Marketing in 2023: focus on inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is often contrasted with outbound marketing. The latter is aimed at massively stimulating sales, and is perceived by consumers today as an annoying nuisance. All those annoying cold calls, mass advertising and inbox-clogging email campaigns.

In contrast, the goal of inbound marketing is to gain the attention and trust of specific potential consumers. This approach aims to attract their attention by creating content that interests them and engaging them in interaction with the brand through relevant and useful experiences. Its goal is to interest potential consumers and accompany them from the moment of interest formation to the selection and purchase of a product or service.

In the long term, inbound marketing is more cost-effective than outbound marketing because it leverages the power of the Internet and social media to reach and interact with potential consumers. Content created and shared in this way continues to live and promote your ideas for many years, providing a stable return on investment.

Overall, inbound marketing today is a more strategic and effective approach to demand generation as it meets the needs and preferences of modern consumers and uses technology to reach and engage them in a cost-effective manner. Nearly half (48%) of marketing teams reported about increasing spending on inbound marketing in 2022 and expecting budget growth in 2023.

The share of spending on demand generation through opinion leaders occupies a significant place in marketing budgets and continues to grow.

As part of the 2022 Global Survey of Marketing Agencies and Brands 39% percent of respondents said they invest between 10 and 20% of their marketing budget in this area; 5% invested more than 40%.

Every year there are new social media platforms, new types of content, and new ways for brands to interact with their potential customers. With the social media landscape changing so quickly, it is important that selected influencers respond quickly to the changes by increasing their value to brands, expanding their audience and attracting new potential customers.

TikTok is the fastest growing social network.

TikTok is a relatively recent addition to the social media landscape. But the video sharing app has already emerged as a reliable marketing channel. The TikTok app has 3.5 billion installations and over 1 billion monthly active users who spend more than 1.5 hours daily watching videos. Top TikTok influencers have over 100 million followers. And it's very tempting to involve them in promoting your products or services. However, the cost of services from mega influencers may not always fit into your budget, especially if you are just starting your project. Therefore, it is also worth paying attention to opinion leaders with relatively small audiences.

Instagram is the leading platform for influencers.

While TikTok is gaining more attention from marketers, Instagram remains the leading platform for influencer marketing around the world. Not only has the app become a common way to discover influencers, it also allows you to directly connect with potential partners through the app's messenger. Instagram offers a variety of formats that creators can use to promote a brand's product or service, from photos and tags to stories and reels. In addition, brand websites can be directly linked or accessed through a dedicated shopping tab, highlighting the platform's increased focus on brand collaborations.

YouTube – long videos and deep content

When it comes to long-form video content, YouTube is the first port of call for both users and influencers. With millions of internet users browsing the platform every day for music videos, tutorials or vlogs, marketers are using YouTube as an important platform to promote their ideas. The length of videos sets YouTube apart from other social networks, with some creators embedding advertising content into 30-minute or even hour-long videos. Because it can require high production costs and mega-influencers have nine-figure subscriber counts, with the average cost of reaching 100,000 viewers being around $2,000, the price for a sponsored YouTube video can reach five figures.

Marketing through micro influencers

Can't afford to hire a celebrity with millions of followers? It's okay - work with micro influencers. Micro influencers are social media opinion leaders with a small following (usually thousands to tens of thousands of people).

Over 56% marketers investing in influencer marketing are working with micro influencers today.

Despite having a smaller audience, their posts often contain more useful information and, because of this, achieve higher levels of engagement with their followers.

Because micro-influencers are still considered “regular” people (as opposed to hard-to-reach celebrities), their audience is actually more likely to trust their opinions and recommendations.

For example, Rosie aka The Londoner on TikTok , is a popular travel and lifestyle influencer with over 240k followers. The profile post image below shows that with almost 32,000 likes, which means 13% of engagement.

The takeaway is that while it's tempting to look only at follower counts when determining whether an influencer is a good fit for your brand, remember that true influence depends on the level of engagement (clicks, follows, and purchases).

Involving micro-influencers will help minimize advertising costs per action while expanding your reach. While their follower base may not be as large as that of celebrity influencers, they can have a greater impact on every action taken. Micro-influencer marketing is expected to grow at a faster rate compared to traditional influencer marketing.

In conclusion, influencer marketing is largely used in the B2C and D2C market. however, nearly 40% of B2B marketers also plan to use influencer marketing more in the future.

What does it mean to have exceptionally good customer service? Automated telephone systems? Chatbots on the site? Detailed user manuals? They make the customer support team's job easier, but they don't always meet the needs of consumers, especially if they have a unique or urgent problem. In this situation, customers don't want to click on a series of irrelevant options or read useless FAQs.

They want to talk to the person as soon as possible, and guess where they go to do this? To social media. Mobile devices have given consumers the ability to search, shop and discover 24/7 availability of services, forcing companies to rethink the customer journey.

