32 Expert Marketing Trend Predictions for 2023

April 7, 2021Heather WilkinsonBusiness, Entrepreneurship

2020 has been a challenging year (to put it mildly).

The Coronavirus pandemic unceremoniously hurtled into the marketing pool, creating a tidal wave of chaos. Consumers were furloughed, made redundant or had hours slashed. As a result, certain markets took an unfortunate profits nosedive. Others (like ecommerce and online businesses) saw profit margins stay consistent – or, in some cases, increase along with demand! Just like Kaoori did and now has turned into one of the biggest chess set providers in the UK.

With face-to-face interactions at a standstill, lead generation agencies have had to evolve and adapt. Of course, tried-and-tested strategies like cold-calling and emailing remain effective. However, successful companies have adopted additional methods to use alongside these classic approaches.

For instance, many companies have made the switch to remote working. This means database lists of phone numbers for cold-calling may no longer be operational, and those that are manned are likely to have reduced staffing (raise your hand if you tried calling your Internet tech support team during Lockdown only to be met with an automated chatbot)!

Also, the needs of the client may have changed drastically in a very short time. Agencies need to understand the new challenges potential clients are facing in order to create effective lead generation campaigns.

As the year draws to a close, predictions for 2023 are cautiously optimistic. Lead generation agencies are adapting and working hard to meet the evolving needs of prospective clients. Knowing your customer better than they know themselves is one of the most important sales tactics around. And in today’s ever-changing market, it’s more important than ever for turning leads into wins!

We’ve asked 32 lead generation industry experts to share their insights into marketing trends for 2023. How will lead generation methods change over the next 12 months?

Not only did they provide some fantastic predictions – they also shared some data to back it up (and at Pearl Lemon, we’re all about the data :D).

Here’s what they had to say:

Katja Doemer

Chief Marketing Officer - Inriver

The upcoming year will surely hold some surprises in terms of marketing trends. However, based on survey data and customer insights, we know the role of product information, customer experience, and sustainability will be significant in 2023. The importance of better and more transparent product information is essential as it helps buyers to buy, whether it is in-store or online.

inRiver conducted research into what turns browsers into buyers and not surprisingly, many consumers (both B2B and B2C) are marrying online and in-person product perusal. They research products online and purchase offline (ROPO) and vice versa for work and in their personal lives. According to our research, more than half of buyers research products online while in-store, and the number is significantly higher for the 16-24 and 25-34 age groups. When product content isn’t accurate, available, or consistent across channels, buyers lose trust and purchase elsewhere. The buying experience matters.

In addition to product information and positive customer experience, buyers value sustainability. They want to buy from environmentally responsible vendors, they use sustainability or eco-friendly practices to determine what they buy, and they are even willing to pay more for sustainable products. inRiver’s research found that 63% of buyers would stop using a product if it was detrimental to the environment, and 62% would reconsider their purchase decisions if retailers were more transparent about the environmental impact of delivery. These marketing trends will impact commerce in 2023 across verticals and industries.

David Toby

Director & Co Founder - Pathfinder Alliance

I run a boutique, digital marketing agency in Perth, Western Australia. Upcoming marketing trends listed below:

Massive Use of Sales Intelligence Technology

Technology has brought about significant changes in well-established B2B sales cycles. The salesperson’s toolbox is now made of many sales intelligence tools that help sales teams identify, track, analyse and interact with existing and potential clients. Salespeople can now predict and respond to the demands of each prospect and stay relevant throughout the entire sales process. At the core of this change are data and automation. Two ingredients that allow unprecedented levels of data analysis and predictability leading to better segmentation, better targeting, better communication.

Personalisation at the core of B2B sales

Today, prospective buyers have become experts at finding a lot of information online about the products and services they are looking for. So an impersonal, generic sales script will not help anymore to win them over.B2C brands have been offering a personalised buying experience to prospective clients for a while. B2B prospects now expect the same. So what exactly needs to be customised in B2B sales? Literally, everything in the overall buying experience, from the communication channels and style to the insights and information delivered.

Need for better trained and continuously coached salespeople

Today, the majority of B2B salespeople receive very little or no sales training and lack even the most basic sales skills from communications to sales tactics. And it has been shown that salespeople who receive continuous training achieve at least 50% better results on average.

