Whether you are a start-up, an SME or a multinational corporation, promoting your goods and services is crucial to ensure higher sales and revenue, and digital marketing is the best way to do so. That way, you can market your business through the digital medium. 

Digital marketing has become a massive part of any company, and for a good reason. The only other significant alternative to digital marketing is traditional marketing, and the statistics from the past few years have shown a massive shift to the digital option. What’s better is that it costs significantly less to promote the business through digital marketing as compared with traditional mediums. 

Once you are settled on using digital marketing for your brand promotion, the best way to keep your marketing ideas fresh is by following the latest trends. Every year there are several trends in digital marketing. Some stay relevant for years to come, and others die down as fast as they come up. So it is imperative you choose carefully. 

Here are a few digital marketing and web design trends we think will be dominant in the near future.

Smaller Networks Will Become Popular for Ads

When discussing social media networks, the platforms that usually come to mind are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc. But there are several other smaller networks that can help you reach thousands, if not millions, of potential customers. A few examples of these smaller platforms are Quora, Periscope, Peanut, Ello, Vimeo, Triller, etc. Platforms like these don’t have too many built-in advertising features like in bigger ones like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. However, they can help you promote your products and services quite effectively. 

Now you might be wondering why to promote on these smaller platforms when you can use the bigger ones instead. Well, there are several reasons for the same. 

One of the first reasons you should consider these platforms is you will be like a big fish in a tiny pond, unlike on the more giant platforms, where you will just be the opposite. So you can build a good following and generate revenue in a shorter time. That would also result in more personal connections, which result in an increase in sales. 

More and more people are starting to recognize the importance of smaller networks. So one of the first future marketing trends we are going to predict for 2023 and beyond is the smaller networks being picked up more often by digital marketing companies.  

Video Content Will Continue To Dominate

Nowadays, paid video-based marketing ideas have become quite popular on almost all platforms, be it video-based platforms like Youtube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, etc. or hard-core social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc.

Videos help showcase the brands as well as their products and services in a much better way compared to standard digital marketing strategies. A short 2-3 minute video on social media platforms can explain what a company is trying to do better than a 2-3 page write-up on it.

Moreover, anyone from the company with a basic understanding of the product or service can explain it through a video, so there is no need to hire professionals every time.

Moreover, the content will gain much traction if you hire digital marketing experts to devise the video strategy. That’s why we predict video-based marketing will not only continue to survive but will begin to dominate the digital marketing space.

Paid Advertising Will Become a Necessity

Digital marketing is broadly divided into organic marketing and pair (or inorganic) marketing. Organic marketing is a type of marketing that uses strategies to promote products or services through unpaid channels like unpaid tweets, unpaid posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., ranking the web pages on the SERPs on the top through SEO, and so on.

Basically, you are promoting something without paying for it. On the other hand, there is inorganic or paid marketing. In this type of marketing, you will have to pay to promote the products through paid tweets and ad posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. You can also use paid SEO for guaranteed top positions for your web pages on the SERPs. 

One common misconception about paid advertising is that it can be costly. But when people say this, they forget that the user has more control over their budget, ad format, who views these ads, etc. So it’s very easy to monitor how much you have spent so far and what kind of output it has delivered. Based on that, you can either stop the ads, keep them going or increase the spending. 

There is no denying the fact that paid marketing delivers better results. So, more companies are starting to adopt this strategy rather than the organic one to ensure they get better click rates and conversion rates. That’s why one of the emerging trends in marketing is more focused on paid marketing, and it will definitely carry on to the next year. 

Reaching New Customers Will Become The Primary Goal

The primary aim of any digital marketing company is to increase the sales and revenue of the business. Lack of Clear Goal-Setting is one of the most common digital marketing blunders when planning a long-term digital marketing strategy. To achieve this goal, not only do you have to work on retaining the current customers, but also constantly try to attract new customers.

Till now, the companies’ main goal has always been the former. However, there is a good reason to believe that will keep your business going but won’t help you expand the reach and improve the revenue. 

You might have heard great risk delivers even greater rewards. If you translate to the business, it means you might get better sales and revenue, along with better ratings from your target audience when you try to reach out to new customers. The risk would be losing some of the current customers, but it may help you achieve better progress towards success. Plus, there is a good chance your new ideas might not only attract new customers but also make your current customers happy. 

So nowadays, more and more digital marketing companies are focusing on reaching out to new customers rather than just working on keeping the current ones happy. We predict this will be one of the future marketing trends to keep an eye on. 

Short-form Video Platforms Will Become Huge

It all started in 2013 when Vine brought out the 6-second video format. In the world of 1.5 to 2.5 hours and even 3-hour movies, no one really understood what they were supposed to do in 6 seconds. But soon, some excellent videos started surfacing on Vine that told inspiring stories, shared great insights and made people laugh out loud, which made the platform ultra-successful. 

