2022 was a turning point for business in Russia. Most familiar sites and work schemes for attracting customers have become unavailable. In 2023 they were replaced by new strategies, and global trends, in spite of everything, were penetrating the Russian Internet marketing. Elisabeth Genevskaya, lecturer from Department of Advertising and Visual Communications, Faculty of design and advertising of Synergy University, told what should be introduced into your business now.
New Channels and End-to-End Marketing
The trend for the development of new channels arose forcibly. In 2022, we were left without Facebook* and Instagram*: They were recognized as extremist organizations and blocked on territory of the Russian Federation. Business had to switch to other channels. So it switched to VKontakte. According to the platform, the audience increase was 8.7%.
Among the alternatives, proposals from the Russian market also began to appear: “Grustnogram”, “Rossgram”, Yappy and others. None of these social networks became popular, advertising cabinets did not appear there. However, we can assume that there will be more attempts to create more successful projects.
In 2023, it is also important for business to invest in comprehensive promotion, developing different channels and platforms for communication with the client. Therefore, you can collect information about the consumer from different sources: what questions he asked, what he bought and with what frequency. Moreover, the client has the opportunity to choose a convenient type of connection for himself: through the social network, the website of the online store or directly through the messenger. It also provides the brand with a high level of service, forms its positive image and predicts consumer loyalty.
Marketplaces and video hosting as new search engines
We see that people more often make purchases on Yandex.Market or OZON, than in an online store of a certain brand. According to Lemon fintech-platform, among the five most popular marketplaces there were Wildberries, Ozon, SberMegaMarket, Yandex.Market and AliExpress Russia. In 2022, they accounted for half of all Internet sales.
Therefore, for many companies, access to marketplaces becomes a question of survival. For marketers, this is a new challenge: promotion schemes there are very different from the usual work with e-commerce, which relied on bringing people to your own site.
There is also a steady trend among young audiences to look for cognitive information in video format: it is much easier to understand how to prepare some kind of dish, teach words in a foreign language or remove a sauce stain. Therefore, for business, this is one of the most effective ways to promote.
Videos with a duration of less than two minutes are in trend. Even YouTube is now promoting videos for up to a minute. Domestic platforms like VKontakte and Zen, where, unlike YouTube, you can now run the ad, are also following this trend.
Legislative Regulation and Rejection of Cookies
In September 2022, the law on mandatory labeling of all online advertising began to operate in Russia. And although almost six months have passed, there is still a lot of questions about work of this system. Therefore, in 2023 marketers will need more time to place advertisements.
The changes also affected the personal data of our audience. Google is already collecting less user information than we are used to. And by 2024 it will stop doing this altogether. Therefore, 2023 is an opportunity for marketers to restructure their working methods. Now we will need other services to know “everything” about visitors to the site. To do this Clearbit, Lusha, and Snitzer are suitable.
At the same time, in no case should we forget about the rights of our audience to confidentiality and security of those data that they are ready to transfer to us. Storage of such data must be treated with all seriousness. Watch out for technical safety, otherwise reputational risks due to information leakage are imminent.
IT in marketing
Initially, this trend appeared in IT, but now it is beginning to spread to internet marketing. First of all, this concerns the management of advertising campaigns. Increasingly, it is the machine that will decide where and how to optimize your ad. For example, from the spring of 2023, Yandex will no longer have campaigns with manual bets with the demonstration of RSS. Google also offers auto strategies with the ability to pay for ads only per click.
Automation is also penetrating content generation: now you can write texts and create images using a neural network – this is a hot trend.
For example, Epica experimented successfully with a neural network: the company filled its social networks with creative and interesting materials, generated by AI. This attracted the attention of specialized media, which told their audience about it.
Improvement of chatbots is also in trend. They are made smarter with AI so they can better respond to requests of users, and this helps the business retain customers. The same story with voice assistants – they will develop, better understanding people, to help them with their questions.
Honest and Sincere Communications
In 2023, the distance between brands and audience will continue to shrink. Content is getting more honest and genuine – it is win-win strategy to boost loyalty and build trusting relationships with the audience. The audience wants to know everything about the brand.
Everyone is tired of the perfect retouched photos taken in the video studio. “Real” content is in trend.
The audience expects the same from bloggers. After a lot of scandals around pseudonative advertising it seemed like influence marketing would not survive. However bloggers continue helping brands create this feeling of “intimacy” with their audience. Therefore, blog tours and UGC (user-generated content) will develop actively in 2023.
What to do about it?
These are not all the trends of 2023. In the field of Internet marketing, they appear constantly – you should just have time to implement and track what is right to a particular business. Take a closer look at the methods of working in IT, but not forgetting about human communication.