2023 Marketing Changes RANKED

Key Takeaways

the first start for 2023 has been an exciting and let's be honest quite terrifying one for most marketers now the dust is settled we're going to go through this year's announcements and work out which ones marketers should be prioritizing and which ones we can leave at least for a bit we're not going to go into loads of detail on each of these topics because we have videos that cover them all in more detail but we're going to be putting the announcements into five categories industry shaking too big to ignore worth your time keep an eye on it and don't stress yet let's go all right let's start with AI because it's been a seriously Hot Topic for the first half of 2023. there have been a ton of AI announcements we're probably the biggest and most significant one has been chat GPT yeah yeah sure child gbd technically came out in 2022 but it's really ripped the world apart in 2023. why Chuck gbt has been so significant as it's really brought AI into the Public's Consciousness and into a lot of marketers workflows not only are marketers using charge EBT on a daily basis to do a whole bunch of different tasks but we now have search engines testing out their own implementation of genitive AI into search results because of that it has to go into our top tier not long after Chad gbt became popular open AI announced their partnership with Bing to bring chat gbt like chat into Bing search results binge at Now Bing chat was the first time that our Sarge marks has got to see what search results with generative AI included could look like and the small amounts of data that Microsoft have provided since then have given us a glimpse into how searches Behavior might change over time now whilst Bing chat is far from perfect is still big after all it did push Google into trying out some tests in its own search engine and for that reason alone Bing chat also belongs in Industry shaking determined not to be too Left Behind Google allows its rival to chat GPT otherwise known as Bard it also announced that it was going to be bringing generative AI into search results through sge or search genitive experience kind of like Bing chat sge wants to answer the searcher's question in the search results using large language model the goal is that the Searcher doesn't actually need to click through to a website in order to get the answer that they need sure you do still have the option to click on websites and you can ask follow-up questions but really what Google is trying to do is answer the query in the search results now this one's a little bit tricky because the technology and the potential are massive definitely industry shaking so where does it sit in our tier list well at the moment SGA how do you say it sucks really it's pretty rubbish it openly plagiarizes it doesn't cite its sources and a lot of the time it's not even as useful as the featured tip it's supposed to replace but it still needs to go in Industry shaking because for many businesses search is one of their top sources of traffic and this is a huge change in the world of search Ste will continue to evolve and improve hopefully and if and when Google does release it this is gonna cause shock waves so for that reason industry shaking last in this section we have ai ad Generation Now us marketers have been using AI in ads for quite some time these AI ad creation tools look like they're going to becoming more commonplace as Google a meta build them into their core ad product and for the perspective of these ad platforms anything that just brings us closer just putting our credit card into Google or meta and just saying go and create all my ads for me is great now for Marxism is not quite that simple whilst these AI ad generators are useful for getting something created really the output that they're creating at the moment is still very very mediocre it's bag in the middle of that bell curve so if you've been used to churning out terrible ads but doing okay because your competitors ads were even worse well guess what your competitors ads are now going to be mediocre so you're going to have to be at least mediocre to compete of course if you're already running great ad images and great ad copy then these tools are unlikely to affect you really the impact that we're seeing these tools having is bringing up the lowest quality ads to make them at least average as the use of these tools proliferates there is a chance that consumers become a bit blinded to the sort of AD creator that AI tools generate so whilst this is an important area we're going to put it in made some waves rather than industry shaking because actually for a lot of advertisers creating amazing ads this hasn't made much of an impact of course AI isn't the only thing to have come out in 2023 there's also been some massive news around the platforms that we marketers use on a daily basis and by the way if you want some help with your digital marketing go to exposureninja.com to request a free website a marketing review the team will take a look at your website your digital marketing and they'll put together a magical plan to help you over the next six to 12 months to significantly increase the volume of leads inside that your website generates for you is totally free so go to exposureninja.com forward slash review to apply for your free review today the first half of the year was also full of news about Twitter Elon Musk bought it eventually fired a bunch of people shook it up advertisers got upset some users got upset moved to other platforms eventually meta brought out their own version now having said all of this Twitter's popularity doesn't seem to have changed massively and Elon does have big plans for the platform and things that it has a big future now I think that the Twitter meltdown sits squarely in worth your time it's important that we marketers understand what's happening across all the different marketing platforms that we have available and If Twitter manages to fix its ad products there is massive potential way for more marketers to make use of it so I think that sits in the middle category alright next up we have the Apple Vision Pro and the reason the marketers are talking about this is not only because it's a potentially new Computing platform but because Apple has this curious way of taking the stuff that we all have sat in the bottom of a cupboard repackaging it and all of a sudden making us actually want it I forgotten where I put this this thing gives me a headache just looking at it whilst the Apple Vision Pro looks to be a really high price point which is gonna price it out of the