Digital Marketing Trends For 2023

With 2023 visible on the horizon, we look at the top industry trends to watch out for if you want to stand out in tomorrow’s digital marketing space.

GPT-4 and the rise of “smart” chatbots

When Silicon Valley-based OpenAI released Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) in 2020, its ability to create human-like natural language shocked the world. As the world’s most sophisticated AI language model, GPT-3 can write compelling poetry, prose, and dialogue with a basic user request.

In 2023, we could see the release of the long-awaited GPT-4. Although AI-based language processing has come a long way in recent years, there are still some setbacks. Chatbots powered by GPT-3 still don’t pass the Turing test, and many consumers hate having a bot handle their support inquiries.

With GPT-4 on the horizon, chatbots are about to see a quantum leap in their development. Once chatbots can produce language indistinguishable from a human, with all our emotional nuances and subtle interpretations, chatbots will take over. 

We may even see GPT-4 chatbots completely replace human support agents. Savvy entrepreneurs will keep an eye out for new GPT-4 based chatbot developments and embrace them when it comes.

Hyper-personalization

In Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, a person’s name is said to be the sweetest and most important sound in any language to them. He wasn’t wrong.

Marketing campaigns should reflect this trend. Emails and SMS that don’t include your prospect’s name are a huge turn-off. Since third-party cookies are being phased out, requesting your prospect’s name and other identifying information is important when they sign up. 

Cookies are slowly becoming a thing of the past, so collecting personalized user data is something you will increasingly have to do on your own.

More mobile images first

Who doesn’t love powerful visual content like infographics, reels, and informative videos? For many of us, this is how we prefer to learn rather than through long walls of text. Increase your visual content production if you want to compete in the information space of 2023 and, more generally, in a world with increasingly shorter attention spans, currently just 8.25 seconds.

Optimizing your visual content for mobile devices should always be a priority. Desktop visual production should be an afterthought. These days, the vast majority ( almost 54% ) of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and this percentage will increase in 2023. So, keep vertical and mobile-optimized images at the top of your content schedule.

Clips, Reels and videos

We cannot ignore the enormous influence that TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels have had on the industry in recent years. With TikTok nearly doubling its monthly users by 2022 to almost 2 billion, its influence will likely continue to rise in the coming year.

Ideally, create short, vertical video content from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Long video content has its place on YouTube, but to unlock the true viral potential of your videos, it’s best to shorten and optimize them for mobile. The more short vertical videos you produce, the higher the chances of going viral and having your content shared widely.

Elevate interactivity

Social media marketing should remain at the centre of your marketing strategy in 2023. Instead of a simple 4 x 3 image post, create more interactive content that engages your audience with a question. For example, you can use the following Instagram features in your story content:

1. Center.
2. “Ask a question” widgets.
3. Questionnaires.
4. Rating sliders.

Including interactive content in your social media campaigns is a very effective way to gain engagement and keep your audience glued to your brand.