A Review of HubSpot’s 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report

2023 marketing strategy trends

Written by

Frances Neese

Created on

December 27, 2022

Good Team Review: HubSpot’s 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report

 

It’s no secret that I am quite literally obsessed with HubSpot.

I can still remember the first time I logged into the CRM. It was the summer of 2019 and the agency I worked for at the time had just become HubSpot Certified Solution Partners, my boss had forwarded an email from a client asking to fix a property on a deal in their sales pipeline.

comeagain? fix the what in your where?

I bumbled through the software trying to figure out what the heck a property was… and where I could find a deal? In my wandering, I remember seeing a contact record for the first time and looking through all the activities. I was utterly shocked that you could see all their interactions: website visits, ads, emails, form submissions right there in one place. It was like I found a missing link to a problem I didn’t even know existed.

 

Fast forward 3 years and I am on the edge of my seat excited to write a post on my thoughts of the 2023 marketing strategy and trends report that HubSpot just released.

 

HubSpot released this report a little over a month ago, I highly recommend reading it and taking notes on how it affects your business if you’re already a HubSpot user. If you’re not a HubSpot user, test out the ROI calculator at the end of this post to see if would be a good investment to make in 2023 (or if you’ve been hesitant because you don’t have time or the know-how to manage it, that’s what we do at Good Team).

 

There are 6 sections this 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report focused on:

  1. Biggest Findings
  2. Top Strategies & Trends
  3. Top Marketing Channels
  4. Social Media Marketing
  5. Marketing Challenges
  6. Marketing Goals & KPIs

I will give you the cliff-notes version of HubSpot’s findings and then share my experience and opinions on what we’ve seen at Good Team with clients and how we are planning to pivot over the next year. Again, here is the report on HubSpot’s website if you want to take a few minutes to read through it.

 

1. HubSpot’s Biggest Findings for 2023 Marketing Strategy and Trends

TLDR: Data-Driven Marketing. Be Agile. Learn to Pivot.

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “Ultimately, you need a plan for when things go off course. Will you increase your marketing budget? Will you cut down on marketing channels? How will you adapt your messaging to resonate with consumers’ evolving experiences? Most importantly, do you have the data you need to guide your decisions?”

I cannot express to you how deeply I agree with this. We saw changes and grew in ways we did not expect at Good Team. At the start of 2022 our focus was to help companies nurture their leads and streamline their Pipelines. We planned on digging deeper into email marketing and sales strategies but what happened was us digging deeper into data

Every. single. friggin. client. needed. better reporting. which meant better data.

Back in April a client asked us to build out an attribution report and the hairs on the back of my head stood up in fear. We got in there and spent about 6 weeks re-writing every inch of their “marketing” dashboard. After delivery I couldn’t stop. That project is still going on today, we’ve re-worked everything now. Properties, lead sources, lifecycle stages, deal records, contact records, workflow goals, pipeline stages, integrations, user permissions, I mean come on we had no idea.

After that it was like a wildfire spread and every client had some kind of reporting project throughout 2022. Now, when I hear about attribution reports I can’t shut-up because every client, portal, business is different and I can’t wait to see how to best track their data. I have no doubt reporting will be the task of the year for Good Team in 2023. Let’s go!

Data is the most important piece of your CRM puzzle and I will die on this hill.

So as I look forward to 2023 and how we are going to help clients it goes something like: “How are we going to make their data accurate, accessible, and easy to understand”?

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “…it’s worth noting that we’re seeing more emphasis on data-based decision-making, agile marketing, as well as social media brand-building (which often majorly contributes to the fast-paced tactics and pivots needed in the marketing industry each day). All in all, more marketers are speeding up processes and tactics to meet the digital, hyper-connected world we’re existing in today. ”

 

2. Top Strategies & Trends

TLDR: Human to human Marketing. Videos. DATA (shocker).

Currently the report shows marketers are focusing on these trends:

 

In 2023 they predict it will shift a little more like this:

 

Short Form Video

I can’t say I’m surprised by much of this, video has absolutely dominated the last few years. Things like TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts will keep that wave strong as we move into the new year. If you aren’t leveraging some of those platforms, I’d recommend looking into what your audience looks like there and seeing if your company can show up in a human way. I’d add LinkedIn as well, I’ve seen a huge wave of video content being shared there (natively) that has done really well. If you’re B2B I’d consider that platform too.

