FADS Marketing in 2023

The last few years have been wild, haven’t they? So many things have changed, and yet, as I read all the 2022 year-end round ups and 2023 marketing predictions, I have definitely sensed some themes. You’ll be glad to know the FADS will remain alive and well through it all. If you have read the book, you won’t be surprised. 

Let’s take a look at the latest trends in marketing, and what you might see in the fierce race to stay ahead of the competition.

Back to basics marketing

With talks of inflation and looming recession, it’s not going to surprise you that marketing budgets in the coming year might be tight. We’ll see marketing departments relying on less to do the work they need to do and in order to be successful, they may need to sit down and get back to basics. 

Instead of sending their carefully crafted messages out on every channel, this means they might have to sit down and identify who they are really targeting:  

“Understanding your best customers and most likely supporters will help you become laser-focused on what tactics will be most effective in meeting the goals you have for your website, saving both time and money.”

What does that mean for you? 

The programs marketers are using are getting better every day at targeting the right audience, so as long as they know who to target all you have to do is keep scrolling. They’ll use all the tools at their disposal to make sure you click. Sign up. Get a deal. Buy now. 

Personalization keeps getting easier

Back in the day, simple touches like using a customer’s first name and last name were enough to make people feel special. Now everyone wants personalized recommendations, products that match their interests, and ads that agree with their sensibilities.

It’s what we’ve been trained to expect after all with the growth of personalization.

We may complain it’s a bit creepy, but fear not, the recommendations will keep on coming. They work so well in fact, that most digital marketers running search ads on Google don’t even have to write anything anymore. The AI will take care of it for them, and create copy that is most likely to be clicked, based on their data. Through machine learning, and being trained on the words we’ve posted, emails, images, and even our keystrokes the auto-generated ads are extremely effective. 

We hear about privacy a lot now, but chances are before you ever thought about internet privacy you were already in the datasets, and now you are being targeted with digital advertising headlines, ad copy and images they know you might click.

Psychological marketing – changing behaviors with emotions

The power of using FADS to influence and change consumer behavior comes from how marketing teams speak to our emotions – our desires, fears, and instincts. Those things have not changed and we even expect that in the coming year we’ll continue to see FADS in marketing.

We saw brands tighten their belts and turn to nostalgia over the holidays because like the FADS, it is a tried and true way to reach consumers. We expect this to continue in the coming year, not just because of the continued concern over inflation and recession, but because we are coming out of a time of tremendous challenge. Marketers know how to use nostalgia and “comfort thoughts” to pull us in, as Liberty Mutual tells us pretty plainly:

Social media meltdown – is it over?

We don’t know yet what 2023 will bring for Twitter, or TikTok, or any other specific social media site, but does it matter? 

We see the extreme predictions like “The Age of Social Media Is Ending,” but despite the prophetic omen of death, it’s still a bit too crowded on most social channels for most businesses to break through all the noise. There must be a middle path in our future.

As the marketers get back to basics and tighten their budgets, we will see some businesses choose to focus only on social media channels that might be giving them some traction, and ditch the ones that aren’t providing value. Some may even ditch social altogether. The age of being everywhere, all the time, is not sustainable and it hasn’t been effective.

And this will be another subtle shift you may not notice – not even if a small business you love leaves whatever your favorite social site is. The big brands will still be all over with their brand campaigns to make sure you know who they are and who they #StandWith right now. The consistent, multi-channel messaging is how the powers that be do the very important work of shaping the culture and our behaviors. You bet they’ll be sure to keep investing in that work, as long as they are making the impacts they want to see anyway.

New year, time to get clear and focus

Most marketing professionals finished their plans months ago and are well on their way to launching the 2023 marketing campaigns they hope will shape our behavior for years to come. 

And there’s nothing we can do but sit back and enjoy the ride. If you want to know how they target us using the FADS, grab our book on Amazon and sign up for our email newsletter.