Here is a summary of the Hubspot report on marketing trends in 2023. It is based on a survey of marketing leaders and data from various sources. It covers AI and automation, economic concerns, data privacy, video marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, content marketing, and video marketing. The main points of each topic are:
- AI and automation are helping marketers save time and effort and improve their performance and results. The average marketer works on nine campaigns per quarter and spends six hours daily on manual tasks. Effective marketers are 46% more likely to use automation than ineffective ones.
- Economic concerns are impacting how marketers plan and budget their activities. For example, if a recession occurs in 2023, 24% of marketers expect to reduce their budget, 20% to adjust their goals, 20% to reduce their scope, and 19% to pivot their tactics. However, 92% of marketers expect their budget to stay the same or increase in 2023.
- Data privacy changes have affected 86% of marketers' strategies over the past year. With the phasing out of third-party cookies, marketers are exploring alternate targeting solutions such as social media ads, first-party data collection, Google Topics API, universal identifiers, and contextual advertising.
- Video marketing continues to dominate and drive business growth. Videos have the highest ROI of any media format, followed by images, blog posts, and podcasts. Video is also the fourth year's most popular and influential media format. In addition, short-form video is the most significant trend in video marketing, with 90% of marketers using it or planning to use it in 2023.
- Social media marketing is one of the most important channels for reaching and engaging audiences. Facebook is the most leveraged and effective social media platform, followed by YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Marketers face challenges such as creating engaging content, gaining and keeping followers, reaching their target audience, finding ideas for new content, generating leads, keeping up with trends, and measuring ROI.
- Influencer marketing is a powerful strategy for building consumer trust and awareness. Influencers have different audience sizes and niches, but macro and micro-influencers tend to have the best ROI. Marketers appreciate smaller creators' reasonable costs, long-term partnerships, niche communities, and trustworthiness—more than half of marketers who use influencer marketing plans to increase their investment in 2023.
- Content marketing is crucial to attracting and converting leads with low financial investment and a high success rate. SEO work is one of the highest ROI channels used by marketers. Content marketers should also focus on creating values-based content that reflects their brand's social responsibility and resonates with their audience. In times of recession, content marketers should maintain their spending on brand awareness rather than activation.
- Video marketing trends from Wistia show that brands increased their investment in video in 2022 and plan to do so again in 2023. Video consumption increased across all platforms and devices. Brands use video for various purposes, such as education, entertainment, promotion, communication, storytelling, and community building.