Top 5 tips & trends for financial marketers in 2023

Social, geopolitical and economic uncertainties that characterized 2022 aren’t likely to abate any time soon. Prompted by those challenges, forward-thinking business leaders are adapting their marketing strategies.

If you are a business strategist looking to jumpstart your 2023 marketing campaigns, consider these five marketing trends and best practices:

1. AI starts to step up

Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI) technology and automation tools (like ChatGPT and DALL-E). You may wonder what AI technology can do, how it works, and how it might help your business. Many of us have the same questions. While AI tools are mostly in beta testing, the technology matures quickly. Essentially, the tools streamline time-consuming creative and content tasks, including research and image searches, freeing up valuable time for strategic work, like branded story development. The Wall Street Journal calls this approach “post-creation.” We believe that, over the long term and with proper set-up and governance, AI can play a vital role in speeding up more basic tasks and enabling agencies to focus their resources on strategic, higher-value client work.

2. Aligning CSR & ESG with marketing strategies

Investing time in your corporate social responsibility (CSR) and contributing to causes that align with your company’s values can win favour with clients and employees. Recent surveys show that Millennials and Gen Z cohorts have high levels of climate change engagement, with 90% of Millennials actively pursuing sustainable investments.2  More regulators are taking a closer look at portfolios to ensure that stated environmental, social & governance (ESG) actions can be verified. With the critical importance of value articulation, marketers need to align their CSR and ESG messaging carefully. Recently, Ext. Marketing helped a major multi-billion-dollar global asset manager successfully benchmark and align the messaging for their ESG solutions, while also helping their messaging to better reflect their corporate CSR positioning.

3. Social media continues to skyrocket

It’s estimated that by 2026, social media, community and virtual platform engagement will influence over 68% of brand revenue.2 Firms need to become savvier than ever about leveraging their social media platforms. However, social media success starts with having a solid content pillars and editorial strategy. In 2022, Ext. Marketing led a number of social engagement strategy projects that enabled our clients to connect with their audiences on organic channels, as well as paid channels like LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube. With our strategic guidance, clients achieved strong engagement and exceeded target expectations with social media audiences.

4. Video frames your messaging

Video is a terrific addition to your brand storytelling toolkit. Research by Cisco discovered that video accounts for 82% of all online traffic.3 Today, Cisco estimates that 84% of consumers have been influenced or convinced to purchase a product after watching a video. Visual content can help keep content fresh and deliver on performance goals. Ext. Marketing engages in video storytelling for a wide variety of firms across different mediums. We recently helped a real estate firm underscore important key messages to investors at their annual Investor Day through videos that demonstrated the lifecycle of a key property. The videos helped convey how the addition of thoughtful design and amenities delivered value to investors, tenants and the surrounding community.

5. Data drives good marketing decisions

Analytics are a marketer’s best friend. All successful marketing strategies employ a digital component – organic social posts, blogs, email, paid digital ads or a combination of channels. Each activity can track data to support your marketing plan (and your budget). Metrics give stakeholders a valuable understanding of their return on investment – and this will be more important than ever as marketers look to use their dollars wisely and more efficiently in the coming years. Ext. Marketing has deep experience applying data analytics to quickly pivot tactics and drive successful campaign results. Metrics can be a bit of an alphabet soup (think: CTR, CPC, CPM), and working with the right partner can help you sort through the data noise and use it in the right context to support your strategy.

1 Will AI Make Creative Workers Redundant
2 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-millennials-and-gen-z-are-driving-growth-behind-esg
3 https://stefanini.com/en/insights/news/global-digital-marketing-outlook-for-2023-and-beyond
4 https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/m/en_us/solutions/service-provider/vni-forecast-highlights/pdf/Global_Device_Growth_Traffic_Profiles.pdf

If you’re interested in exploring these trends further or just want to better align your messaging, Ext. Marketing can help! Call 1.844.243.1830 or email us to book a time with our team.