10 MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2023 

Conversational commerce 

Conversational commerce will be a must-have feature in every marketer’s repertoire starting in 2023. Future marketing increasingly aims at starting a direct, “real” dialog with customers and using the conversation to encourage them to make a purchase. 

One trend to keep in mind is instant gratification. Today’s customers expect their needs and wishes to be met immediately and without complications, so it’s best to have products in the online store available for immediate delivery and arriving the next day. Customer service is available 24/7 and responds within minutes. 

Meet these requirements by using the latest technology: 

• Instant messengers that enable you to communicate in real time without delay 
• Chat and service bots that offer fully automated solutions with the help of artificial intelligence 
• Voice assistants and voice bots that use speech recognition to conduct conversations with customers 

⭐ Highlights of conversational commerce 

Conversational commerce offers several advantages. Interacting directly allows you to get to know your target groups better and to respond to their individual needs. You can also build a trusting, emotional bond through conversation. 

Chatbots are a good way to relieve the burden on your customer service as they speed up and automate communication. The bots improve over time through machine learning and provide you with loads of valuable information about your customers that you can then use for personalized digital marketing campaigns. 

💡 By the way: This trend involves not only B2C companies – B2B customers now use the same channels as B2C buyers and shoppers, and they require a similar user experience. 

Voice commerce 

According to the Smart Speaker & Voice Study 2021-2022 by digital agency Beyto, more than half of people over 18 use voice search at least occasionally. With the help of voice assistants like Alexa, Cortana and Siri, they get answers to all their questions on the Internet simply by using their voice instead of a keyboard, mouse, or cumbersome search tools. 

Increasing numbers of people are also using voice commands to search for and buy products online, but current voice recognition technology still needs to be optimized to further boost the voice commerce marketing trend. The goal is to make interaction with voice assistants as human as possible and to build trust. 

⭐ Highlights of voice commerce 

Voice commerce makes online shopping especially convenient and easy. The shopping experience can also be personalized with the help of voice assistants that analyze consumer behavior and learn from their users. 

3. Programmatic print 

Personalized advertising is a marketing trend you probably know mainly from online marketing. Programmatic print makes it easy to create personalized (print) campaigns – completely automatically. 

This is done using smart templates that take advantage of analytics data from the web and that are populated with data and files from your digital asset management system (DAM). 

Programmatic print is ideal for reactivating shopping cart abandoners, for example: If an online store visitor adds products to their shopping cart and then leaves without completing a purchase, this triggers the exchange of certain content such as text and images in a template (with the help of the DAM) and sends a personalized mailing. This reminds the online store visitor that there are still goods in the shopping cart and they can also receive a coupon code for free shipping. 

Other use cases for programmatic print are: 

• Traditional dialog mail 
• Inserts in parcels 
• Pullout catalogs 

⭐ Highlights of programmatic print 

Programmatic print lets you carry on a personal dialog with your customers across all channels – even offline. 

Analog advertising still packs a punch, even in today’s digital world: Deutsche Post’s CMC DIALOG POST Study 2020 concluded that print mailings – advertising materials sent to existing customers by post – achieve an average conversion rate of 4.9 percent. 

Read in our blog how you can create customized print products easily and cost-effectively using web-to-print. 

Visual commerce 

Tomorrow’s marketing thrives on images. Visual commerce aka visual marketing uses the full potential of imagery to engage customers. 

You will encounter the following technologies in online marketing trends 2023: 

• 3D product visualization: 360-degree views bring products to life from all perspectives. 
• Visual product configuration: From the color to the materials the product is made from _– customers can use configuration tools to create customized products that perfectly meet their requirements. 
• Augmented reality (AR): The product can be digitally placed in a chosen environment. This gives customers an impression of how your product works. 

⭐ Highlights of visual commerce 

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text and also remembers them longer. You should therefore work with as many visual supports as possible in your marketing, since they help your customers envision your products and experience them directly in use. 

Video content marketing 

The trend toward visual imagery is also holding strong in content marketing: from Instagram reels and TikTok videos to YouTube shorts, video is now the format of choice because it can be consumed quickly and digested easily. The most sought-after content includes product videos, Q&As and tutorials. Video podcasts, analogous to audio podcasts, are also very much in vogue. 

⭐ Highlights of video content marketing 

Video can be used to present complex content in an easy-to-understand way. Using interactive features and live videos is a great way to actively engage your audience. Videos are also ideal for building your thought leadership and for influencer marketing. 

� Speaking of influencer marketing: Making use of micro-influencer marketing can really pay off. The big advantage here: While micro-influencers may have fewer followers (between 1,000 and 100,000), their audience is made up mostly of peers rather than fans. This peer-to-peer relationship is much more personal and trusting – offering ideal conditions for authentic marketing. 