Shayne Sherman

CEO & Founder - Techloris

I think we can easily see that the future of B2B marketing is shifting toward voice search as people are more likely to speak to voice assistants using a conversational tone, questions, and long-tail keywords. The keywords used by customers are not only natural but straightforward language. When customers use voice searchers, they use more keywords. Searches usually take the form of a question. The use of voice search is increasing. Experts believe that half of the online searches will be voice search by 2020. That means customers own almost 2.6 devices in their homes on average which will surely increase as people want to increase the volume of audio content they consume.

Not to mention the fact that more than half of households are supposed to own a smart speaker device by 2023. Thanks to voice assistants such as Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home, users no longer need to type keywords in search engines. So, B2B marketers need to adapt themselves to appear in these voice searches.

Daniel Foley

Director

I’m an SEO specialist working in the industry since 1999. LinkedIn has seen a surge, and been a saviour for professionals over the pandemic. It’s been great for people to have a place to discuss, share and learn without being in the office, or having the potential to attend workshops. LinkedIn is likely to see its popularity continue to grow as the pandemic continues and will likely reclaim its place as the place to be for professionals in 2023. This is a perfect place to promote your skills, services, or opportunities to businesses with what is a fully engaged audience.

Karl Robinson

Director & Co-founder - Logicata

Across all communications channels, first impressions are important, so marketing trends in visual and graphic design can have an effect in developing preference for a brand. Certainly, we can all call out a dated web design consciously or subconsciously.

If you are looking for the best way to market to businesses in 2023, the best approach will be a personal approach. With many businesses looking to repair and rebuild after some serious economic difficulty, their minds will be focussed elsewhere and unlikely zoned-in on cold emails, cold calls and unknown advertisers. Instead reach out with a visit, or a personal message through socials to see if they want a coffee and a chat or what they can offer. This building of trust will be imperative for businesses as they look to hopefully keep their business alive and growing as the pandemic (hopefully) starts to affect our life less.

Chris Taylor

Marketing Director - ProfitGuru

I believe that using automation in a lead generation can easily process something that is either messy or overly complex, then transforms it into something manageable even for a single user or a small team that can be understood and woven into methods that improve your possibilities to grow even exponentially.

With advanced automation software, you are able to scoop all your potential customers and put them into a single source. Then you can then use repeatable sales actions into loops and processes to allow the entire system to do the complex work for you, making it simpler to focus on building and growing B2B relationships.

Jennifer Willy

Editor - Etia

Content Marketing is very important when it comes to giving a boost to your business and brand awareness. It encompasses things like writing relevant content for the reader’s digital marketing and social media, building both online and offline community and brand image. So, when we talk about some of the marketing trends that will take over in the coming year are given below.

The first one would be the emphasis on CX. The important part is that this customer experience is not limited to customers only. It also includes stakeholders, internal, and external; marketers, and various departments on board. This experience will improve with relevant and personalized content, feedback and support, etc.

Video content is another trend that is already taking over. According to Diode Digital, online video is a 600% more effective marketing tool than both print and direct mail combined. This storytelling medium is very vital for marketing strategy. It can easily create curiosity and catch the attention of an average viewer.

Lastly, email marketing often gets overlooked even though it is the cheapest and most effective method of promoting your brand.

Bilal Uddin

Digital Content Strategist - Withintheflow

The B2B buyer seems to be having difficulty completing a purchase. 77% of B2B buyers state to face complexities in completing the B2B purchase.

Digital marketing has become an essential part of traffic conversion. The marketer needs to focus on creating navigation much simpler for buyers so that the traffic driven from digital marketing efforts should be able to convert on the landing page without any hassle or confusion.

The website should be easy to navigate so that B2B buyers can easily identify the call to action without any help.

Chioma Iwunze

Marketing strategist - Timedoctor

Podcasts, also known as radio on-demand, will be an important marketing trend in 2023.

As the pandemic rages, people will be forced to adopt a remote lifestyle. So far, people have changed the way they consume news, movies and other forms of entertainment. Most people also tune in to podcasts that fit their lifestyle and life goals.

Many companies will adopt podcasting as a content marketing strategy to enable them to reach a more diverse audience. Because podcasts allow people to share their stories and their ideologies in a creative and engaging way.

Andrew Roderick

CEO - CreditRepairCompanies

In a changing market, understanding how to grow your sales is the focus for 2023 through MQLs and SQLs. Businesses need to know when a customer is interested in their product and when they will be ready to buy. You need your customers to know your company exists, What problems you can solve and how they take the next step?

