New year, new growth goals, and revenue targets. As we make headway into the New Year, likely, marketers have already started the year with their plans mapped out for the months ahead. But, if there’s anything marketers have learned over the past three years, it’s adaptability. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the economic headwinds that followed to battling inflation and a recession, there are constantly new challenges for marketers to adapt and respond to as consumer expectations fluctuate along with our rapidly-changing world.

We’re entering 2023 with a looming recession, inflation woes, and uncertainty. But with these challenges, there are also opportunities. Let’s talk about what we think will be top-of-mind for marketers as we enter into a new year.

Marketers will focus on what’s working.

This year, marketers will learn how to balance leaning into what’s working while still trying to innovate and find new ways to connect with their customers. Marketers will primarily invest in tried-and-true channels and look for ways to maximize their efforts.

Marketers will look for ways to maximize their efforts.

To maximize their tried-and-true channels, marketers will look for opportunities to reduce ad spend, improve targeting, and make each customer interaction matter. The key ingredient to making this happen? Data. Marketers will begin thinking about how to better harness first-party data from across their organizations — using tools like CDPs — to be more precise in their marketing efforts.

Marketers will be re-evaluating their marketing spend.

We’re all feeling the pressure from inflation — both in our personal and professional lives. As we become weary of expenses and rising costs, marketers will start to rethink how they’re spending their marketing budgets. When every dollar matters, marketers will look for ways to squeeze the juice out of every investment, ranging from advertising spending to tech stacks. They’ll be looking for ways to maximize spend, minimize redundancies, and will find ways to drive the most value from what they have.

Marketers will seek flexibility.

With looming uncertainty, a rapidly changing tech landscape, and fluctuating customer expectations, marketers will seek flexibility as a way to be able to better adapt to the changes. This means they’ll be looking for ways to gain leverage over their vendors and consider migrating away from the traditional full-suite platforms to having more best-in-class point solutions — helping them manage costs, giving them the ability to negotiate with vendors, and giving them more focused capabilities.

Marketers will prioritize creativity and delivering value.

With the rapid emergence of digital marketing tactics, growth ‘hacking’ has become a core strategy for many marketing teams across industries. But with weary consumers abound, marketers will have to lean back into foundational marketing tactics: leading with creativity and finding ways to deliver true value to their customers. Especially as collecting first-party data becomes a critical part of preparing for the cookieless future, finding creative ways to orchestrate value exchange with customers will be paramount to setting yourself up for future success.

Marketers will become focused on how they use their data.

‘Data is the new oil.’ As marketers become increasingly responsible for harnessing the full capabilities of the business to provide the best experience for their customers, marketers will diligently evaluate how they’re capturing and using their data. This year, marketers will focus on collecting, unifying, and activating their customer data. Governance strategies will also be a critical part of their overall data strategies. Getting a handle on customer data will also better set marketers up for success as they evaluate emerging technologies like AI.

Stitch was founded in 2022 with a simple mission: to help marketers better navigate the evolving landscape. After decades in the martech ecosystem, we’ve seen marketers become inundated with costly, clunky tech stacks. This is not scalable for the future of marketing. After doing our due diligence, we saw the opportunity presented by Braze and its data integration partners. Braze is a customer engagement platform purpose-built for the modern marketer — enabling marketers to easily capture and activate customer data for creative, personalized, cross-channel experiences. Want to learn more about how we think these tools can help your company in 2023? Let’s chat.

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