use of most ordinary folk the potential here is that apple is building another iPhone moment and most marketers didn't really anticipate the impact that the launch of the original iPhone would have on marketing if this is indeed a new Computing platform it could change the way businesses interact with their consumers find consumers and produce their products and services this has massive potential but at the moment it's just that potential now of course Apple has said they're going to be producing a lower cost version but we don't have timelines on that or what it's really going to mean so whilst all of this is potentially massive at the moment we're putting it in don't stress yet in a few years we might see VR and AR take off but for now there are way more important things to be worrying about this next one has been an ongoing spiky thorn in the side of marxist for quite some time and that is the continued decline of tracking an attribution this has been an issue for marketers for ages but in 2023 it really seems like some companies like apple for example are determined to make it more difficult for advertisers to track consumers across different platforms not only that but as the customer Journey becomes more convoluted and involves customers using your website and your apps in different stages on different networks at different times it's more more difficult to understand how consumers are interacting with our Brands is that sale because the customer just saw the ad or is that sale because the customer saw the ad six months ago followed you on Instagram then saw an ad on Facebook then watched a video if you're on YouTube then came onto your website then saw an influencer post about you then read one of your emails then click through to make the purchase from an ad now although this is an issue it's something that's affecting everyone at the same time and broadly marketers are just sort of getting on with it I think there is a danger on over the longer term that people stop making decisions on such a performance basis and start getting a bit fluffier with their tracking but for now we're gonna stick it in keep an eye on it speaking of ads and tracking this has been another year where Google has been pushing really hard on their automated bidding strategies in particular performance Max campaigns performance Max uses machine learning and AI to try and find the customers that are most likely to convert across Google's entire ad Network including search display maps YouTube and this includes audience types that you may not have considered before now the PPC team here at exposure ninja loves performance Max and we've seen some incredible results with it including a return on ad spend of up to 1 000 now of course A lot of people are still using older ad types but we do think that it's worth exploring using performance Max at least to test so because of that we are adding performance Max slap bang right in the middle worth your time speaking of Google platforms something that marxists haven't been talking anywhere near enough about is Google's New Perspectives filter if users add this perspectives filter to the searches that they're doing they're gonna see user generated content from sites like quora from social media platforms like Reddit from long and short form videos on YouTube and Tick Tock and this can be really useful let's say you're making a search like best iPhone cases I can see reviews from people who've actually used them from demonstrating how this case works and what the features and benefits are if you compare this to the regular organic results what you tend to see is loads of review sites where they may or may not have actually used the product in the first place now I think this is an attempt from Google to actually balance out the potentially less personal results generated by AI whilst this perspectives filter was only available in the US we expect to see this rolling out to all countries in the coming months and marketers need to be bearing this in mind because if this perspective's filter proves to be popular it's very possible that customers will be heading straight to the perspectives filter so you need to be thinking about how are you encouraging creators to create content which is getting shown in this prospectus filter and can you piggyback on some of the Reddit threads the core answers that are already being ranked in perspectives for the keywords that you're wanting to be targeting now I think this is too important to ignore I think marketers are sleeping on this so I'm going to put Google perspectives right at the top in Industry shaking whilst we're talking about new platforms who can ignore facebook slash meta's new threads app over the years there's been plenty of Twitter competitors but none of them have got the traction at least early stages that threads has got because it's connected to Instagram it's very easy for people to Port their Instagram identities over to threads and that quickly led the app to get up to 100 million users faster than any other app in history now yes those users did drop off after the early stages but we are expecting threads to stick around at least in some form for a while and of course when meta opens up threads to its fantastic advertising product marketers are going to get access to all of those threads conversations so for that reason we're sticking it in the made some waves category now just to caveat Zuck did say that they're not going to be adding ads to threads until they get to 1 billion users but we'll see sticking with social media and the first half of 2023 we saw a big protest from users of Reddit now this might not seem like a big deal to marketers until you remember that Reddit posts actually often very prominent in search results and Incredibly prominent inside the perspective search results now it's not uncommon for us to go into a client's Google and six account and notice that they're getting referral traffic from a site like Reddit their products or service may have been recommended in one of their subreddits but as part of the process a lot of these subreddits went dark IE came offline now this type of recommendation in a subreddit is one of those little bit of a sort of bonus user generated content things that you might not notice until it's gone and because of that we're putting the Reddit mail down in a worth your time area but there's also really a bigger question here at play which is who owns the content on social media sites and who has ownership of that if it's used to train artificial intelligence models oh that's the topic for another day who can forget