With a new year comes new possibilities, and in the digital marketing world, the possibilities can be endless. The selection of foundations, strategies, and tactics, is also endless, however — so how do you ensure you’re on the path to digital marketing success in 2023?
That’s what we asked our experts.
SalientMG’s team recently expanded its digital marketing capabilities with the additions of VP of Digital Jason Lynch and Marketing & Automation Specialist Julia Tong.
“The biggest question we hear from B2B startups is what they should be doing now and next based on their market and maturity,” said Jason. “Our ‘senior doer’ Growth Marketing team has years of experience in the deepest weeds of MarTech implementations, demand gen campaigns, and content strategies that inform the strategic recommendations we make. We’re able to holistically assess the dynamics of a startup and chart the most effective path for growth.”
As this larger team looks ahead to 2023, each “senior doer” shared their biggest prediction for the new year. Explore our keys to success for demand generation, marketing operations, content marketing, and more:
Jason Lynch – VP, Digital:
I expect every day of 2023 to bring news of a new tool or use case for ChatGPT. As we settle into these new use cases, I’m hopeful that the implications of AI adoption to accelerate marketing outputs will have an unexpected twist – enabling authentic human connection.
Our consulting work is not just about outputs and strategies in decks. It frequently centers on fundamental issues of aligning internal teams and systems around a customer journey. We create digital strategies to help our clients connect with their audiences. We create content that is equally about the process of an organization taking a meaningful point of view on issue as it is about the output.
While AI will clearly transform and automate marketing in ways we can’t even imagine in the years to come, if we focus on the creative process as much as the output, we’ll realize that digital tools are a means to giving us back more time to do the work only we can do. Having more time to connect and create alignment is a primary need for business B2B marketing teams, and I see AI making that happen in 2023.
Amanda Klitsch – Director, Demand Generation:
As we look to 2023, we see ever present reminders that even in B2B marketing, there is a human at the end of the buyer’s journey. Authenticity has become paramount to brand success, and companies that get this and present their brand authentically and in a way that demonstrates how they solve problems for their customers will see the greatest success.
Pressing the right buttons for a campaign setup alone isn’t enough (although it certainly doesn’t hurt), but my hope in 2023 is that more organizations consider marketing, and particularly demand generation efforts, as one piece of a much larger puzzle to connect with their audiences. Expecting paid media alone to drive revenue ignores the complexity of the buyer’s journey and decision making process.
Demand generation is a part of a larger process, and in 2023, the organizations that understand this and prioritize awareness, have valuable website content, test processes to understand what is important to their audience, leverage great post-lead nurture and marketing, and encourage sales organizations to collaborate will be rewarded.
Kreg Lewenza – Senior Digital Marketing Manager:
B2B tech companies have amassed bloated MarTech stacks to help support their marketing initiatives. The 2022 MarTech landscape showed how the 150 martech solutions in 2011 grew to a whopping 9,932 in 2022. With tool fatigue, low adoption, and a need to save budget, marketing leaders are realizing that distribution, automation, and reporting don’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) done with 15 different tools.
In 2023, there will be a tipping point martech tool consolidation from both a product and user standpoint. Integrated platforms like HubSpot and Zoho are constantly releasing new features that make add-ons obsolete. Organizations are also realizing that many tools they are paying for have low adoption and want to limit their martech stack to systems that are actually being used.
Julia Tong – Marketing & Automation Specialist:
The relationship between successful MarTech adoption and closed-won deals will continue to grow more apparent in 2023. Strategically embedding the best-fit marketing tech means aligning to your customer journey and employee needs.
Having an optimized, unsiloed tech stack improves marketing efficiency, the customer experience, and data management and security — all of which increase marketing ROI. Although many successful businesses have a strong online presence, they gather data from many different marketing channels, each with their own platform. This leads to inefficiencies and even errors in data analytics, which results in a poor understanding of target personas, marketing performance, and sales results. I predict more alignment of teams and go-to-market strategies around well implemented MarTech and shared metrics for start-ups that will win in 2023.
Mary Clare Rechtoris – Senior Manager, Content Marketing:
Getting your content to stand out has never been more challenging – and those challenges will only grow in 2023. Audiences are constantly inundated with ads, event invitations, prospecting emails, LinkedIn messages, and sales phone calls. Combine this information overload with their ability to spot a sales pitch disguised as “helpful content” within seconds, and it proves that content marketers must master the art of human connection in 2023. If your content doesn’t create empathy and appeal to your audience’s greatest challenges, it won’t generate results.
We’re seeing that consumers want compassionate connections that are empathetic to the struggles they face. Research has also shown that emotionally-connected customers are more valuable than highly-satisfied customers. Another important piece of the empathy puzzle? Data. There’s nothing more powerful than quantitative data to validate the claim that your solution improves the lives of your customers. We’re also seeing leading brands stand out with proprietary research that stands out.
Heading into 2023, focus on the big three: 1. Know your audience 2. Build authentic connections 3. Show them the numbers.
Nicole Pytel – Director, Content Marketing: 2023 must be the year that digital marketers take command of the Dark Funnel. It’s a challenge we’ve faced for years, but as buyers get more savvy about avoiding conversations with Sales until they’re absolutely-positively-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt ready to make a purchase, marketers must compensate.
How? By ensuring that unknown prospects have everything they need to advance through the funnel at their own pace. Reserve your gated content for the most substantial assets and turn case studies, one pagers, and videos into touchpoints that are easy to interact with, clearly demonstrate your expertise, and establish your brand’s distinct value. It’s time to put a new twist on your organic and distribution strategies so that your full-funnel journey can be like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Bottom line — if you’re like most B2B startups, your 2023 marketing goals are big. Ensure you’ve got a solid digital route to success.