Loom’s 2023 digital marketing predictions: GA4, TikTok and the rise of AI

It’s that time of year again – Loom’s digital marketing predictions for 2023!

It’s been quite a year for the digital marketing industry, with lots of exciting developments and new platforms to get used to. We’ve been working with our clients to help them capitalise on the opportunities 2022 has brought, providing support while expanding our own knowledge.

So what will 2023 look like for digital marketers? Here’s what our team think.

Looking for a specific section? Jump to our predictions for:

• The switch to Google Analytics 4
• Digital marketing without cookies
• Adopting new platforms and strategies
• AI and the future of digital marketing
• The TikTok craze
• The marketing industry and the working world

The switch to Google Analytics 4

We’re starting off with the big one. In early 2022, Google announced that the current Analytics – known as ‘Universal Analytics’ (UA) – will be sunsetted and replaced with Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Here at Loom, we’ve been getting our heads around GA4, working with our clients to set up their accounts so we have enough data to work with when UA goes for good. If you’re unsure about Google Analytics 4 or are unsure of where to start with your account, read our GA4 guide here.

Here are our thoughts on GA4.

Get started with GA4 sooner rather than later

Tommy Pearson

“You’ll already have heard the news – Universal Analytics is being sunsetted in July 2023 and being replaced with Google’s new solution, GA4. This is a sea change in how tracking and analytics will be handled, and your website and marketing strategy has to be ready.

“There are a huge amount of changes in terminology, event tracking, dashboards, AI-driven insights and more. On top of that, there’s no escaping the fact that come July, your data won’t be collected in old faithful Universal Analytics. There’s a learning curve here, and it’ll take practice, but many marketers are in the same boat.”

Digital marketing tip:
Our main takeaway is, if you’re not using GA4 yet, start now. The sooner you start building up data and get used to using the platform, the better you’ll be when it’s the go to destination for digital marketers everywhere.

The advantages of GA4

Marco Morelli

“With the end of third-party cookies and changes in privacy, plus the complexities of cross-platform and cross-device customer journeys, there are many challenges we’re currently facing in the digital marketing industry. With this in mind, Google Analytics 4 has the flexibility to measure a variety of data, integrating different user journeys – for both websites and mobile apps – and use machine learning to predict new insights. This also means that, through GA4, we can measure the impact of the future of mobile apps.

“Moreover, GA4 has the ability to operate across platforms, not relying exclusively on cookies and using an event-driven data model, denoting a measurement paradigm centred on the user and, consequently, their privacy. GA4 provides many, many advantages – we just have to get used to it ASAP!”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Get set up on GA4 as soon as possible – you don’t want to lose large amounts of data.
2. Play around with the interface and ensure that you know how to find what you need. By setting up your account in advance, you’ll have time to experiment and see for yourself how advanced the new analytics is.

Digital marketing without cookies

While GA4 has been a hot topic for the industry, we haven’t forgotten about the phasing out of cookies. This year, Google once again pushed the deadline to 2024, suggesting that they’re still scrambling to find an alternative.

While it’s hard to know what the future will look like without cookies, we’ve kept an eye on the different solutions that have been suggested so far.

The announcement of Google’s ‘Topics’ – a cookie-less solution

Wez Cogan

“Google’s controversial cookieless solution called FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) has been axed. This privacy solution saw a huge wave of community backlash due to the questionable access Google would still have to user data within these cohorts and potential for machine fingerprinting. So with the heat turned up to 11, Google’s new solution Topics was announced in early 2022.

“With this new(er) solution, your browser determines a handful of topics, like “Fitness” or “Travel” that represent your top interests for that week based on your browsing history. Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted.

“Topics are selected entirely on your device without involving any external servers, including Google servers. When you visit a participating site, Topics picks just three topics, one topic from each of the past three weeks, to share with the site and its advertising partners.

“This new solution is still waiting for approval and, more importantly, feedback from the industry. Who knows, there could even be another iteration of this Privacy Sandbox solution. Regardless, I believe we will be seeing a rollout of at least one cookieless measurement and targeting solution in 2023 because Google is currently set to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024. Fingers crossed, there’s a replacement for FLEDGE (First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment) too!”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Get GA4 fully set up ASAP because this will be crucial to ensuring you’re ready for a cookieless future.
2. Set up Enhanced Conversions. With this solution, advertisers can share first-party, user-provided data via their existing tags, which helps identify conversions otherwise unobserved by tagging alone.