Nowadays, several short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, etc., are available to showcase your talents and products. These platforms and apps are used by more than 1.5 Billion people worldwide. Moreover, it has been estimated by experts that the ad revenue on short video platforms will be more than $10 Billion in 2022. 

That’s why you understand it would not be wise to exclude these platforms from your digital marketing strategy. So when you hire digital marketing experts, make sure to tell them to promote your brand on TikTok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, etc. as well.

Augmented Reality Will Become More Mainstream

Although it was invented in 1968, augmented reality became popular in the early 2010s, and most people experienced it in full swing in the Pokemon Go era. Kids were amazed at the technology, leading to a massive hike in Pokemon’s popularity. You might have seen how expensive the mint-condition Pokemon trading cards are. The experts believe this sudden shift in interest has a lot to do with Pokemon Go. 

Nowadays, so many eCommerce websites and applications use augmented reality to showcase their products in real life. One of the best examples is Adidas. A few years ago, they added the AR feature to their app. By just tapping on the feature and pointing the phone camera towards their feet, they could see how the shoe would look on their feet. It made the decision to buy the shoes so much easier. 

Another company that recently added this feature is Lenskart. You can now check how a pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses would look on you, which eliminates the need to visit the eyewear store. 

With the AR feature, customers tend to buy the products instantly rather than procrastinating till their store visit. 

That’s why more and more businesses are looking to hire digital marketing experts to find ways to somehow include augmented reality into their websites or applications, and we predict AR to become one of the biggest web design trends in the future.

More Brands Will Incorporate Social Listening

It is crucial for any brand or business to listen to its customers and understand what’s good with its products and services and what’s not. So every digital marketing company suggests its clients incorporate social listening in their development strategies. 

Social listening is a process of constantly monitoring the various social media channels for mentions related to your business, brand, products and services and analyzing them to understand people’s opinions. After sifting through the mentions, you can choose which to act upon. Although, indeed, you can not make everyone happy, you can surely try to make yourself and your brand the best there is.  

Often people post their complaints, issues or opinions about a particular company on Twitter. Sometimes the company addresses the issues and appreciates the opinions, which results in the customers having a positive affirmation about the brand. But if the company ignores or doesn’t respond back to the customer, it results in a bad image towards the brand.

That’s why social listening is going to be one of the emerging trends in marketing that more and more brands are going to incorporate in the years to come. 

Social Media Will Remain Popular

Social media is one of the biggest parts of everyone’s lives. More than 4 Billion people worldwide use social media every day for almost 2.5 hours on average. So you can imagine the kind of reach social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., can provide to a business. 

So many smaller companies have been able to scale up their business at a minimum investment with the help of social media-based markets like Facebook Marketplace. They can sell their products through their socials at little to no commissions. 

That’s why we think one of the most significant emerging trends in marketing is the use of social media for brand promotion.

Local Targeting Will Become More Prevalent

Often, people in business know who their real customers are. They can be of a particular gender, age group, profession, or even city. In that latter circumstance, local targeting is the best way to go forward. When it comes to organic marketing strategies, you can hire digital marketing developers to implement local SEO. But when it comes to social media marketing, you can try local targeting methods like geotagging the posts. 

Geotagging lets you add the location to the post. For example, if you are posting promotional content for your product or service, the location can be your business. So when people click on the post, they’ll know where your business is located and how they can get there. This strategy has been especially helpful in the case of food-based businesses because people love exploring new places to eat. Moreover, it can be quite beneficial with respect to those people who like to shop locally rather than going to a different city.

So the dominance of local targeting strategies is going to be one of the future marketing trends.

Using Social Media for Customer Service

We’ve already seen how social media can be beneficial for social listening and active marketing. But there is another thing your company can use it for, customer service and support. 

Nowadays, when someone has an issue with a product or service, one of the first things they do is leave a tweet about it. Think about it; you must have done it too. Most of the bigger companies reply by either answering the query or issue or asking the person to reach out to them via direct message and explain the issue in detail. After that, they can resolve the issue with the customer privately. That is one of the best ways to perform customer service. You don’t need a separate chat box or a consumer forum for it. 

That’s why we predict it is going to be a rapidly spreading trend in digital marketing.

Conclusion

There are trends in every industry, and staying on top of them keeps your company relevant in the business. They will help you improve your sales and revenue. 

So keep them in mind and design your next digital marketing strategy accordingly. We hope this blog has been useful in boosting your digital growth.

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The post Digital Marketing Trends: Top 10 Predictions for 2023 & Beyond appeared first on Linkody’s Blog.