What does a recession mean for your business and how to cope with it. Predictions for 2023

Personalization

The winners will be those who best tailor their offerings to the needs of their audience. This applies to both the product itself and the marketing associated with it. As a result, one-to-one marketing and personalized communication will become not just an option but a necessity.

In the near future, we will face a flood of non-personalized information, where scale is intended to compensate for the lack of quality. Competing in this „quantity race” against the largest entities will be difficult. Strong, large brands will have the space to become even stronger and bigger. Therefore, for everyone else, precision in communication will be crucial. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) tactics will increasingly be incorporated into B2C strategies (while for B2B, they will become mandatory). The quality of messages will matter even more, and retention and churn rate will be topics on everyone’s lips.

The power of data

To achieve personalization, data about our potential and existing customers is essential. However, in 2023, obtaining this data will become increasingly difficult. The impending end of third-party data, although postponed several times, will eventually take effect.

Additionally, the widespread implementation of directives such as GDPR will significantly limit the amount of anonymous data collected from users. Businesses must find ways to encourage their (potential) customers to share information about themselves and allow the integration of data from various sources into a coherent picture. One solution is „paying” for data, such as offering discount coupons for signing up for a newsletter.

Aggregating data about your own customers is becoming crucial. The less we know about them ourselves, the more we will be „reliant” on offerings from major players like Facebook, Google, or Amazon. In Poland, this includes platforms like WP, Onet, and Allegro, which gather vast amounts of information about users within their ecosystems, enabling highly precise targeting.

Incidentally, predictions of Facebook’s decline may be premature. The vast amount of data it holds, combined with its ability to quickly adapt solutions from other platforms, means that Facebook will continue to be a major player for a long time. In the coming year, its position, like that of other large players, will only strengthen.

Relationships

A complementary solution to personalized marketing communication is the humanization of a brand through influence marketing. Recommendations and reviews from people who matter to us—whether from our close circle or „from the internet”—will become even more significant.

The use of AI

In 2023, a disruptor will make a strong presence, one that could overturn the market in the long term: OpenAI, particularly its product ChatGPT. It is currently difficult to predict all of its potential applications. However, fueled by the right data, it could even revolutionize the search engine market, as it will be able to return results as accurate as Google’s. Microsoft is aware of this, investing billions of dollars in the technology and already announcing its integration into its Bing search engine.

It appears that anyone with access to the right dataset to train AI will be able to develop their own solution based on this technology.

The same applies to platforms like TikTok, whose key advantage has always been their recommendation algorithm. The widespread availability of AI solutions will allow new players to achieve a similar quality of suggested content.

These are just two examples of AI applications from what will likely be a much longer list.

I believe we are facing a new kind of SEO, or rather AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization)—the optimization of content to fuel AI.

How to prepare for what’s coming?

2023 will not yet be the year of radical changes, but it will be the precursor. The recession will mean that achieving the same results will require more effort, more sophisticated strategies, and more innovation. Early adopters will benefit! Quick adaptation will significantly increase the chances of survival.

What should we focus on?

Deep personalization (see: Retention in E-commerce as a Way to Survive the Crisis and The Use of Marketing Automation Tools in an ABM Approach)
Minimizing the risks associated with the end of third-party data and GDPR implementation, which means building your own database and aggregating customer knowledge to create unique communication.
Building relationships, which means a broad approach to influence marketing that extends beyond working with well-known influencers or celebrities (fewer users trust such recommendations).