While every brand, marketer, and advertiser is waist-deep in their holiday marketing campaigns (as they should be), we are splitting our time between promoting our clients’ holiday sales and thinking about what is on the 2023 horizon.
History has taught us that you can rarely think too far ahead when strategizing your marketing approach. Between a looming economic downturn (or stagnation), shifting social media attention, and budgets getting tighter, now is the time to consider what the marketing chess board looks like for the new year—and get started.
While we are putting together our annual ebook of new year marketing predictions, we wanted to give you a preview of what’s on our minds—to help get your creative juices flowing.
So, let’s jump into some of the opportunities you should be looking into, as well as some of the pitfalls you want to avoid.
Market Harder vs. Putting On the Breaks
Let’s start by addressing the economic elephant in the room—a looming recession. No matter your news source, most are discussing the upcoming recession (or debating if we are already in one).
The short answer to the question “Should you shift into the next gear or hit the breaks altogether?” isn’t so short. If you go all in and just try to outspend your competitors, you could sink the ship. If you hit the brakes, people may not remember you when the storm has passed.
So, here are a few things to consider:
– Some competitors will likely slam on the breaks and exit the (advertising) market for a while. This may make it easier for prospects to find your brand—if you can break through the remaining noise. This shift can also make ad platforms cheaper—less demand means more supply.
– Customers remember brands. During the last downturn in 2008, brands that stopped marketing had a harder time building back their customer base after things started to level out. Even shifting to a brand marketing strategy to stay top of mind will most likely pay off in both the short and long run.
– Putting more time and effort into loyalty-based marketing can go a long way. When times get tough, consumers are more likely to look for lower-priced alternatives, but showing that you are with your customers through the good and bad times (via email nurturing, remarketing, and promotions) can strengthen affinity for your brand and extend overall customer lifetime value.
First-Party Data Will Be Key
Truth #1: Marketing and advertising data is at risk. Truth #2: There is already a way forward.
This at-risk data is called third-party data. If you are running Google or Facebook ads, you are using third-party data. Access to useful metrics like purchase times, devices, interests, demographics, etc., is diminishing or, at the very least, dwindling in accuracy.
It all comes down to data privacy. Google is addressing it by killing off cookies, and Apple’s privacy (iOS 14.5) update upended Facebook ad efforts overnight.
While we 100% support efforts to protect consumers’ data, the numbers also show that customers prefer marketing that is personalized to them. Personalization without data is nearly impossible.
Unless you tap into first-party data—data that your business or brand is collecting firsthand—and if you are an ecommerce company, you are likely collecting this data already and don’t even know it.
Ecommerce CRMs like Shopify are there to record transactions between you and your customers. This customer data (names, emails, numbers, purchases, etc.) is first-party data that you own and can use—ethically.
Your first-party data can be applied to improve Google Ads targeting, build stronger Facebook lookalike audiences, or launch more personalized retargeting campaigns. What makes this type of data even more spectacular is that your competitors can’t replicate it—because it’s specific to your customers.
TikTok Cannot Be Ignored
If you have been waiting to “see what happens with this TikTok thing,” guess what? The market has spoken, and they are getting loud.
TikTok is growing faster than any other platform and is still gaining momentum. It is the sixth largest social platform in the world, was the most-downloaded app in 2021, and is the youngest social platform in recent memory.
Furthermore, this rapid growth is not just because of Generation Z; everyone is jumping on board. In fact, 36% of users fall under the 35- to 54-year-old demographic. So, the use of TikTok with the older generations follows the same adoption process that Facebook and Instagram saw—but at a much faster pace.
This doesn’t mean everyone is heading to TikTok to try out dance trends. Brands and businesses of every size are creating and promoting content that informs, educates, and shows a different side of their brand story.
For example, searching for accounts related to something, you might wonder “Why would anyone want to watch that content?” Let’s take “plumbing,” for example. We see plumbing creators with follower counts ranging from the tens of thousands to millions. Who knew?!
How about law and lawyer-related content? Lawyers can’t spend their time on this “kids’ platform,” right? Wrong! Again, we find active, robust content creators, practitioners, and law firms using the platform to show their expertise and spread the word about their area of law.
With these examples in mind, it’s clear that there is no reason not to be creating content for this platform. And being that there is such a heavy organic component to TikTok, users are constantly scrolling to discover new things—and new brands.
YouTube Shorts Is Growing
We did a whole blog post on this one, but here is the short version (pun intended).
YouTube Shorts is YouTube’s answer to Instagram Reels and TikTok. These are 60-second (max) videos that are intended for vertical mobile viewing.
YouTube has been pushing hard on Shorts—both on the consumption side and on the creator side. Shorts are found using the same search algorithms as regular YouTube videos, so if you have ever uploaded a video on YouTube, you know how the process works.
All this to say that the learning curve is minimal, and they are pretty easy to start creating and uploading.
While most content creators started just chopping up their long-form content and uploading it, the vertical format would mess up the framing of content a lot of the time. So, most have figured out that content needs to be reformatted for vertical viewing or the content needs to be specifically shot for vertical viewing.
What’s the takeaway? Creators are using Shorts to promote products, educate, or even as gateways to their longer-form content—and you can, too. The opportunities are 100% there for the taking, and if you already have content you created in 2022, you can pick your best nuggets, reformat them, and reuse the content in 2023!
More Coming in 2023
We have more trends and tips for 2023 on the way, but you should start thinking about next year right now.
Professional sports teams have a pre-season session to work out the kinks—you should implement the same. Get warmed up and work out your plan of attack before the 2023 season officially starts.
Contact our team today, and we can build a strategy specific to your brand, goals, and budget. Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, Google—we have experts across the board who can check out your 2022 results and point you in the right direction. If you’d like to check out one or two, we have you covered there as well!