Adopting new platforms and strategies

There have been many new platforms that have grown in popularity. We’ve already mentioned GA4, but TikTok, chatbots, AI generation and many more have been making waves within the industry.

As digital marketers, it’s important to stay on top of the latest trends and evaluate what works – and what doesn’t – for clients. With advanced technologies and changing user behaviours, it’s never too late to try something new.

Early adopters will be big winners

Sam Gosling

“Early adopters of new features and platforms that have been released over the last few years will be the ones with the advantage. It is always important to stay ahead of the curve to gain advantage over your competitors and with all the new releases recently, this is more important than ever. Those who have had GA4 set up already will have more data, audiences and insights to make more informed decisions with.

“The same is likely to be true with other new(ish) features and channels such as enhanced Conversion Tracking, Performance Max and TikTok. These early adopters will see the benefits of having much more data than their competitors who may well be lagging behind.”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Adopt new features as soon as possible and test any betas that might be available to you across different platforms. This will ensure that you’re not being left behind and you are one step ahead of your competition.
2. Test new platforms even if you think they might not work for you. Audience behaviour is complex and they are likely to be everywhere across a variety of channels, if they are there, should you be too?

Chatbots will become more sophisticated a crucial part of a business’ marketing strategy

Tamas Mihaly

“As digital technologies continuously advance, so do customer experiences and expectations. This is why it’s important for businesses to keep up with the latest trends the digital world can offer, so they can thrive even in a red ocean environment.

“Chatbots will be booming in 2023 and beyond as they offer various benefits to businesses, such as increased conversions, reduced labour costs, automated customer service, and being able to use them for advertising purposes just to name a few. Also, customers getting answers to their questions in a quicker way will make them happy. Happy customers means more business.”

Digital marketing tip:
Consider setting up a chatbot, especially if you’re already directing paid traffic to your website to generate leads or sell a product or service. A chatbot AI can substantially boost your conversion rate and improve customer satisfaction. Chatbots are communicating with your customers in real-time which means that you can keep them on your website for longer. The more time spent on site, the better, as it can help in improving SEO and driving sales.

Don’t let chatbots slow your website down

Jack McGivern

“Due to lack of data from the change in cookie policies, businesses may opt for more interactive and engaging websites, including more conversational marketing. Conversational marketing is an ongoing dialogue between businesses and their customers, when and where it’s most convenient for the customer. One example of this is through the use of chatbots. Rather than a customer filling out a form and waiting for an indefinite amount of time, conversational marketing engages them instantly, which is also incredibly useful for qualifying leads.

“With simple and sleek designs becoming more popular in recent years, I would also be inclined to guess that we may see more responsive and dynamic websites coming out of the woodworks in order to stand out from the crowd. The only issue with this is that sometimes dynamic sites can be poorly optimised for speed and SEO. Finding the balance between function and visual appeal, will be essential for those looking to adopt a more dynamic website design.”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Carefully test your website on a variety of devices, you can see what devices your users are using through analytics, although optimising for mobile is recommended.
2. It is possible to lazy load certain elements that aren’t crucial to the main function of your website, you could also choose to load elements as a user hovers over it. This can be useful for a chat bot.

Experiment with new social media platforms

Dan Waller

“With tensions at Twitter mounting, a number of new or previously neglected social channels are starting to gain some traction with Google Trends showing a huge increase in interest around Mastodon (for example) over the last month. Whilst not all of these alternative channels are going to stick, we reckon there’s going to be a handful that are here to stay, and these will offer brands exciting new spaces to experiment with. And although not many of these alternatives aren’t offering advertising right now, we’re sure they’ll start to introduce paid features sooner rather than later – we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for these announcements in 2023!”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Check the channels content focus is right for you – if you have visual products, go with a platform that leans into videos or images, but if you’re blog based, find something where you can share feeds or better still, link back to your website
2. Where is your audience? Take a bit of time to get to know a platform before investing too much effort into it. This will help you understand the audience that uses the platform and whether they will resonate with your brand
3. Once you’ve found a platform that works, stick with it – you don’t have to use every platform that’s available.

AI and the future of digital marketing

AI isn’t anything new, but it’s certainly expanded rapidly over the last few years. From AI content generation to enhanced PPC automation, there are many opportunities to take advantage of.

While AI can transform your business processes and speed up your outputs, we believe that it shouldn’t do all the hard work. We’ve taken a closer look at some of the latest AI tech in detail in our guides:

• AI content generation: should you be using AI for content writing?
• Why You Need a Human Approach to PPC Automation

Opening doors with AI

Lottie Hudson

“There is also evidence that AI is coming into a much more accessible tool within the public domain and advertising industries, what implications may this have for the manual SEO work, PPC Ad Copy etc. With the help of AI it opens doors for daily content creation and use of AI machine learning. What does the future of AI Marketing look like? AI will help marketers to make better decisions, create work outputs, improve collaboration and much more.

