Here at NetElixir, the new year is already on our mind. We wanted to share with you our insights, tips, and trends for your 2023 digital marketing strategy, so we asked our Design, Content, SEO, and Social Media experts what they thought you should know to ensure your e-commerce business is ready for the coming year.
Invest in the Mobile Experience
Heading into 2023, users are tied to their smartphones more than ever, and your e-commerce site needs to be easy to find and intuitive to use on a phone, wherever your customers happen to be when they search. Visual search is increasingly popular, especially among younger users, with many customers likely to use the images results on search to find the product that they want – and increasingly likely to make their purchases from their phones. High-quality, attractive product images with accurate alt-text and content with great SEO will help your site rise to the top of the rankings. Once customers have found your business, it’s important to ensure your site has quick load times and a smooth user experience (UX) on mobile.
Use Customer Feedback to Develop Content
You may not realize it, but when it comes to content creation, you already have a wealth of information available to inform your digital marketing strategy. Look to product reviews, customer feedback, and email campaigns to discover what information your current customers wish they had about your product and business and develop thoughtful, search engine-optimized answers to those questions. Your current customers will thank you and your prospective ones will find you more easily as your content helps your business rise to the top of search results.
Create Content for Multichannel
As you plan your content strategy for 2023, keep in mind the many channels with which your potential customers engage. Whether they find your brand through a search for a specific product, through a post or ad on social media, through reading a review, or directly on your site, customers are likely to research across channels to inform their decision to purchase a product. As they circle through exploration and evaluation (also known to marketers as the “messy middle” of the typical sales funnel), relevant content for every point in the funnel, with actionable next steps, will keep customers moving toward conversion.
This doesn’t mean you need to create unique content for each phase. With Google’s August 2022 Helpful Content Update, search is becoming more focused on prioritizing human-first content over search-engine-first content. Use the same core content idea and adapt it for different media, from blog posts to videos to infographics, that work well for various channels. Exploring the same key topic from different angles can offer meaningful information for your target audience.
Enhance Your Social Media Strategy
The social media landscape – and social media advertising – may be undergoing changes, but it’s as important as ever to meet your customers where they are by creating an engaging and seamless social commerce experience that makes it easy for users to convert to a sale. What does that mean for your business?
- Prioritize short-form video. Whether we’re talking TikTok or Reels on Instagram and Facebook, audiences are turning to short-form video not only for entertainment but also for information – and that includes organic and paid ads. Users spend five times longer looking at a video ad than a static one, and Facebook video ads on average have a lower CPC at $1.86.
- Create engaging, native-feeling ads. It’s not enough to just put out a quick video and hope for the best. Users prefer native ads that don’t break the flow of their experience of their feeds and instead seem like organic content. Your business can take this one step further by creating authentic, immersive, and interactive augmented reality ads. These ads instruct users who click on them on how to interact with the ad and offer users an opportunity to experience your product or service.
- Optimize for AI recommendations. TikTok has created user expectations for relevant AI-selected content based on their in-app habits. In 2023, we expect that AI-recommended posts will infiltrate Facebook feeds, and the push for more content from Pages and people that you don’t follow will give Facebook a much-needed boost.
- Engage with customers via DMs. Brand engagement via direct messages continues to rise, and Meta is looking to feature more tools to help brands tap into this shift. Meta recently highlighted the growth in Click-To-Message ads across Messenger and WhatsApp. In 2023, marketers should expect additional ad options that align with this new form of engagement.
Take Advantage of Trends….
NetElixir’s trend researchers have a few ideas of what design trends we can expect in 2023:
- The retro trend will continue strong, so if it suits your brand, consider using subtle cues to the 90s and other relevant decades in your designs, including colors and fonts.
- We’re seeing more use of realistic-looking photography that doesn’t look overproduced, as it helps brands connect with their customers on a human level.
- Gradients will still be big in 2023, with liquid-looking gradients adding another level to this visually appealing style.
- Tap into the coming metaverse by adopting or creating the sci-fi-augmented, futuristic reality feel that comes with avatars.
- Grab attention with cinemagraphs, still photographs stitched together as a video clip or animated GIF to show very subtle movement.
…But Stay True to Your Brand
From design to strategy, brand authenticity is important to your customers. If your brand tone relates to a current trend, do make the most of it – but don’t force it. Your brand will draw attention by presenting a consistent identity that customers connect with and remember.
Leading with your brand’s values and staying true to them will continue to position your business for success. In 2022, companies like United Airlines, Keystone Light, and Miller Lite tapped into their identities and values to promote on-topic messaging that draws attention to their brand: remember UA’s commitment to carbon neutrality and other environmentally-friendly stances, Keystone Light’s focus on their rural customers’ sense of community and self-sufficiency, and Miller Lite’s emphasis on Americana. In 2023, consider how your brand can explore its own values in ways that capture the interest of potential customers.
Work with NetElixir
Whatever your plans for 2023, NetElixir can help your business develop a digital marketing strategy that will resonate with current customers and connect with new ones. From web development to prepare for the cookieless future and make your e-commerce site more mobile-friendly, to SEO and thoughtful content creation, to engagement with trends, NetElixir’s team of experts will work with you to frame a strategy for success in the new year and beyond.
