As we leave 2023, what are five marketing trends that need to be left behind?

Inauthentic Endorsements 

How often did you see celebrities and influencers promoting or endorsing a brand or product last year that instantly made them lose credibility?

Consumers are becoming a lot more aware of advertising and are highly critical of inauthentic brand alignments and endorsements. Research from the Morning Consult found that 44% of Gen Z consumers trust endorsements from a celebrity or athlete. This percentage is even lower for Millennials, at 38%.

Inauthenticity must be left behind. For brand endorsements to succeed in 2024, brands must choose influencers who actually align with their message or product. For the advertising to be a success, the influencer’s audience should see the value in the product or service, in turn finding it a believable alignment. 

Overusing Hard CTAs 

Hard calls to action such as ‘BOOK NOW!’ or ‘BUY HERE!’ have been very useful in driving sales through creating a sense of urgency. However, with consumers more savvy to marketing, they are not as willing to spend straight away and can need some guidance.

Softer CTAs like ‘find out more’ or ‘explore’ can come across as less sales-motivated and less invasive to customers. The commitment free nature of these CTAs can in turn generate more interest, and ultimately more sales.

For best results, harder and softer CTAs should be used together. Here, you give the customer more choice whilst not scaring them off with a heavy sales focus.

No Social SEO

In 2024, it is important to focus on optimising your social media copy to enhance reach.

Social SEO is the process of researching keywords that your audience are searching for, and then adding these in all text based features of your social posts. This includes having keywords in your profile description, post captions and even in the post themselves.

This allows users to easily find your profile, rather than heavily relying on social algorithms to find consumers. 

Videos Without Captions

Over 90% of people now watch videos without sound. With people scrolling on the train, in waiting rooms and so on, it makes sense that they will not be playing videos out loud.

For this reason, it is strongly recommended to add captions to your videos. Having captioned videos not only allows viewers to understand what is being said, but also keeps them captivated.

Overusing Hashtags 

Hashtags are still an incredibly useful way to reach new audiences. However, using too many under a post can damage the post reception, coming across as spam-like. This may be due to the rise in bot accounts across social media platforms, which typically use lots of hashtags in a scattershot way. 

To use hashtags correctly, do not use too many and ensure they are relevant to your post and brand. 

Leaving these 5 trends behind in 2023 will drastically improve your marketing performance. It is also important to remain reactive and adaptable to future trends throughout the year.