Happy holidays! How are you celebrating? We at Make Your Mark are wrapping up 2023 and the holiday season with this glorious collection of what went right in digital marketing…and a few things that went wrong. Keep reading for a comprehensive look at the best digital marketing insights of 2023, and which digital marketing mistakes you might have made.
Digital Marketing Insights
1. AI Tools
Look, this is probably at the top of everyone’s list of digital marketing insights, no need to check it twice. It’s impossible to ignore the tremendous effect AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Jasper have had on the digital marketing landscape. And those three are just a fraction of the tools currently available to marketers online. It’s not just copywriting and chatbots anymore—it’s video generation, design, task automation, consumer profiling…you name it, and there’s probably an AI tool out there doing it. Pro tip: the more you play around with these tools and get to know how they work, the better you’ll become at integrating them into your process without losing yourself to the novelty of it.
2. Twitter Becomes X
So…this happened. In a slightly confusing and upsetting-to-some move, Elon Musk decided to scrap Twitter and its whimsically perfect bird-shaped logo and replace it with a futuristic-looking letter X. The consequences of that decision are already being felt. The platform has lost around 13% of its daily users since the rebrand. How does this apply to our list of digital marketing insights? For marketers wondering if it’s time to jump ship from X: if you already have a large following, stay. If not, don’t feel bad about cutting the platform out of your social media management.
3. SEO and Google Updates
Just like your wardrobe, Google also refreshes and updates its algorithms and systems. 2023 has seen some significant changes to how Google ranks pages in the search results. There’s been a spam update, increased emphasis on content quality, and a push against unhelpful AI-generated content. It’s not enough to be putting keywords in various places on the page anymore. The question you should be asking while you write is: is this valuable to the user?
4. Video Marketing
It’s not a new statement that many people prefer watching video over reading. What people tend to underestimate is just how much video they’re watching per day, especially when it comes to them via social media. On average, Americans spend about 3 hours a day watching video online, and another 3 hours watching TV. Their time on social media? 2.5 hours a day. That’s…a lot of time! So it makes total sense that marketers have been seriously investing in video marketing to reach a larger audience.
5. Data Privacy
We live incredibly digital lives today, which means there’s a scarily huge amount of our private information just chilling in servers all across the globe. It’s natural that we’ve become more aware and concerned about what companies do with that data, and how they keep it safe. What does that mean for digital marketing? It means that marketers can build brand trust by directly addressing those concerns, especially if they’re a B2B, Fintech, or SaaS company. It’s definitely not uncool to be transparent about your data policies.
6. UGC (User Generated Content)
Influencers don’t get to have all the fun, right? Also, while influencers are still pretty popular for advertising, some people would rather hear from an everyday individual who uses the product. That’s what UGC is: getting content from consumers themselves. That type of content tends to be viewed as more authentic and approachable.
7. Voice Search
“Wait, are you telling me people are too lazy to type these days?” – an old man somewhere.
The answer is…kind of, but that’s simplifying it a lot? Voice search used to be a novelty feature waaaay back in 2011. Now, more than half of smartphone users use the voice technology on their devices; and there are so many more devices that have voice-activated features. TVs, cars, even stoves. Hold on, how is this related to marketing? Voice search affects SEO and target search phrases, for one. A text search might look like “funny cat videos.” A voice search sounds more like “yo gimme some funny cat videos or something.” The looser, more natural way we speak will change how you optimize your content to be visible in voice searches.
Digital Marketing Mistakes
MISTAKE #1: Only using 1 social media platform
For those of you who don’t love social media, I’m sorry to say that it’s really a central part of digital marketing. You need to be on more than one platform. Why? Because your customers use more than one platform! People interact with the internet in different ways. Even if your target audience is 65 years and older, there could be a percentage that prefers LinkedIn to Facebook.
MISTAKE #2: Treating SEO like a numbers game
We touched on this briefly while covering Google updates, but it’s worth reiterating. When you optimize your content, your first thought should be about the value it provides to the reader. Yes, keyword density is important and so on, but that only goes so far. Someone might visit your page, but will they stay on it if your content is some gibberish that mentions the target keyword enough times to rank?
MISTAKE #3: Not personalizing your copy
If you copy-paste the same social media caption for Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, you’re making a mistake. If you send the same email to all 5000 people on your contact list, you’re losing almost all of them right away. People want to feel seen and heard. They want to feel like you understand them and what they want, because it means it’s more likely that you’ll be able to give them what they want. So, take the time to read the room before posting or launching a campaign.
Learn more about the finer points of digital marketing from the experts at Make Your Mark here in our blog.
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