Top Trends in Digital Marketing You Can Use in Your Business

What are the top online marketing trends to watch out for in 2023? A reliable Chicago digital marketing agency can give you a full list — and more. It can help you create a thorough plan to help launch and scale your business this year.

This article covers five trends:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) to automate tasks and forecast future trends
• Hyper-personalization to make campaigns more efficient
• Visual interaction to deepen customer engagement
• Enhanced user experience (UX) to create a seamless omnichannel experience
• User-generated content (UGC) to build a more authentic brand

Let us discuss how you can use these digital marketing trends below. Let’s go!

Are you looking for a full-service digital marketing agency? See the DAP difference below!

1. AI to Automate Tasks and Forecast Future Trends

Digital marketing AI has been around for years. But it has achieved massive growth this year. For example, ChatGPT hit 1 million users five days after its launch. It then climbed to a billion in three months.

This technology was so impactful that it forced Google to release Bard to counter Bing’s integration of the chat-based platform.

However, you do not have to be a tech giant to benefit from it. For one, AI and search engine optimization (SEO) make good partners, because they automate many processes. It does the following:

• Identifies and prioritizes the most relevant and effective keywords based on user intent.
• Helps create topic clusters and outlines.
• Determines and addresses site speed issues.
• Optimizes images and videos for search engines by analyzing file names, alt tags, and other metadata.
• Provides insights into competitors’ SEO strategies to spot opportunities, such as keyword gaps.
• Assists with implementing structured data markup to improve search engine visibility and understanding of website content.

AI also taps into machine learning for predictive analytics. With it, you can identify purchase patterns, changes in consumer behavior, and future trends. Then, you can leverage this data to overcome marketing challenges, stay ahead of your competitors, and improve customer retention.

2. Hyper-Personalization to Make Campaigns More Efficient

Companies big and small are pouring more money into digital marketing. By 2027, global advertising spending will reach a whopping trillion dollars. It means you might allocate 5% or more to it from your total budget — not a small price to meet your business objectives.

For this reason, hyper-personalization is one of the hot topics in digital marketing in 2023. It takes customer segmentation up a notch, by further breaking down the leads into various categories.

To show you how it works, let us say you are an e-commerce site selling apparel. To do hyper-personalization, you would:

• Collect first-party data on each user’s browsing history, purchase behavior, and social media activity.
• Use the information to create a detailed profile of their preferences and interests.
• From the profile, offer customized product recommendations when they visit your site. If users have previously purchased athletic wear, the page might show them photos of running shoes or fitness accessories.
• Use segmentation to create personalized email marketing campaigns and send targeted emails when they leave shopping carts. Additionally, let them subscribe to specific mailing lists, such as discounts on outdoor gear, or notifications about new arrivals.

Hyper-personalization is hard work, especially when researching, tracking, and analyzing your market. That is why we strongly suggest hiring a Chicago digital marketing agency to get the job done.

But this trend is worth it, because it makes your campaigns more cost-efficient and increases conversion. Because the message resonates with the right audience, it boosts customer loyalty, which reduces customer acquisition costs.

3. Visual Interaction to Deepen Customer Engagement

What do millennials, Generation Z, and Alpha have in common? They are the “super consumers,” accounting for the bulk of today’s spending. They also value — and crave — experience.

You can exploit experiential marketing with immersive visual interaction to deepen your engagement with them. 

Review this table for the different technologies that you can use, as well as popular examples that you can copy:

4. Enhanced UX To Create a Seamless Omnichannel Experience

Today, people get information in multiple ways, from voice assistants to mobile phones and websites. Your job is to ensure that their transition from one touchpoint to another is seamless. 

In other words, their interaction and shopping experiences must be the same whether online or offline (like in your physical store). To do this, apply best practices for user experience (UX) design for digital marketing and SEO: 

• Use the same brand colors, fonts, and imagery across all channels. This way, you can create a recognizable and cohesive brand identity.
• Prioritize the mobile experience. Design for smaller screens and optimize load times. Avoid creating a separate website for desktops.
• Stick to your content's message, tone, and labels.
• Simplify the user interface to make navigation easy and clear. 
• Personalize the user experience based on the user’s behavior and preferences in all channels.
• Utilize micro-interactions, such as animated feedback or hover effects, to make the user experience more engaging.
• Continuously test and optimize the user experience for improvement.

5. UGC To Build a More Authentic Brand

Are your social media goals focused on chasing likes and followers? You might revisit this objective because these metrics might become less important in 2023 and beyond. The reason is authenticity. 

As new generations, especially Gen Z, seek deep connections with brands, they want you to be more transparent and value-oriented. For them, it matters whether you care about the environment, treat your employees fairly, or be honest about your challenges. 

How do you showcase this attribute in digital marketing? With user-generated content (UGC)

Not to be confused with influencer marketing, where someone polishes their personal brand to attract marketing deals, UGC has these essential attributes:

• Creativity
• High engagement level
• Trustworthiness
• Accessibility 

UGC’s global market value can achieve a CAGR of 29.4% from 2023 to 2030. This means more brands plan to add it to their advertising campaigns. Now is the best time to harness it to compete.

Summing Up

What awaits in the digital marketing future? In reality, nobody knows. 

But these trends suggest marketers will continue to use technology to streamline processes. Most of all, they will take a user-first approach to building a sustainable brand and long-term customer relationship.

Digital Authority Partners (DAP), a fast-growing Chicago digital marketing agency, is here to help you integrate these advancements into your advertising strategies. Contact us now for a consultation.