Where is marketing headed in 2023? Well, with the onset of new technologies, Instagram’s Reels-first strategy, the Metaverse, a cookie-less world, and many more changes and updates, one of the keywords for this year is “adapt”.
We’ve studied algorithm updates, technological advances, and different social media feature releases to determine the marketing trends you need to be paying attention to for the coming year.
As you read through, we hope you’ll be inspired to experiment and create new and interesting content that resonates with your audience, leads to higher conversion rates, and propels your marketing strategy forward.
With that in mind, let’s dive into the trends to explore how you can practically incorporate some of these big ideas into your strategy for next year.
Trends #1 Tiktok Marketing
Since 2019, TikTok has consistently ranked as one of the world’s most downloaded apps. This remained true throughout 2022, even despite growing concerns about its data harvesting and privacy policies. Still, as it continued to attract users and became the de facto search engine of Gen-Z, TikTok spent the last year strategically courting advertisers with new tools and integrations. Barring any huge hiccups, by the end of 2023, the platform’s relationship with marketers will have hit a new groove.
Along with new partnerships with discovery platform Foursquare and marketing firm NCSolutions, TikTok rolled out a WooCommerce integration in May 2022 to help businesses create and measure their advertising campaigns. Then in April, TikTok built on the experiential appeal of marketing on the platform by introducing interactive add-ons for in-feed ads designed to drive engagement. To help with boosting exposure, the platform launched the contextual advertising program Pulse, giving marketers the opportunity to place ads adjacent to trending, highly-engaging, and relevant content. And finally, TikTok began offering the Follow Me educational experience to help small and medium businesses learn how to best leverage it all.
TikTok shows no signs of slowing down its commitment to advertisers into 2023. Late 2022 updates like Showtimes on TikTok, its movie theater ad experience, point to even more outreach to art and entertainment advertisers. Sony Pictures already saw great success in using the platform to market Spider-Man: No Way Home, according to a report in Deadline. However, setbacks like the limited availability of TikTok Shops still have some marketers holding back. And more concerningly, the FCC ended 2022 still debating whether or not to ban the app outright.
Along with contending with government regulation, one of TikTok’s biggest obstacles may come with building trust on both sides of their ads. When it comes to trust with advertisers, there will be even more scrutiny of the platform’s content moderation policies and processes. On the customer side, scams and 2022 events like the Pink Sauce incident — in which one creator came under fire for her homemade food product — have drawn attention to consumer safety and quality control on the platform.
With so much attention and engagement to be potentially gained from TikTok, jumping into the arena too late may be a costly mistake. According to the company’s own research, 81% of its users leverage TikTok to find new brands, products, and services. Platform support around new features and integrations makes now a particularly easy time for new brands to get involved and experiment with strategy.
And though there are still a number of giant question marks in TikTok’s advertising future, signs point to 2023 being a big year for the platform’s relationship with advertisers. Perhaps more than on any other social platform, TikTok’s speedy evolution demands real-time familiarity from marketers and brands.
Brands that have already jumped into the TikTok ad world will reap the benefits throughout 2023. As they know well, the platform requires its own style of involved content creation. Figuring out your brand’s footprint on the app now will save valuable time and resources in the future as others stumble to keep up with waves of new changes and increasingly platform-savvy consumers.
Mastering content creation for TikTok is no small task. It will be increasingly important for marketers to wield audio in their branding or marketing campaigns. Plus, the quick evolution of trends and jargon on the platform mean marketers that want to stay in conversation with
TikTok audiences will rely even more heavily on social media monitoring.
Additionally, marketers looking to take TikTok by storm will need to take a closer look at their influencer marketing programs and partnerships with content creators. For many, standardizing and streamlining processes with influencer marketing platforms and hubs will be the best way to establish TikTok marketing that is consistent, timely, and efficient.
