401. Predictions for 2023 🕺
The rise of AI, the future of TikTok, and the hot new strategies, tools, and marketing roles for 2023
Hi there 👋
Happy new year! Hope your 2023 is off to a great start. I’ve been inspired by a handful of lists of 2023 predictions — here’s one from Scott Galloway, here’s one from Digiday — so I thought I’d do some predictions of my own. In past years, this has gone poorly, but I think that’s half the fun … and certainly helps me stay humble.
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
2023 predictions
I often tell my teams that we set goals so that we can learn, not judge. So I will give myself the same advice here with my marketing predictions for the new year. No judgment, even if most of them turn out wrong. Which they usually do.
1. AI will be part of every marketing team’s tech stack
Whether you’re using ChatGPT or Dall-E or Jasper or Copy.ai or any dozens of other AI marketing tools that exist or now or will be made in the new year, AI will be a critical part to every marketing team’s tech stack in 2023.
And we’ll all be better off for it!
The most successful marketing teams will be the ones who find ways to use AI to drive greater efficiency for their work. Think: performance marketing, production design and copy, experimentation. Whatever you need to do at scale, you can do a lot faster with AI. (Oh, how I wish I had ChatGPT when I was coming up with 25 headline variations per blog post back in the day.)
AI tools are clearly leaps and bounds ahead of 2022’s “it” technology: web3. And the preponderance of AI tools, plus our (human) ability to do cool things with it, will only accelerate into 2023.
However …
2. AI will create demand — and love — for authentic brands
There’s an exhibit at Disneyland where you can walk the hall of presidents and see animatronic Abraham Lincoln telling you what’s up. However, I know it’s not the real Abraham Lincoln, no matter how real Disneyland tries to make him. You can’t fool me!
A similar “sniff test” is likely to play out across marketing this year. Whether or not an increased adoption of AI tools creates homogeneity among brands, consumers are going to be on high alert regardless. And it will be the totally authentic and real brands that stand out.
So get prepared with:
Original photography (try Death to Stock or run your own $20k photoshoot)
Experiential marketing event like pop-ups or gifting
Longform video storytelling and immersive digital experiences
3. TikTok will survive US government scrutiny (by being sold)
Word on the street is that US lawmakers want TikTok banned because of TikTok’s China roots. It’s almost unfathomable that TikTok wouldn’t exist in one of the biggest consumer markets in the world, and that’s the conclusion TikTok’s loyal users and savvy business leaders will arrive at, too. The easiest way around it is to sell. Does Elon have any money left?
4. Finally, we measure the impact of our true fans
No more getting lost in shadow funnels. No more wondering about community ROI. No more guessing about the impact of word-of-mouth or audience-building or brand sentiment.
There are some incredible new tools out now — check out Common Room for a full customer journey view, including community, or Endgame for product-led growth/sales — that can measure all the different channels and paths that we previously thought impossible (or at least super difficult). Tools like these will be fixtures on tech stacks by EOY.
5. The rise of the BizOps role
We created a Business Operations role on our marketing team in 2022, and it has been life-changing. More teams will find out the power of this role in the new year. Call it what you want — some might call it a Chief of Staff, some might blend it with Marketing Operations or Revenue Operations, depending on the business — but the end result is a more efficient, better connected, higher performing team. Operations in general will be a focus for 2023; you can already see it in the rise of tools like Rattle, the evolution of Notion and Asana, and the mindset shift toward efficient growth.
6. The new social media must-have for marketers will be … Reddit
Assuming every marketer is already putting together a TikTok strategy, next in line for the shiny object du jour is Reddit. And yes, Reddit has been around forever and has been a best kept secret for marketers for many years now. But this is the year that it makes it official — taking a slice of ad budgets (its ad tech is improving), turning into an uncommon PR channel (AMAs FTW), and being a critical social listening and community-building channel for our B2C and B2B brands.
7. The return of field marketing
Pack your suitcase. Events are back!
(They were already kind of back in 2022, so I’m cheating a little.)
But the real winners will be the teams that think of field marketing a little differently. Yes, sponsor the events that matter to you. But find ways to show up beyond a big check:
Send your team to attend events
Host your own summits or invite-only sessions
Partner with other companies on dinners and after-parties
Do something original with experiential marketing or your booth activation
Bonus: Reader predictions
For those of you with the Substack mobile app (see button below), you can join conversations every so often about miscellaneous marketing topics, like 2023 predictions. I asked readers to pull out their crystal ball, and this is what I heard:
Bing’s ChatGPT integration will increase Bing userbase and more marketers will add Bing to their SEO strategy.
~ Ozgur T
TikTok will be banned, but short video will live on.
~ Josh S
Google and Facebook ad spend will go down. Influencer spend will be more rational.
~ Guarav B
AI-powered super-personalized marketing. Not just personalized to the person’s interests but their sense of humor, beliefs, point-of-view, outlook on life, etc.
~ James L
Sponsored by …
Thank you to this week’s newsletter sponsor: Marketing Against the Grain, a podcast from the awesome team at HubSpot. Check out the latest episodes for a look at AI tools, category dominance, and intrapreneurship.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I currently lead the marketing team at Oyster. I previously built brands at Buffer, Vox, and Polly. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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