With costs rising it’s important now more than ever to get the most out of your marketing spend, so we’ve rounded up the top three digital marketing trends of 2023 to help small businesses stand out online. We’ve chosen our top three trends, not only because they are simple for small businesses to implement, but if you continue to work on them they will benefit your business in years to come.
- Publish valuable content
2023 looks to be the year where quality content is put first. This 2023 digital marketing trend is actually not new at all, yet it’s something that has and continues to be what we believe is extremely important to the success of your digital marketing activities and that’s publishing valuable content. One of the best tips we can give small businesses is to avoid salesy content where possible and to move towards content that your audience really cares about. Having your own blogs and original content on your website that’s helpful to your audience is vital if you want to stand out. Also don’t be afraid to share content created by others on your social media channels if it would benefit your followers. Not only will this save you from having to create original content each time, but it actually shows that you care about your customers by giving them content that’s important to them, no matter where it came from.
This year there is set to be a shift for businesses to move away from placing importance on the number of followers they have on social media to sharing content that truly matters. Digital marketing expert Neal Schaffer says: “Since COVID we’ve seen a new social media culture that focuses not on the number of followers, but on the content itself”. Helpful content is not just for sharing on social media, it needs to be published on your website too to help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google published a ‘helpful content update’ in summer 2022, where it says that to stand out in search results, businesses must create ‘more original, helpful content written by people, for people’. Creating valuable content for SEO purposes is something that we are very passionate about at Q Social Media. It’s also a whole other topic in itself, and one that we will be discussing in our next blog, so please keep an eye out for that.
Here’s our top tips to consider when creating or sharing valuable and helpful content:
- Put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. What do they care about, what will help them? Then create content around those subject areas
- Is your content written by subject matter experts? If not then it should be as Google ranks this highly on websites. It’s also a great opportunity to show off your team and therefore your business as a whole, by having team members write a blog for example around their own area of expertise, or you could team up with an influencer and guide them on creating content and have them share it to their (relevant) audience
- Give your audience what they need, but Keep it relevant to your business. All of your content should be relevant to your business in some way. For example, say you own a bike repair shop and you want to run a competition on your social media channels. You may think that giving away a John Lewis gift voucher will help attract people, and while it may gain likes and shares, it could be the wrong audience. So giving away something like a free bike health check will ensure that you are getting your business in front of the exact audience that you need – people that own bikes.
2. Look out for signals from your audience
This 2023 trend ties in nicely with the above and that is to look out for signals from your audience, in other words what are they asking for? Being able to analyse digital marketing data such as the number of new followers and website visits is one of the reasons digital marketing is so great for small businesses, but actually knowing what your audience wants and providing it, will set you apart. If you take a look, your audience is literally telling you what they want from you. You can see this in your Facebook, Google and Trust Pilot reviews, in customer service emails and in conversations on social media and so on. Find out what they want and provide it in the form of content (as well as what you are offering them through your products or services). If for example you don’t have many followers on social media or Google reviews yet, then take a look at your competitors’ reviews and what their audience like and dislikes about their business.
3. Team up with influencers and content creators
You may be tempted to leave this out of your strategy when times are tough, but thinking about the points above it’s great to have others talking positively about your business, and you can do this through an influencer partnership. Again, influencer marketing is nothing new, but more and more smaller businesses are jumping on this trend. You don’t have to approach someone with a huge following, just someone that aligns with the values of your businesses and who’s audience you can help with your products or services.
As you can see, these three trends have all been around for a while, but that only shows how vital it is for small businesses to be authentic and helpful to their online audience, in order to turn them into loyal customers.
Finally, another 2023 trend we could see working well for small businesses when researching keywords for new content is to include low search volume keywords. Rather than competing for online space with keywords that are already popular, the idea behind this trend is to get ahead before they become popular. A great way to do this is say for example if you are writing content for a page on your website, or writing a blog is to choose some popular keywords and some that are low volume and (seamlessly) incorporate those keywords into the wording.
Google updates
There’s also some Google updates that we thought you should know about to help with your digital marketing in 2023.
Last summer a new version of Google Shopping Ads called Performance Max (or PMax) went live and this year will be all about optimising your PMax campaigns. This version of Shopping Ads is perfect if you want your business to appear across all of Google’s platforms, including YouTube, Gmail, Shopping, and Search. It’s a great advertising option if you have specific conversion goals such as leads or sales. To increase conversions, the key is to break out campaigns by product categories, so that each campaign is highly targeted and to update the Audience Signals, which is a feature that allows you to suggest customer segments. This helps Google’s learning algorithms to show your ads to the right people.
In July 2023 Google is launching a new version of Google Analytics. Google Analytics 4 will collect event based data (a method of tracking and analysing interactions between users and your products) from websites and apps to better understand the customer journey. This new version takes into account ‘cookieless’ measurement (the use of website cookies where users accept or decline their online behaviour being tracked is going away – we will no longer be able to track them). If you would like to set up Google Analytics 4, click here.
If you need expert support with your digital marketing in 2023 please get in touch with us at Q Social Media.
