5 Trends for 2023

Sharing a few key trends that I think you might want to keep an eye on over the coming year and some ways to evolve your marketing activities to ensure you stand out and grow.

As marketing and communications is always evolving and people are constantly bombarded with information, it's a real challenge to sort the wheat from the chaff.

So here goes…

?? Trust is key. If you’re entering new markets, growing your business or launching any major project, building customer and market trust should be a huge priority right now. You can’t do that if you go quiet.

?? A single customer communication channel is no longer enough. You need to visible and present in the spaces where your customers are.

Don't be cajoled into thinking this means you need to be active on every channel. You'll just sap your limited resources.

Think visibility, engagement, market fit and repurposing content. Aim to speak with actual people as often as you can. Phone calls are your friend.

?? Partnerships are in vogue (again). These are an extremely valuable low cost way of growing your business in a market where customers are hard to reach. Think about finding synergies with other businesses and scaling your offerings in a mutually beneficial way.

?? Be wary of failing to support key projects with the right communications activities. Think about the roadblocks you keep coming up against. Good communications helps you navigate your way through, around and over these. Be consistent.

?? Stay focused on customers’ changing needs. Taking your eye off this when you have cost pressures and become internally focused can jeopardise performance over the short and long term.

Loyal customers are the primary, enduring source of cash flow and organic growth.

Marketing isn’t optional—it’s a “good cost,” essential to bringing in revenues from these key customers and others.

?? Be careful of bright, shiny AI objects (think ChatGPT and other AI marketing tools). Remember, people are still people and much about human nature hasn't changed.

We might be more time-poor, dealing with more work (thanks to the contradiction of the skills shortage and redundancies), and have more cost pressures, but face-to-face meetings remain the gold standard.

Your relationships are critical, so you need to be nurturing these every single day.

Just like you, your customers need to feel confident about their future, yet also trust your business and value proposition, so stay in touch.

If you’d like to delve a little further, here are some articles that might interest you.

HBR – How to Market in a Downturn

The CEOs speak: Five big lessons of ASX profit season

Finally, my live cohort-based program for?Advance your Business with Powerful Networks?kicks off soon. We’ll be covering all this stuff and?tailoring it to you. I’d love to see you there. Please also share this link with friends, colleagues (and your boss ??) if you think they could benefit.

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