In 2023, companies need to become more human. They need to show empathy and understanding to show they are the business that will fit into post COVID life. In 2023, to achieve both the goals of great sales and obtaining customers a full content marketing strategy to create an online community is a way in which marketers can meet both the emotional and business needs of its customers. Martech and Focus vision showed that your average B2B reader reads 13 pieces of content per day, and in recent times more time is spent in content before any decisions. Engaging your audience with content marketing allows your business to build long lasting relationships and empathy. One initial blog can then nurture a relations with follow up editorials, your social media and online assets

Adam Rowles

Founder - Inbound Marketing Agency

Video Marketing: According to Google, more than 70% of buyers/researchers/users watch videos related to the products throughout the buying process i.e. shortlisting, adding to cart, etc. The response from video content is immense. The catch is, most of the videos show salient features of the products, and the users get influenced by it. If the product is good, then there is nothing wrong with getting influenced!
Exclusive Email Marketing: There was a report published by Linkedin and it mentioned that 50% of all the B2B traffic is generated from Linkedin. Out of that 50%, 80% of the leads are from the combined outreach of published content and email outreach. Exclusive email marketing is still an effective way to boost up business. This trend is going to continue in 2023 as well.
Unique Content Marketing: Content marketing will never die but it will change its form. For example, infographics, graphic designs, trendy newsletters, etc are all part of content marketing. While all this is still on, unique content marketing ideas will stand apart. For example, a company known as Gum Gum released a personalized comic book for a CEO. So this is unique and something that is unexpected. But it is also a part of content marketing.

Jake Meador

Director of Content Strategy - Mobile Text Alerts

SMS marketing is going to become more dominant in B2B sales in 2023. Though the exact figure differs from source to source, virtually all the data suggests that at least 95% of texts are read and quite possibly as many as 99%. This is an open rate that no other marketing channel can match.

While it is true that SMS has generally been used more as a B2C marketing channel traditionally, there are uses for B2B sales as well. In regard to using SMS to schedule meetings when attending trade shows or with individual prospects. This is an especially promising avenue given how much money a business can waste on sales travel for meetings where a prospect does not show up or has to cancel at the last minute. Even if SMS did nothing else except reduce the no-show rate on meetings for salespeople, it would be a huge win for B2B companies.

More so, in B2B companies, rather than collecting email addresses on their website, they can collect phone numbers and receive permission to send text messages. These messages are far more likely to be seen and provide a more reliable means of contacting prospective customers.

Sean Nguyen

Director of Internet Advisor - Internet Advisor

Keep An Eye On Video Marketing. It’s Coming For Your Gig.

Content marketing is going to be even more important in 2023, because of a simple reason: it works. Content is being pushed out more and more frequently, and on multiple channels. From blogs to websites to social media, brands are putting out content to attract attention. The most important content marketing trend to look out for is absolutely video marketing. Written content and even images are losing out to video, because video encapsulates all the most essential features content should have: it’s bright, it’s engaging, it’s creative, and it expresses the main idea faster and more efficiently. It is predicted that in a couple of years, video will be the overwhelming majority of content.

Stan Tan

Digital marketing manager - Selbys

As millennials start taking up decision-making roles, the traditional way of acquiring a lead such as cold calling will become less effective. People just don’t have time to talk to 10 different suppliers before making a decision. People today want to compare suppliers as quickly as possible before jumping on a call or meeting before making a decision. Hence, strategies such as content marketing where the decision maker can learn as much about your products and services beforehand will become more effective moving forward.

Elle Brown

- Nihaojewelry

Content-driven marketing: High-quality content is still a major trend to promote conversion. The ultimate goal of creating content is to generate revenue. Therefore, in the process of content creation, do not create content just to increase the content of the website, but put the needs and preferences of users in the first place. In order to increase website traffic and conversions, marketers must create content with purpose and substance. By detecting the search field and analyzing the traffic on the page, to find out what the visitor is looking for, and then provide them with exclusive insights. In the B2B industry, the content must be more professional, allowing users to see your value.

In addition, the methods of content marketing tend to be more diversified, not just blog posts, but also video content marketing. For video content in the B2B industry, companies can provide in-depth demonstrations of products and services, create tutorials for products, and promote new products in an attractive way.