about ga4 and you've tried right the first half of 2023 for a lot of marketers was characterized by a looming countdown to the time where the Google analytics that they've known loved and understood for years was replaced by something horrendously confusing totally different and that they had no idea whether the data was accurate or not although those may not have been the exact words they used in ga4 press release now whilst it may seem like Google is doing this for no other reason just to punish you after you've survived lockdown and cost of living crisis and high inflation in reality they're probably doing it to protect themselves from lawsuits Based on data privacy now we've made a bunch of videos on how to use j4 and how to Grapple with its weirdness spoiler it's actually pretty cool but just for the fact that you've probably had to cancel your annual leave and relearn a new platforms and scratch that means it goes in the mates and waves category all right we've looked at some of the biggest AI announcements in 2020 V we've looked at some of the new platforms and Tech that we've had to Grapple with but what about the digital marketing strategies that have either come up or had a bit of a Renaissance this year now it's impossible to ignore the economic certainty all around us and the cost of living crisis that is happening in a lot of countries as a result a lot of marketers have had to tweak their messaging to make sure it's sensitive for a customer base that is in a sort of recession mindset the recession definitely lands in the top tier industry shaking because every business has to think about how their marketing messages are landing in context of where their customers are at the thoughts they're having the fears and worries that they have whether you're B2B or b2c your course customers are going to be thinking in a different way this year than they were a couple of years ago or maybe four years ago before the world went completely crazy one way that brands have been standing out in this cost of living crisis is by making more use and thinking more logically about their branding and positioning and we've been helping clients at exposure ninja with exactly this helping them figure out what makes their brand different how to stand out in a competitive market and how to get the most out of their marketing budgets our own services for clients in this area have completely taken off so for that reason we're putting branding right at the top in Industry shaking yes branding has been around forever but branding and positioning is one of those errors that can provide that huge leverage with marketing across the ball becoming more competitive it's no longer enough to just throw up some ads and hope that people click on you because hey why not you need to be explaining to Consumers why you are the best choice and why they should shop with you rather than competitors the companies that do this well win another Trend that has continued this year is community marketing and that means building a community on a platform like Discord slack Tick Tock or Reddit now some of the brands that do this really well like sneak on Discord or Duolingo on Tick Tock do so by giving their Community a sense of her if you know you know people in their Community feel like insiders they're in on the joke and this strategy can work really well because it actually gives your potential customers a bit of an identity around your brand you can then meet them on their level take part in discussions with them and create content that really resonates with where they're at now to be honest we expected to see a bigger increase in community marketing the first half of 2023 but that AI sort of knocks it out the way but nevertheless it's one of those sleeper things that's not always visible to the outside world and we think it's going to continue burning underground so we're gonna put keep an eye on it but if this is the sort of thing that suits your business then it may well be worth some more attention than the second half of the year now we spoke about Ai and the Google perspectives filter early on and whilst influencer marketing has maybe lost some of its cool over the last few years we actually think it could be due a bit of a Renaissance because of these things as Ai proliferates and people get used to consuming more automatically generated content it's very possible that we might start to Crave that human element which influencer marketing does so well influencer marketing could also be a great way of getting your brand featured in the perspectives tab too especially if your work with influencers feels very organic and sits nicely in people's social fees without standing out as overtly Addy so we're going to put influencer marketing into made some waves and we think it's going to increase in popularity later this year in a similar vein a marketing strategy that has been around and we've been doing it for almost 10 years at exposure ninja but we think it's due a significant Renaissance is digital PR Marxist love digital PR for a couple of reasons firstly you guess you linked this helps with your SEO but secondly it's a great way of getting your brand mentioned in important Publications which can help both with human customers but also for large language models that are crawling the internet trying to understand how the world works and what the top brands are in each category on top of this of course digital PR can actually get you visibility and Clicks in its own right if you're being found in the Publications that your audience is spending time on online they might visit your website and buy from you so given the digital PR not only helps you rank in an AI search World potentially gets you recommended by these generative search tools and of course gives you an additional traffic Source in case donors of AI steals some of your old traffic digital PR has to go in the top spot yes it's an oldie but digital PR is back for round two Return of the link Return of the journal request so hopefully you feel a bit of mental clarity about all the craziness that has happened in 2023 so far but remember this is just my take you might have different perspectives let us know in the comments below what do you think we missed off this tier list and do you agree or disagree with any of our categorizations we say bring on the rest of the year although it would be nice if it chills out just a little bit if you want to know how AI is going to impact search engines then check out this video where we're going to show you exactly what's going on and how to prepare for the future not that future like