Adapting to Change: 5 Major Marketing Trends for 2023

The recent Qatar World Cup has become a trending topic, with feeds flooded by the latest match updates. Much like football tactics need to be adjusted based on the game situation and the opponent, brand marketing is similar. It involves anticipating the trends of the upcoming year in advance and adjusting marketing strategies accordingly. This could include efforts such as short video marketing, online live streaming, and exploring the metaverse.

With the rising cost of customer acquisition, companies need to seek more innovative marketing paths, and the definition of "marketing" itself has become more expansive, far beyond just branding and advertising. So, what changes in marketing trends can we expect in 2023? Based on our customer service experience and industry data, Webpower will offer some predictions.

1. Personalized Interactive Content to Build Brand Stories

In 2023, brands will have a more refined control over their content. A study by Demand Gen shows that brands offering personalized experiences see a 20% increase in sales opportunities compared to their competitors. In the digital age, unique and multi-dimensional brand stories not only help strengthen connections with users and increase user engagement but also improve brand image and build brand equity.

Although many companies have now prioritized content marketing, finding what truly resonates with users remains a challenge. Due to the pandemic, people have reduced outdoor activities and thus have a higher demand for interaction. Therefore, interactive content will become a significant trend in 2023.

According to a survey by Outgrow.co, 93% of marketers believe that interactive content generates 4-5 times more page views and conversions compared to static content. Users are no longer satisfied with passively receiving only sales information. Brands can incorporate interactive SVGs, questionnaires, internal links, CTAs, etc., into their content to allow users to engage and create personal meaning through the experience. This way, user behavior will provide immediate feedback, making it easier to adjust marketing strategies.

In addition to producing their own content, many brands are also incorporating User-Generated Content (UGC) into their strategies. It is known that nearly three-quarters of users trust content created by other users on public platforms, which is why so many people enjoy discovering recommendations on platforms like Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book).

The production of UGC not only provides users with a sense of exclusive achievement but also creates a highly engaged community. Subsequently, brands can acquire a group of "organic promoters" at a lower cost. Therefore, UGC will remain a key focus for brands in 2023, with continued exploration on how to achieve spontaneous, brand-related, sustained, and widespread content dissemination by users.

2. From Scenarios to Ecosystems, Empowering the Entire Digital Chain

According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), the scale of China's digital economy reached 45.5 trillion yuan in 2021, with industrial digitalization contributing 81.7% of this scale. Digital marketing is considered a crucial scenario within the digital economy and is currently in a rapid development phase. From the rapid development seen in the past, it is evident that refined user operations have become a core focus for businesses in a saturated market.

Thus, with the continuous development of China's MarTech industry, more and more service providers are choosing to enter the field. However, it is challenging to integrate across all channels, including the user end, business end, and scenario end, with data silos remaining a significant hurdle to overcome. In the future, China’s MarTech market will exhibit characteristics of comprehensive services, market integration, and in-depth operations. Service providers will build small ecosystems for collaborative efforts, enabling full-chain digital marketing for enterprises. As an all-channel intelligent membership marketing service provider, Webpower integrates SCRM marketing automation product development, sales, and services. Its full-chain digital marketing service product, Dmartech Intelligent Marketing Cloud, brings "customer-centric" marketing scenarios to life.

Moreover, it is evident that as customer acquisition costs rise, the value of SCRM private domain scenario marketing becomes increasingly important in the digital marketing stage in China. It is an indispensable part of the marketing ecosystem. Businesses will focus their MarTech advertising and marketing budgets on SCRM private domain user operations. By leveraging marketing technology, they can enhance support capabilities in complex scenarios, increase user engagement and activity, drive the digitalization of the entire marketing chain, help businesses adapt to market demands, empower commercial decisions, and achieve business growth.

At the same time, the continuous optimization of online technologies and the rise of the metaverse concept have accelerated technological innovation and transformation. During the pandemic, this has fostered online engagement habits among users and customers, effectively promoting the transformation of interaction channels. It has also enriched the technological ecosystem and service directions within MarTech scenarios.

3. Blurring Boundaries: The Metaverse as a New Growth Engine

Earlier, we mentioned the impact of the metaverse on the transformation of marketing technology. In 2022, the normalized remote work mode and the increased difficulty of private domain traffic acquisition forced marketers to seek new growth opportunities. The goal is to generate user interest in products and effectively convey product information amidst the rise of the "home economy."

In recent years, the maturation of technologies such as virtual reality has presented the metaverse as a new opportunity for brands to explore. As pioneers and explorers in marketing, some leading brands have already actively ventured into this field. This is because, from one perspective, the rise of the metaverse embodies the expectations of brands for innovative growth; and it is also the hope of enterprises to leverage emerging technologies to capture consumer attention and foster more interaction.