“AI Marketing has been around for quite some time. Just check your Gmail. It’s been a while since Gmail’s AI predicted what you would like to write and suggested to autocomplete the entire sentence for you.

“Gartner predicted in the autumn 2021, that worldwide AI software revenue would be $62.5 billion in 2022, growing by 21.3% from 2021. The fastest growing segment would be knowledge management; Statista forecast that the global AI software market revenue will reach $126 billion by 2025.”

Digital marketing tip:

1. Subscribe to informational forums to keep up to date with the marketing sphere. AI offers many new tools for marketers.
2. Use AI for the ease of personalisation of your content, targeting the right messages to the right audiences, saving time by creating content and marketing automations, use machine learning and improve algorithms continuously.

An increase in opportunities as searches expand

Tom Spooner

“In 2023, we’re going to see Google continue to expand the types of search you can perform and lean even more heavily on AI. Its ‘Multisearch’ is already in Beta in the US – it allows users to combine text and images to find more relevant search results, even on a local level. You’ll be able to search an image of an item of clothing along with a specific colour, for example, or take a picture of your house plant and find care instructions. It’s important that SEOs keep a close eye on the evolution of search and capitalise on opportunities.”

Digital marketing tip:
SEOs keep a close eye on the evolution of search and capitalise on new opportunities. Follow Google’s blog for more insights.

AI isn’t for everything

Chloe Price

“When Google rolled out the Helpful Content Update earlier this year, they made it clear that content that’s valuable and genuinely helpful for the user should always take priority. If you’re writing thin content that’s loaded with keywords forced into each sentence, then chances are your readers will not enjoy what you’ve written and you’ll see your rankings drop. We all know how important content is for SEO, and that’s partly why AI content generation has grown in popularity, allowing SEO’ers to churn out articles that target their keywords while putting in minimal effort.

“Now, with the Helpful Content Update tackling this content type, and any other spammy, poorly written content, we may see a larger focus on content quality over quantity, as it becomes a more significant part of digital marketing strategies. Businesses should be paying more attention to what they write – and what their audience is saying – to ensure that your content hits the mark.“

Digital marketing tips:

1. Review the content currently on your site and decide whether it is actually valuable to the user, or if Google would see it as poor. Content audits are a great way to do this.
2. Don’t take your keyword research at face value. While search volume is of course important, research your terms individually to make sure they meet the user intent and you’re writing for the right stage in your users’ journeys.
3. Try and avoid AI content tools!

The TikTok craze

We’ve already mentioned the importance of testing out new platforms. However, TikTok has become such a craze that we felt it deserved its own section, having impacted a variety of marketing channels.

Although TikTok was founded before the pandemic, during lockdown it exploded in popularity. Designed to be an ‘entertainment’ platform, it allows users of all ages and backgrounds to share authentic, fun content that’s valuable to viewers. This simple app has sent tremors throughout the industry, for both organic and paid social, and even SEO.

Read more about the impact of TikTok on digital marketing for more information.

TikTok SEO

Ellen Stone

“With TikTok attracting more traffic than Google in 2021, it’s become a key tool in a digital marketer’s social media arsenal. Users are beginning to use the app as their preferred search engine to look for restaurants, travel, products and more. With that in mind, I predict that TikTok SEO will become a staple platform for many brands digital marketing strategy, with a focus on TikTok related SEO optimisation and search ads.

Google now lists TikTok video within its SERPs, so becoming more strategic with the copy being used on your videos is crucial. Whilst search ads are not available on the platform as of yet, they were reported to be testing the feature earlier in 2022, and could have incredible potential, considering the amount of traffic passing through the app everyday.

Digital marketing tips:

1. Similar to Instagram, research and select a keyword that you want to rank for. You should review how many views the term may have before making a decision of what to select. Anything in the billions are going to have high keyword difficulty, and you may never reach that ‘first page’ for a user. Instead, pick a term in the lower millions and below, to capitalise on lower keyword difficulty.
2. With your selected keyword, make sure this is ALL over your video. Add it to your cover, in-video subtitles, your voiceover and caption. Don’t forget your hashtags! Make sure you research associated hashtags to your specific term, so you can include this and support your central term.
3. Create a content series around your preferred term. Similar to building topical authority through SEO & Content, having a series of videos on the topic increases your opportunity of ranking. It also means you have a back catalogue of ideas!