According to the latest Sprout Social Index™ research, 60% brands agree that personal/direct messages play an important role in their customer service strategy. In addition, 55% brands are using direct messaging for marketing purposes, demonstrating the enormous opportunity that social commerce provides. 79% customers saythat they prefer live service options such as chat and private messages. Instant messaging gives you the ability to respond and solve problems instantly. Bots and automation help you quickly solve known common problems. However, the personal touch that is based on real human conversation cannot be replaced by a bot.

Messaging offers a brand experience that suits modern lifestyles. Customers get the ability to interact with businesses easily and conveniently, and businesses get a cost-effective and more meaningful way to connect with customers.

It's no coincidence that this trend comes at a time when many social media platforms, namely Instagram and Facebook, are expanding their e-commerce capabilities. For this reason, providing customer service on these platforms will become even more important.

Consumers are spending more and more time on mobile devices. 60.9% of website traffic on the Internet comes from mobile devices. 92.1% Internet users access the Internet using a mobile phone. There are 4.32 billion active mobile internet users. By 2025, there will be more than 1 billion 5G connections worldwide.

The shift to increased smartphone use starting in the early 2000s meant that advertisers and marketers had to adjust their strategies and campaigns accordingly to accommodate mobile devices. For example, companies that didn't have a mobile-optimized website risked losing valuable information about Google search queries. This is because in 2015, Google changed its algorithm so that more mobile-friendly websites received priority placement for search queries made on mobile devices.

Another lesson marketers had to learn was that smartphones are not only receivers but also transmitters of information, effectively creating a network effect.

Smartphone use will only increase as more people rely on them. Understanding how and when consumers use smartphones is critical for companies when setting up their advertising and marketing campaigns. As smartphone data collection and analysis technologies continually become more sophisticated, the speed and relevance of advertising and marketing campaigns will become increasingly important. The key is to reach consumers with the relevant message at the right time through the appropriate mobile channels.

Consumers actively resist advertising in all forms. They fast-forward through commercials using DVRs, eliminate ads entirely by using streaming services, and install ad blockers on their laptops and mobile devices.

How can a marketer overcome these obstacles and get their message across to potential consumers? As practice shows, the best way to attract consumers is to create circumstances that they are happy to be a part of.

The goal here is to create a lasting impression for consumers that they will want to share with others. It will increase their loyalty to the brand and make them want to buy the product or service. You're not advertising a product—you're letting consumers see and feel what their life will be like with it. You create an association between your brand and corresponding positive emotions.

Study Freeman Global Brand Experience Study reports that a third of CMOs plan to allocate between 21 and 50 percent of their budget to experiential marketing over the next few years.

About 65% of consumers believe that live events and product demonstrations helped them understand the product better than any other method.

New immersive technologies are opening up new opportunities for experience marketing as they mature and become cheaper. For example, MasterCard in collaboration with Swarovski capitalized on this fact by creating a virtual shopping experience that gives customers the opportunity to see what luxury Swarovski decorative items would look like in their home environment and purchase them while in a virtual environment.

However, AR/VR are still waiting for their time, which will come with a decrease in the cost of the corresponding solutions.

Whether it's a software company, a bank, a government agency, or a lemonade stand, every business runs on data. It is the lifeblood of everything related to marketing, sales, service and more.

But when valuable information is misused or falls into the wrong hands, it leads to severe distrust in the business and potentially exploited consumers.

In the world of marketing, data matters to more than just you as a marketer or business owner. Consumers also consider their data valuable and do not want to allow it to be used uncontrollably.

Data privacy is changing marketing (perhaps forever)

Access to personal data will become more and more difficult. Apple has changed the way it collects information in its new operating system iOS14; Several browsers have disabled third-party cookies, and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other similar laws are becoming increasingly strict.

GDPR is the EU's attempt to give consumers more control over their data. Organizations must ensure that they collect data legally and securely, and that those who collect and manage that data protect it and respect consumer rights.

Complying with GDPR guidelines may seem like a burden, but the penalty for non-compliance will feel much heavier; fines range from €10 million to 4% of the company's annual global revenue.

And - GDPR is not the only organization enforcing privacy requirements in 2022. In fact, companies like Google and Apple are now protecting user data as well.

In 2021, the launch of Apple iOS14 allowed iPhone and iPad users to determine which apps are allowed to use their data for advertising. The Apple Mail app for iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey Apple has virtually limited the ability to collect user data for mass mailings. More details about the changes can be found here

Google has announced that it will phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of 2024, joining a growing list of browsers ditching the notorious tracking technology.

Ultimately, companies and government organizations are increasingly looking to give users more choice when it comes to sharing their data. While this protects consumers' interests, companies that need personal data to target marketing campaigns will have to find alternative strategies if they lose access to critical information.

The best, and perhaps only, way to solve this problem is to create an outstanding online presence with unique content and a well-structured strategy for gaining access to consumer data, focused on its comprehensive protection and privacy.