 

Influencer Marketing

TikTok changed the game with influencer marketing, Instagram and YouTube aren’t far behind. Influencer marekting companies like Ubiquitous are growing almost as fast as the platforms they have niched with. If your goal is awareness with a low CPM and you’re not on these platforms you’re behind. At Good Team we focus more on helping companies tighten up their internal processes through HubSpot, so we don’t have a whole lot of experience here. However, it doesn’t take an industry expert to point to the fact that if your audience is between the ages of 16-35 you have to be on these platforms or in their DMs.

 

DM Marketing

I am actually quite surprised at this one. It seemed like such a fad when chat bots came out to integrate on into your business’ Facebook Messenger account during COVID. I guess it didn’t die off the way I thought it did, or perhaps is a Phenix rising from it’s pandemic ashes. Regardless, it isn’t a bad tactic with one asterisk… you have to be human about it. As I’m typing this I’m thinking even about the chatbot we have on Good Team’s website. It feels stale and robotic (hopefully by the time you’re reading this I’ve fixed that).

Maybe you didn’t even notice it was there. I digress. I think there is a lot of potential here on the customer service and deal closing side. Meet people where they are, and they are probably in their DMs. This article about Instagram’s launch of DM-Based shopping is a good start to that journey if you’re interested.

 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Is this the scariest word in marketing? Idk. I do think it’s the most mis-marketing (is that a word?) word in marketing. SEO is not difficult, but it does take time. It takes time to do it properly and it takes time to understand the results. When looking for an SEO solution ideally you’ll have someone focus on Keyword Research, On-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Good Content, and Link Building. If you’ve ever tried to find that kind of solution you’ve probably been met with 12 month contracts at upwards of $$$$$$6k/month (my keyboard spazzed when I did the money sign, but  I’m keeping it for dramatic effect).

You can download out SEO Checklist as a starting point to plan your next move. If you don’t have an SEO strategy in place it is worth either learning, hiring, or partnering with an agency to do it for you.

2023 Marketing Strategy

 

Humanizing Brands (Value Based Content)

I could write for days on this topic. Keeping a human to human perspective in everything you do with marketing it imperative. Social media, emails, websites, the data you’re gathering, your sales process, customer service, etc. if you don’t have that top of mine when you are strategizing and thinking about the content or way you plan to speak to leads, prospects, customers you’re losing. I think more than ever people are aware of the marketing process and they can smell fake authenticity from a mile away.

There’s a shift towards companies stating their values, I don’t think this will go away anytime soon. People want Organic food and they wan Authentic marketing, everyone is looking for real. And real takes time and energy, don’t cut corners.

 

Better Data

If you are using any sort of marketing software, like HubSpot, and don’t have a system for gathering, organizing, and using customer data it’s okay. There’s still time. Creating a system for data properties and how those properties will be used during the marketing, sales, and service phase of a customer’s journey is step one. Making sure your whole team understands the system for creating properties is absolutely necessary. The worst thing you could do is add everyone as a super admin and let your team control and create any type of property.

What will happen if you do this is 6 months down the road after HubSpot has been working hard gathering that data you’re going to want to build out a report to track, let’s say, marketing platform success. You’re going to start throwing properties into that report and realize that some are single-line text, so some of the properties have typos and you’ve got 4 different versions of Facebook (fb, fbook, face book, and bookface). What are you gonna do with that? You could build a workflow to rewrite the data, but if you’ve got hundred of custom properties you’re going to have to hire someone to manage all of that.

 

If you decide to change anything with your 2023 marketing strategy, let it be this: Create a system for custom properties and only have a small handful of super admins in your HubSpot. 

 

3. Top Marketing Channels

TLDR: Facebook isn’t dead. But it might be dying.

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “Marketers leverage an average of four different marketing channels in their role. Social media is used by over 42% of marketers, making it the #1 channel marketers are currently leveraging. It also has the highest ROI of any channel and will grow significantly in 2023. Additionally, one in four marketers say they use social media shopping tools.”

Facebook is still the top choice for paid marketing, but the investment of those marekting dollars is not growing nearly as fast as platforms like TikTok and YouTube. TouTube is projected to see the most growth in 2023 for marketers, and projected to grow by another 200 million users in 2022.

Anecdotally, my husband and I only watch YouTube. We don’t have cable or any subscription services, we enjoy watching real people doing real stuff and learning from their experiences. I will we are a bit abnormal in our entertainment consumption, we get excited when new off-roading and hiking videos drop and couldn’t care less about the Christly or Kardashian families – so take that with a grain of salt.

