The 5 forces that will shape 2023 for Marketers

Happy End of a really, really fricking weird old year and (hopefully) Happy 2023 to you all.

If you have ever read the book Ender's Game, you will be familiar with the training that the cadets had to go through in Zero-Gravity in order to orient themselves on how to be comfortable with being disoriented. Simply put, up and down are man made concepts. When you are floating around in space, there is no real up or down. So everything you learned on earth is moot and you have to adapt to the situation as it develops.

That's how 2022 felt. Everything we knew about tech, business, investment, the stock market, common sense, decency, morality and just about every social construct was called into question.

Which makes the job of marketers very, very difficult. Because, that's kind of our thing - understanding society and then exploiting it to make money.

It also makes end of year "prediction" listicles kind of redundant - even if the predictions do come true, 90 other things would have happened to have either greatly dimmed, or greatly exaggerated the impact of each prediction.

I actually did a whole presentation a few weeks ago with a few predictions. But then I realized that was probably one of the most hubristic things I have done in a long while - so that keynote got relegated to the black hole that is my "archive" folder, and I now present you with my take on the 5 "forces" that will help shape the chaos that 2023 promises to be.

The outcomes of these shapings is not something I am willing to put money on, but at least you know what to look for as you revise your marketing plan for the 9th time in 4 months.

Shall we?

1. Brand Trust

Very few brands measure trust, even fewer measure it by content type and medium. This will change. In the incredibly competitive advertising landscape in which we operate now - building long term customer trust, which leads to advocacy, is worth a lot. But without knowing where to invest in trust building, based on what’s working, it’s a crap shoot.

Maybe within this year we will see “Trust lift Studies” - but if not, you will hear a lot more about impact on trust.

The call to action is quite clear. If you don’t know how much people trust you in a specific context, you only know how good that context is at getting you the next sale - but not the sales after that. Understanding contextual impact on trust acts as a multiplier for campaign based brand success. And who ever can crack the measurement formula, has a competitive advantage.

2. Targeting (or the lack thereof)

Apple did it and Google is, maybe, possibly, on the verge of doing it. No cross app tracking?means less consumer context.

Less consumer context means having to rely a lot more on the little context that we have.. which is, surprise, surprise, mostly in the content and medium that the consumer was most recently in.

Sequential content design was big back before cross app and site tracking and it will be, probably, making a comeback - media agencies and brands need to work a lot more closely with creators and creative agencies to think - what is the next piece of content that needs to be delivered after this one to finish the funnel if the click doesn’t happen on content piece one.

And it is much easier to get this done in advance. To have your creator, designer, editor to put out 2, 3, 4 pieces of content which are sequential is much easier, and a lot more impactful than 20 pieces of non-sequential content.

Video is the medium that people want, give them video based stories.?

3. Creators Vs. Brands

OBVIOUSLY, this need for more story based content means that creators will wield even more power than they have amassed to date. And the good creators will ask themselves two questions:

• Is this brand paying me enough for the quality of my content
• Do I like this brand enough to want to work with or continue working with them

From your perspective, the first question is, does this creator’s output drive trust worth x dollars - which is, and because everything is connected, why prediction 1 is prediction 1 - assessing a creator’s value needs a measurement led base.

The second question is your action. Don’t treat your creators as disposable - money is important, but if you can’t build relationships with the people you work with, they won’t help you build relationships with the people they sell to. And nothing, nothing, is more damaging than an advocate turned detractor.

Be nice.

4. A new social/entertainment gold rush

There is so much money being and to be made in the social, entertainment, content space. From where I stand, it is an absolute space race. Who will get to the next million, 10 million, billion users.

Byte, Triller, Zynn, Clash were all apps that came and went in 2020 and 2022 because they saw the opportunity in the Discovertainment space - but there will be many, many more that will distract users, creators and brands in 2023 - my advice, don’t ignore them, at least not after they hit critical mass of say 30 million users in the US or 200 million globally, but also make sure you subject them to the same brand trust measures that you would any other context. I don’t know where the next big thing is coming from - but I do know what will make it a marketing darling.

The ability to take all the good bits of discoverable, entertainment based, user centric, FOMO creating, Remorse preventing, creatively simple and retargeting capable and make it easy to advertise on.?

Because while we are truly in a new age - building good products is an ageless challenge.

5. Discovertainment

Social media is great because it is, well social - it is also aspirational and allows a little bit of of discovery - within a smaller segment.

It is also, problematically, aspirational, and that can be stressful. You also tend to visit social apps and sites because you feel like you have to, because you need to remain in the know, not because you want to.

Entertainment apps and sites, and channels, and publications deliver on their name - they entertain, they help you disconnect and they are broad. But they are also lonely, usually require a lot of focus and time and don’t allow for much discovery.

By melding the two element, entertaining content and communities that unite only around that content, you get a much more positive, freeing, relatable, discovery led and broad experience. I have coined a new phrase for this - Discovertainment.

You can choose whether you feel like being social or not.

I choose not.

But this isn’t about me, it’s about a happy viewer, who relates to the content and the creators, is often surprised by content and products and has an easy way of combatting potential buyers remorse…?you see where this is going.

Straight to the checkout page.

That's it, almost

?So, those are the 5 forces that I believe will have the biggest hand in shaping the marketing landscape in 2023.

I do, however, still want to make one prediction. This is a bit of a safe bet, but probably something most people haven't thought about.

A major B2C CMO will be hired from the B2B space

B2B marketers rely on trust building, sequential, nurture led content. They can’t really rely on retargeting because tracking potential customers across sites can put their ads in contexts in which they are unwelcome.

B2B marketers are masters of content level tracking and are obsessed with segment based marketing - which, let’s face it, is closer to interest based marketing than demographic targeting is, which is a bit of a cliche in the B2C world.

B2B marketers are also, the ones who built the concept of the content creator as a sales person - yes, they usually have their actual sales people become creators as opposed to the other way round, but the concept is the same. Some one relatable (who understands the technology in this case) taking about products in the right (technical, financial, API ready, user friendly) context.

So, for your final call to action - B2B marketers, brush up your CVs, make sure you tell the world about how you were doing 2023 marketing 15 years ago.

B2C marketers, find a B2B marketer and make friends - they are on to something.