Is Your Brand Ready for the New Year? Trends to Pay Attention to in 2023
Did you know that combining digital marketing with traditional print ads, can make your branding and marketing efforts 400% more effective? Traditional, offline marketing is an important branding tool to continue, while implementing a variety of digital marketing strategies.
Brands, even small business brands, are urged to implement strategies such as AR, VR, and machine learning tools like those used to chat with customers in real time. These are important and effective technological advances that make a big difference, however, it is crucial not to lose sight of the human side of branding.
Now more than ever before the focus is on the customer in the most intimate and personalized way possible. While technology can provide customer data in great detail, using that data to serve those customers in a meaningful way is the key to positioning your brand for big success.
Customer Experience
It should come as no surprise that superb customer experience is extremely important for any brand’s reputation. But it’s also an important driver in purchasing decisions. In fact, 73% of people say customer experience is an important factor in their buying decisions but only 49% of US consumers say companies provide a good experience.
With that data in mind, there is a great opportunity for brands to set themselves apart.
An easy to navigate website, convenient payment options and process, friendly service, and knowledgeable staff are just a few surface level things that contribute to great customer experience. However, today’s preferences go above all that. Customers value personalization, feeling understood and cared for, a brand image that aligns to their values, and great customer service well beyond the sale.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is considered the foundation of any successful branding strategy. As such, it deserves a great deal of attention and planning.
Brands that use content marketing see 6 times more conversions than brands that don’t. And that’s just one of many compelling statistics that should place a content marketing strategy at the top of your branding priorities.
Making content marketing a priority is just step one. What should your brand focus on when it comes to trends in 2023?
Video content will continue to be king as 54% of audiences prefer video to written content.
Other trends include podcasts, interactive content, and an emerging newer form of content that dives deeper into the why of customers’ needs and wants - intentional content.
While that is helpful data to keep in mind as far as the format of your content, the most important thing to keep in mind is that content marketing should be designed to understand your customers wants and needs and provide them with content they can actually use and rely on.
Influencer Marketing
A modern twist on the old tried and true word of mouth marketing strategy, influencer marketing takes the concept and amplifies it appropriately for the digital era.
Influencer marketing is a collaborative effort between a brand and a person with a significant amount of social influence and audience in a specific industry, section of an industry or even a specialized niche.
This type of collaboration is mutually beneficial as the influencer or brand ambassador gets exposure to a new audience base and the brand gets expanded reach into new audiences.
The key factors to consider when evaluating an influencer to work with are the influencer’s reach or audience size, how engaged the audience is with his/her own content, how relevant is that audience to your brand, and how authentic the influencer is.
For small businesses, looking for a niche influencer with a small but very engaged audience would be most effective.