Expanding targeting options for TikTok ads

Alex Instone

“TikTok has gained significant market share of users and changed the culture of social media in a relatively short period of time. However, despite the growth in users, the targeting options and machine learning feels less effective than its competitors. This year I think TikTok will bring out more targeting options and improve machine learning to account for these shortfalls.

“TikTok’s growth has been so rapid that it’s been noticed by everyone. This means that business owners will increasingly see it as an opportunity to push their product or service on the platform.”

Digital marketing tip:
When starting on TikTok ads, we would advise to regularly generate ads and make them as authentic and native to TikTok as possible.

Make the most of short-form videos

Harry Pearson

“With the introduction of TikTok and YouTube shorts, people’s viewing habits have changed. Bite sized content offering information that requires little time and effort to consume. With most platforms now very much focused on highly visual content, I think that, this year, more users will be focusing on providing short form videos to use on TikTok, YouTube shorts and Performance Max campaigns. These people that get onboard with short form videos early will see the benefits of using this content in your campaigns quickly.

“I also predict that user-generated content will become a big priority. Consumers love user-generated content, and for brands it means that they are not using many resources and get to publish videos that will evoke emotion in users.”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Be authentic – your short videos should be a true representation of your brand’s personality and show your customers exactly what your company stands for.
2. Create a payoff for the consumer – why should your consumer carry on watching your video? What’s in it for them?
3. Create a short series of content – break up videos into short series, giving the consumer a reason to keep coming back to your profile.
4. Figure out what you’re trying to get out of the video. Before you start producing the video, figure out what you’re trying to tell your target audience.
5. Add a call to action at the end. This doesn’t always have to be “click the link in the description” or “sign up to our email.” Instead, it can be as easy as “tell us where you’re from in the comments.” This is creating engagement with your brand and forming a relationship between you and your consumer.

The marketing industry and the working world

While we consider the current trends and developments in the marketing industry itself, it’s also important to take a step back and look at the industry as a whole. It’s been a turbulent year for businesses with rising costs, a recession on the way and still navigating a new way of working following the pandemic. Regularly revisiting your strategies and looking after your employees are key to thriving during these difficult circumstances.

Marketing in a downturn

Nikki Ellison

“The UK economy is predicted to take a significant down swing in 2023. Businesses might need to revisit their marketing KPIs, which can often shift in a downturn as some targets, which may have been less important during growth, now need to be prioritised during a downturn. Retention will be key for all businesses, so make sure your customer data is in good order.”

Digital marketing tip:
Ensure all business and marketing decisions are data driven. This allows for better decision making, forecasting and help keep your finances in order.

Bridging the gap between online and brick & mortar

Romy Gwillym

“With online shopping becoming more and more popular, e-commerce and online business start ups are growing at a rapid rate. Currently, setting up as an online business is a great way to keep overheads to a minimum due to much smaller rental costs. I predict that HMRC will bring in a new e-commerce tax to bridge the gap between brick and mortar and e-commerce overheads.”

Digital marketing tips:

1. Stay on top of the latest info to ensure you’re prepared for any updates.
2. Consider this when planning if starting a new e-commerce business. If the tax does come in, you’ll need to ensure your finances are in check.

Proactively supporting mental health in the workplace

Vicky Hockley

“Going into 2023 with a recession and cost of living crisis off the back of a worldwide pandemic will continue to take its toll on employees. Mental health awareness and support in the workplace has increased dramatically since the pandemic and will continue to do so into 2023. As well as clear lines of support, open communication and flexible working, proactive benefits such as healthcare, gym & exercise memberships, financial guidance and online coaching (such as MoreHappi) will be at the forefront of businesses plans when it comes to employee wellbeing.”

Digital marketing predictions:

1. Speak to your employees about what’s important to them and what they need to make their experience at work an even better one. Consider anonymous surveys set up for free on Google Forms. We do this every 6 months and Loom and always get lots of great insight to make positive changes.
2. Consider revising your employee benefits – include this in your survey or ask your employees what would be appreciated most, especially during the recession and cost of living crisis.

Building your digital marketing strategy with Loom

Digital marketing is a fast-paced, ever changing industry and sometimes it can be hard to stay on top of the latest news and developments. Thankfully, Loom does it all for you.

Whether you’re looking for PPC and Biddable Media or want to invest in your SEO, then get in touch and we’ll kickstart your digital marketing strategy.