Back to the report.

 

Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are all tied for the 2nd highest ROI behind Facebook.

If you are advertising on social platforms and have been for a few years, first let me say may God bless your stress levels. It has been a roller coaster of change, the Meta shift affected users and advertisers and from my perspective – nobody is benefitting from that. Seems most advertisers are running from the Metaverse into the TikTok-sphere. Don’t get me started on Twitter – I don’t think I have a functional thought for what is going on over there.

On average marketers are planning to increase investment in TikTok and decrease their investment in Facebook. Surprisingly according to this chart 56% (8% higher than the next platform) have decided to maintain their investment in Twitter. Y’all are riding that wave, godspeed to you.

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “On top of the points above, 26% of marketers plan to use TikTok for the first time in 2023, while 16% of marketers will invest more in the app than any other next year.”

 

4. Social Media Marketing

TLDR: VIDEO!!!

Far and above other types of content, video remains top dog. Not only does it remain, but it is also projected to gain strength with 24% of marketers planning to invest more in video in 2023.

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “Half of marketers are using videos, with 47% leveraging images, followed by 33% posting blogs articles, infographics (30%) and podcasts or other audio content (28%).”

As we work with clients we encourage video to be used in every area of marketing. Software like Wistia and platforms like YouTube and Vimeo make it really easy to share, create, and convert watchers into leads. As you think about the way you communicate your business and how you help customers consider adding video to the mix. It isn’t just being added to marketing, it’s a useful tool for sales, internal communication, and customer success.

 

5. Marketing Challenges

TLDR: Traffic, Leads, Employees… nothing new!

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report: “The top challenges marketers are facing are generating traffic and leads, hiring top talent, pivoting their marketing strategy, training their team, keeping up with the latest trends, and increasing competition with other brands. ”

One interesting take away from the report is that, after all this time and technology, “Marketers still struggle to understand target audiences”. Before we had our HubSpot year (2022), we offered paid media as a service at Good Team. We created, ran, and managed campaigns in Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn. All the changes to data regulations and laws has made understanding what is successful and what resonates with your ideal audience almost impossible. It seemed, towards the end of our time, an ad would pop-off and generate leads every now and again but over time there were very little similarities in the ads that did well and those that didn’t.

I see why this is a key theme in the report, I don’t think we’ve reached the peak performance of all this data gathering. Hmm, it clean data a key theme you should focus on in your 2023 marketing strategy? Hehe, I think so.

2023 Marketing Strategy

 

6. Marketing Goals & KPIs

This one got me really excited. I could hardly wait to get to the end of writing this because the data in this report echos what I am so passionate about and why Good Team exists.

TLDR: Marketers plan on improving alignment between teams, increasing marketing spend, and understanding the data more thoroughly.

From the 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report:“…in 2023, half of marketers say these goals will change. For those marketers making a pivot, increasing revenue/sales still tops the list, but the focus will shift to improving sales/marketing alignment, fostering relationships with customers to increase brand loyalty, revving up advertising, improving customer understanding of their products/services, and understanding audience targets better.”

Anytime companies talk about improving alignment between teams I can’t wait to hear how they plan to do so. Regardless of your methods, it’s an imperative principle to execute within your company – everyone is working together to get this boat moving forward. Obviously, if they ask my opinion I tell them incorporating the Sales, Marketing, Service, and Ops hubs is the most effective way to do that if you are wanting to lean on a software.

Increasing revenue and sales while simultaneously improving customer experience and brand awareness is difficult. I think the last two follow naturally, engagement and loyalty.  There are millions of marketing agencies and gurus that will help you accomplish that – but a good marketing team is going to knock it out of the park for your company on those top three items. HubSpot helps you understand why what they’re doing works, and how to do it again.

My advice, invest in good people to accomplish your marketing goals first. Then once you have a solid system invest in good software to help you understand what’s going on, while also giving your team the tools to automate their processes. What fun!!!!

 

Conclusion

Thanks for riding this weird train with me, it’s been a fun blog to write. I learned a little for myself and gained a few ideas for clients in the process. If you’re using HubSpot, especially if you’re paying, and you don’t feel like it’s been the most valuable tool in your belt. Don’t give up yet. If you’re 4 months into your 12 month contract and feel like you don’t know if you’re doing it right, see if our DIY HubSpot audit helps bring you back on the right track. It was one of my favorite things we created in 2022 and I hope you find it valuable!

 

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