Caroline Lee

Growth marketer and Co-founder - CocoSign

AI and machine learning algorithms aren’t dubbed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” for no reason. At the moment, stats show that 40 percent of sales tasks can be performed by A1. We expect to see a big leap in this value in 2023. Indeed, it is projected to increase to 85 percent in 2023 and further to 139 percent in the next three years.

Because it snuffs out the guesswork from management tasks capacity management, quota and territory planning, it is likely to be adopted by the management of many brands. 75 percent of buyers already expect brands to predict their wants, needs and make relevant suggestions concerning these needs before contact with the brand. For this reason, businesses that have already implemented AI in their sales models have seen their leads increase by over 50 percent. There has also been a corresponding reduction in cost by almost 40-60 percent.

Maria Saigatova

Head of content - Blast Sourcing

Having become an undeniable trend in 2020, artificial intelligence is yet to gain a foothold in digital marketing in 2023 and beyond. As the amount of collected and transferred data worldwide keeps growing and is expected to increase by 61% by 2025, artificial intelligence will play a significant role in many business processes, including B2B marketing. AI gives the ability to collect, process, and make sense of tons of real-time data. Besides, according to Forbes, AI, and machine learning are highly prioritized by sales and marketing teams, being used 40% more than by other departments.

Artificial intelligence is an amazing technology when it comes to improving customer experience and their interaction with brands. AI can increase ROI through data analytics, gaining valuable insights into customer behavior and buying preferences. The technology allows marketing teams to use these insights to create more efficient touchpoints and more personalized experience.

Artificial intelligence is already used to power chatbots to improve the customer journey, boost ad performance, personalize the whole digital experience, identify leads, target clients across various channels, cross-sell and upsell and is yet to come with much more. So it is not a surprise that 83% of those who have already adopted AI has achieved substantial benefits and continue to leverage the technology to reach greater results.

Shiv Gupta

CEO - Incrementors Web Solutions

Digital Dominates Customer Experiences

Survey your customers about their digital activity. Reward them for their time and seek their honest input by giving them the option to remain unidentified. Besides asking multiple-choice questions, always leave a blank for customers to write in their responses. Visit your site as a client. Pretend you need one solution you offer and see how easy it is to get the knowledge you need. Note page load times, descriptions, and functionality.

Michael Hammelburger

CEO - Cost Reduction Consultants

One big trend in 2023 will be marketing cost reduction strategies in light of the effects of the pandemic. In our firm, for instance, we aim to introduce cost reduction and tax analysis strategies to determine quickly and accurately how to increase our clients’ cash flow and reduce expenses. This pandemic has influenced us to make huge adjustments in our business model to better introduce cost reduction and tax analysis strategies and help determine quickly and accurately how to increase our clients’ cash flow and reduce expenses.

We’re constantly communicating with our existing clients and discussing with them how our services in cost reduction and tax analysis can be influential in their path to recovery. The results have been evident so far. Our clients state that they will continue to nurture their relationship with us for the long-term since they are being supported in their plans to make a complete turnaround from a sharp downturn brought by this crisis.

Skyler Reeves

President & CEO - Ardent Growth

Here are some 2023 B2B marketing trends that are ready to take many industries in the coming year:

Taking a science-based approach to marketing. Apart from creativity and great user-experience, data analytics will inform design decisions and not the other way around.
Machine learning and statistical analysis will improve to determine what actions to take to rank businesses higher in terms of organic search results.
More stringent A/B split tests will be implemented to ascertain what sorts of changes to a site’s design, copy, infrastructure, and more result in statistically significant increases in conversion rates.
Using pixels and data in ads for website visitors on social media and other platforms to meet them where they’re at in the buyer’s journey.
Email automation sequences to recapture lost leads/customers and build the engagement of subscriber base.

Sharon Van Donkelaar

Chief Marketing Officer - Expandi

2020 really was a bit of a surprise for B2B marketing – a lot changed. However, it really seemed like the marketing world really did just adapt rather than suffer – even for B2B companies. 2023 will definitely look a little different, but one thing is for sure, content marketing isn’t going anywhere.

The only thing is because so much content is being created, especially online, you have to just find new ways to stand out from the crowd and also stay relevant.

2023 will still lie with video or podcasts. This kind of content gives your brand a voice. In fact, according to Google, 70% of B2B buyers and researchers are watching video content all the way throughout the buying journey.

This should highlight the importance of having video and podcast content in your marketing strategy