Our Top 10 Takeaways from Hubspot's 2023 Marketing + Strategy Trends Report

Trends are changing. And from a marketer’s standpoint, the latest trend might just be a pathway to success. 78% of marketers agree that the industry has changed more in the past 3 years than in the past 50. Surveying more than 1,200 global marketers, Hubspot’s survey analyzes the greatest goals, challenges, and strategies they have with the developing consumer market.

In this article, we’ll cover:

1. Understanding the consumer market
2. Marketing trends
3. Social media marketing
4. And much, much more

Understanding Customers and the Market

Recognizing and understanding your customers’ habits, and using that data to build your brand and market accordingly

Know Your Audience

Understanding the depth of your consumers is crucial to gaining insight into their needs, wants, and especially, what they will spend their money on.

Knowing your consumer’s demographic information is just the tip of the iceberg. Data including interests, hobbies and favorite stores can influence a marketer’s means by which they produce advertisements. Other data including most used media outlets, online communities they are a part of, and challenges they face help to create personalized routes that marketers can use to advertise. 

Be Prepared for Change

With recent changes in consumer behavior, preparing for another worldwide alteration in consumerism and in marketing is important for any business.

Understanding consumer trends is crucial to a successful marketing technique. Spontaneous changes in the consumer market are unexpected and unforeseeable, but can change the entire course of advertising. From the recent pandemic to a threatening recession, changing consumer behavior is inevitable.

Changes in Marketing

1. AI and automation is taking over content creation, which gives marketers a new skill to learn and an ease of pressure.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRMs) are more widely used to organize data
3. Social media DM tactics are growing to gain customers
4. Online communities build engagement within people around your brand
5. Data-informed marketing strategies are increasing
6. Understanding and improving customer experiences is crucial to mend the gap between marketing and servicing

Top Marketing Goals

1. Increase revenue
2. Improve consumer experience
3. Increase brand awareness over multiple channels
4. Increase engagement and attention
5. Strengthen brand loyalty

Trends

Jumping on the latest trend can grow your audience and increase profits

Trends in Marketing

1. Short videos will increase in marketing tactics
2. Advertising through online influencers and content creators will grow
3. Web SEO tactics are a good way to read specific audiences
4. Customers are looking for humanized brands to work with
5. Data usage is increase and helping marketers

Dead Trends in Marketing

1. NFTs are a thing of the past. 1 in 3 marketers plan to stop using NFTs in 2023
2. Although a recent development, marketing in the metaverse and audio chat rooms will slowly die
3. Voice search optimization and VR will be less widely used in marketing campaigns

Marketing Channels

Utilizing social media as a means of marketing is growing dramatically

Along with blogs, personal websites, and social media, influencers and content creators are subtly beginning their careers in marketing. Through brand advertisements and video contributions, influencers can easily market to a large and mostly young audience through social media and blogs.

Top Social Media Channels

1. Facebook
2. Instagram
3. YouTube
4. Twitter
5. TikTok
6. LinkedIn
7. Snapchat

Leveraging 64% of all social media, marketers are using Facebook as a means to reach multiple audiences through different tactics and techniques. With a growing number of marketers utilizing the app, YouTube generates 57% of marketers and is expected to grow in marketing tactics the most out of any social media app.

With a dramatic increase of TikTok usage by the Gen Z population, the app is a place of growth for future investments. Used by 41% of marketers, TikTok will see growth in 2023 with its short-form videos as a successful way to market to a young and large audience.

Sharing Content on Social Media

Social media holds a wide range of audiences. How do businesses and marketers alike share content to reach their target?

Sharing content across multiple sites can be time consuming and possibly over-kill. Most marketers use duplicated content to reach a certain audience over multiple platforms, while less tailor their content to fit each app.

Media Formats

Which social media formats are marketers leaning toward and why?

Images, blog articles, infographics, and podcasts or video content are among the highest formats marketers are using today. It is expected that the use of video and audio content will grow dramatically in 2023.

These formats are used by marketers depending on their schedule, commitment, and audience. Roughly ⅓ of marketers put out content only once a day while another third posts multiple times a week. Only 13% of marketers post content multiple times a day.

Social Media Challenges

Whether creating personalized content, reaching a target, or keeping up with trends, if you aren’t experienced with social media, it might be difficult to leverage it. Below are the biggest social media challenges marketers have faced in 2023 thus far.

1. Creating engaging content
2. Gaining and keeping followers
3. Reaching target audience
4. Finding ideas for new content
5. Creating content to generate leads
6. Keeping up with trends
7. Measuring Return on Investment (ROI)
8. Growing a global audience
9. Lack of high quality data
10. Sales or marketing alignment

Marketing Metrics

Effectiveness of strategies are changing, and the best metrics lead to the best conversion rate and growth. Below are the most successful marketing metrics to measure effectiveness.

1. Sales
2. Web Traffic
3. Social engagement
4. Conversion rate
5. Follower growth on social media
6. Lead generation

Marketers, Trends, and Budgets

Marketers are expected to experience an increase in budget for their work because of an increased workload and responsibility

Workload

Even with the developments of AI Marketing, recent trends show that marketing roles are shifting back to in-person. With a decrease in worldwide panic and a high workload that seems to keep increasing, marketers are expected to have an influx in work and therefore produce more work in 2023.

Marketers spend an average of five hours per day on administrative tasks, leaving them with less time to do more influential work. 52% of marketers describe their workload as “somewhat high” compared to only 26% who think their workload is proportional.

Budget

With an increase in marketing budgets despite the recent pandemic and the foreseeable recession, Marketers are being given the funding to increase and improve their work with a fallback. 39% of marketers agree that their budget increased in 2022. Depending on how the budget is invested, 58% of marketers are confident in how to invest and what to invest in, while 14% are not.

Our Top Takeaways

Ultimately, data of 2023 shows us that in recent events, marketing has skyrocketed, especially through means of social media and influencers. With attention to customer experiences and the latest trends, marketers who take advantage of the growing industry are sure to succeed.