In the highly popular metaverse, aside from virtual digital humans, NFT marketing is also a crucial strategy for enterprises. With low marketing costs and high attention, NFTs have become a novel tool for engaging and retaining private domain customers. The development of NFTs has extended from its initial foothold in the art world to broader brand applications. Companies are collaborating with artists, creating digital derivatives, and leveraging strategies such as live streaming, mystery boxes, and digital collectibles, thereby enriching their digital assets.

The metaverse is like a roaring train of the times, reimagining the future possibilities for brands and accelerating iterations across various industries. The key challenge for major brands is figuring out how to best utilize this new marketing tool. In order to build brand tone, capture user minds, enhance user loyalty, stimulate physical market sales through digital means, and achieve long-term sales conversion in collaboration with consumers, brands may invest more effort into their metaverse initiatives in the future. Additionally, the application scenarios for digital collectibles will continue to expand, facilitating data flow and rights confirmation in new fields.

4. The Private Domain 2.0 Era: Intelligent Digitalization Enhancing Omnichannel Marketing

In a recent Tencent financial report, it was revealed that the number of daily active accounts on mini programs surpassed 600 million, with a year-over-year growth of over 30%, and the daily usage frequency increased by more than 50%. Nowadays, many brands have integrated mini programs with their membership systems, creating a more comprehensive retail ecosystem. The lightweight operation of mini programs provides a better customer experience and supports a wider range of commercial and public service applications.

However, as more brands enter the private domain space, the rising costs of SCRM private domain operations cannot be overlooked. It is reported that over 80% of merchants state that the costs of private domain layout have increased by an average of 40% compared to the initial setup. Therefore, refined and precise operations are the future. Due to limited in-house technical capabilities, some brands need to select suitable technology service providers to help improve the efficiency of traditional operational processes and compensate for human resource limitations. On this efficient foundation, leveraging SCRM and MA to focus on refined user operations and marketing, integrating all-channel data, and making intelligent SCRM private domain operations a reality becomes feasible.

Webpower leverages cross-channel integration, user profiling, tagging systems, tag scoring, and user nurturing, along with a series of operations to achieve multi-channel reach and form a marketing closed loop. This approach uncovers the full lifecycle value of users, helps brand enterprises deepen their membership systems, and accumulates proprietary data assets.

Today, SCRM private domains have already evolved from the group-building 1.0 era to the 2.0 era, characterized by online and offline integration and public-private domain synergy. The boundaries between channels are beginning to blur, allowing brands to explore new SCRM private domain marketing paths through different user touchpoints. For example, brands can use automation tools to collect, clean, and integrate data, build tagging systems, and segment user groups. This data can then be applied to downstream scenarios such as data analysis, ad placements, and corporate strategy formulation, maximizing the utility of private domain traffic and enhancing omnichannel intelligent digital marketing.

Additionally, the future technological ecosystem will become more open, with technology service providers working towards ecosystem co-construction and reducing technical barriers. This will achieve optimal matching of people, products, content, channels, scenarios, and goals. It will expand the service boundaries and make private domain strategies more diverse and engaging.

5. Emphasizing Privacy and Security to Redefine Customer Experience

All of the trends we mentioned above are closely tied to user information protection and data security, be it emerging privacy computing in blue ocean markets or virtual reality technologies in scenarios governed by the Personal Information Protection Law. It has now been a year since the enactment of the Personal Information Protection Law, and as noted in our previous articles, some multinational companies are increasingly engaging with domestic MarTech products to ensure compliance with local data regulations while maintaining autonomy.

The collection and utilization of personal information can be considered a "justifiable need" for digital marketing. However, for consumers, a poor privacy experience can be nearly as damaging as having their data stolen. This is enough to make 43% of them switch to another brand.

In the future, as brand marketing becomes increasingly competitive, personalized marketing will be more important than ever. Correspondingly, user expectations for personalized experiences will also rise. Therefore, companies need to employ intelligent marketing cloud products, using the "notice-and-consent" principle as the fundamental rule for personal information protection and the precondition for handling user data. This approach allows for the collection of customer data and real-time strategy adjustments based on customer preferences and behaviors, thereby creating a personalized experience.

73% of people state that customer experience is a crucial factor in their purchasing decisions. The growth of online content has empowered consumers, making them no longer passive in learning about products. They are not waiting passively for brands to tell them how great a product is; instead, they proactively seek information through various channels. The tightening of user privacy policies is pushing the industry towards more standardized marketing. Therefore, to provide better personalized experiences in the future, brands must integrate customer experience as a significant consideration across all channels and aspects of their marketing strategies.

As 2022 draws to a close, have brands developed long-term and sustainable marketing competitiveness? And in the coming new year, what emerging marketing trends will be worth exploring? Webpower will continue to stay attentive, evolving to meet changes, gaining insights into customer needs, deepening the understanding of business, and continuously enhancing the capabilities of its intelligent marketing cloud products to bring better customer experiences!