Opinions form With Global Alliance agency leaders
Some of the hottest business communications trends we see fast-approaching as we step into 2023 include everything from a pressing need to create a genuine and engaging employer brand narrative, the rise and rise of TikTok (as well as platform-agnostic short-form video) and an even more laser focused approach to through-funnel execution for demand gen.
Bringing all three of these disparate trends together is the fact that audiences across the board are expecting something different from businesses next year as we navigate greater social and economic hurdles, making a cohesive and dynamic strategy through both internal and external communications vital.
Knowing what’s coming and creating strategic communications plans will ensure your business positions itself as an industry leader. Here are the top three trends in detail:
Employer branding
We’ll see organisations across all sectors redouble their efforts in developing transparent and cohesive employer branding. This will inevitably cause even greater reliance on comprehensive internal communications which match closely with the external corporate brand proposition and we expect to see internal comms budgets increase.
In the wake of the great resignation and quiet quitting, 2023 will see businesses continue to move their focus from talent attraction to talent retention. We expect to see communications around purpose, leadership position and investment in employee advocacy programmes.
We also expect to see an emphasis on ethical employer positioning and narratives. As employees become increasingly conscious about where they work and how it aligns with their values, it’s important that companies set out clear DE&I policies, communicate their ESG efforts and offer mental, physical and financial health and wellness benefits.
In today’s digital era, people – and journalists! – want honesty. So building an authentic voice and consistently delivering against your commitments will be the benchmarks employees hold up for their employers to meet. With this greater emphasis on authenticity and integrity, companies shouldn’t be scared to admit they may not have all of the answers, especially when communicating climate initiatives. Demonstrating that work has begun on delivering true environmental impact is the key imperative employees and the wider communities expect.
Short-form content tik-toks the boxes
Data shows we read just 28% of the words on a blog post. As brands and news media continue to evolve, there’s an increasing emphasis on delivering daily content in short, sharp and consumable formats. Take the Wall Street Journal and Adobe who joined TikTok just a couple of months ago, or the Morning Brew delivering short-form daily newsletters.
Perhaps once considered the stomping ground of the ‘cooler’ consumer brands, now B2B players are entering the TikTok fray with short-form content enabling them to connect more deliberately with both audiences and key media outlets alike.
While longer-form content will likely retain its place for more technical detail and analysis, there’s no denying that the punchiest simplifications tend to get the cut through, particularly on thought-leadership platforms like LinkedIn with time-poor and eyeball-stretched viewers. So sit tight for huge leaps forwards from more traditional corporate brands using short-form video to build a direct line to senior decision makers that focuses on brevity without sacrificing quality.
Consolidation and greater commercial focus
Over the course of the last 12 months we’ve certainly seen an increased appetite across clients for more comprehensive integration of marcomms strategies and a greater reliance on PR teams and external agencies to bring demand generation services to the table. As the marketing world looks to demonstrate efficiencies in the year ahead, and the work of multiple agencies is brought under one roof, we should expect that 2023 will see further consolidation in RFPs.
In a recent UK survey, demand gen came up as the most required additional service for the year ahead. B2B brands will continue to invest more in nailing down a really thorough understanding of customer personas and their customer journey to understand how to improve demand gen.
Services the With Global Alliance members are seeing increasingly required to support this need include paid media strategies, using AI to create and personalise content at scale and a hybrid mix of IRL and digital events.
Across continents and countries, the agencies of the With Global Alliance see both globally and locally relevant trends. If you need to understand what is driving successful audience engagement in your market or markets, drop us a line at hello@withglobalalliance.com.