Virtual events 

Virtual events have been on the rise as a marketing strategy, not least due to the coronavirus pandemic. Virtual events are events that take place entirely in digital space, while hybrid events combine digital and analog elements. In addition to trade shows, conferences, concerts and community events can also be held virtually. 

According to a survey by the digital association Bitkom, 47 percent of companies implemented digital or hybrid trade shows for the first time in 2020. Three years later, virtual events have become an integral part of event marketing. Technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and metaverse can take your marketing to a new level – and another step further into the future. 

⭐ The highlights of virtual events 

Virtual events enable you to save tremendous amounts of resources during planning and execution. There are no costs for renting a location or for travel, and you save printing costs for advertising materials. 

You also have a greater reach digitally, since people from all over the world can attend events more easily. State-of-the-art technologies mean you can give your creativity free rein when it comes to design and create unique events like never before. 

💡 By the way: You can also use suitable event platforms to analyze the behavior of participants and measure the success of your event. Monitoring the success of marketing campaigns is completely in line with the trend of performance marketing. 

Social commerce and discovery commerce 

Social media already featured strongly in the 2022 marketing trends and will remain a hot topic in online marketing in 2023. The focus here is on social commerce – selling via social media platforms. According to a study by Accenture, social commerce sales could triple by 2025. 

Another trend directly related to this is discovery commerce. With this marketing strategy, instead of customers searching for suitable products, the products make themselves available to suitable customers. Potential buyers come across the products while scrolling through their social media feeds and can purchase them there, directly. 

⭐ Highlights of social commerce 

Customers complete the purchase of your products via the direct purchase option without leaving the page or app or first having to initiate a complicated ordering process. Social proof refers to when potential customers base their purchase decisions on the actions and recommendations of others, and it has a major influence on social commerce. 

You should therefore pay close attention to the power of customer reviews and support the sales process with social selling: build intensive and long-term customer relationships through authentic interactions with social media users. 

💡 By the way: The trend is toward direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. When you as a manufacturer distribute your products directly without intermediaries, you have full control over your brand. You also build stronger customer relationships and can collect valuable information and data about consumers. 

Omnichannel marketing 

Multichannel commerce, sales via various sales channels and marketplaces, has been common practice for a long time now. One of the marketing trends of 2023 takes it a step further: omnichannel marketing. The goal here is to serve and link all sales channels, online and offline. 

Unified commerce goes yet another step further and lets you use CRM platforms, helpdesk software and other solutions to manage all your channels centrally via a single platform. 

⭐ Highlights of omnichannel marketing 

Dr. Karsten Wildberger, CEO of CECONOMY and MediaMarktSaturn, calls omnichannel the “future of commerce” in the Google Omnichannel Excellence Study (GOES) 2022. Omnichannel ensures a uniform customer journey and a consistent brand identity across all channels. 

Progressive web apps (PWA) 

Mobile first is a catchphrase we’ll be hearing a lot in the next few years. Websites, online stores and social media platforms are mainly used via mobile devices these days, so it makes sense to focus on mobile-optimized versions when designing websites. Search engines also prefer pages that are “mobile-friendly”. 

Progressive web apps (PWA) follow this mobile-first approach. These are special browser applications for mobile devices that function like an app. 

⭐ Highlights of progressive web apps 

Progressive web apps combine the advantages of moile apps with those of traditional websites. They are accessed entirely without downloading using all common browsers and regardless of the operating system. At the same time, they are easy to use, promote customer engagement, and provide an improved customer experience. 

Headless CMS and headless commerce 

Headless commerce refers to the construction of websites where the frontend and backend are separated. A headless CMS is a content management system that has only one backend and serves exclusively as a repository. This means you use it to manage your content, which you distribute to various frontends and channels via APIs (interfaces). 

You can also use APIs to fetch data from various systems, such as from your Master Data Management or Digital Asset Management System (DAM). You can even build entire websites this way. 

⭐ Highlights of headless commerce 

The big advantage of headless commerce is that you can customize the frontend of your websites and online stores completely independently from the backend. This give you great flexibility and allows you to operate efficient omnichannel marketing. You enter all your data centrally and only once, and then use it as needed for the various channels.  

Another advantage is that the headless CMS has no superfluous HTML code, as is often the case with modular systems like the WordPress plug-in Elementor. As a result, your website is ultra-fast and gets top scores in Core Web Vitals. Thus, a headless CMS positively impacts the user experience. 

Conclusion: What’s new and different about the future of marketing 

Marketing trends in 2023 are primarily aimed at improving the user experience. You should use all available channels to engage with your target audiences and invite them to interact. Be consistent and authentic while doing so. Engage in content marketing that inspires your target groups, and use visualizations and modern technologies like augmented reality for unique customer experiences. 

With all the digital marketing trends, don’t forget to serve offline channels as well. The successful “click and collect” model, in which customers order products online and then pick them up in-store, has shown that a smart combination of sales channels resonates with customers.