigns. It seems very clear that 2023 will see effective campaigns utilising other forms of Artificial Intelligence: AI generated pictures, chatbots (that guide visitors to the right areas of your site), and cross-platform publication software will all see a rise this year.
5. More Privacy Please
As the whole world embraces digital landscapes, it’s no wonder that privacy is going to be an important issue. There have certainly been enough corporate data leaks to rattle the confidence of most internet users. But this can actually be a powerful selling point in 2023.
Privacy issues now impact user trust more than ever! Britons and Americans seem to have the largest amount of skepticism when it comes to parting with personal data, so emphasising how you collect, store and use their information (while showing genuine appreciation for the trust they’ve given) will give visitors a much more positive experience with your brand. Visitors not only have to know that they control of their own data, they also have to ‘feel’ it.
Websites in 2023 will also need to demonstrate that they are regularly maintained and protected. Having a website that’s fully encrypted is now a standard expectation. Showing Google and your visitors that you take security seriously will benefit your business this year.
Final Tip
In 2023 more automated 'thank you' emails will be sent out explaining how personal information is used. This will also be a good opportunity to show your appreciation for the mutual trust you have created. This will go a long way with your customers.