Digital marketing has overtaken traditional marketing with mobile advertising becoming the dominant advertising medium, accounting for much more than half of global ad spend. The Digital market is growing exponentially as customer's behavior has shifted to the mobile world. Global digital ad spend has been around USD 441 Billion in 2022 and projected to reach USD 485 Billion in 2023 (Source : Wordstream).

Digitization will become an even more critical part of the emerging business landscape. Businesses will not be able to garner most of their sales through traditional marketing in 2023. Most businesses have already acknowledged the digital shift, and those who have not done it yet will be out of market in 2023.

Now, a variety of disruptive digital marketing tools lead the market. Key tools in the market include Google, Meta Platforms (Facebook), moLotus, Microsoft, Amazon, and many others. Growth in the mobile video advertising segment is comparably higher than the other segment due to the rapid increase in video consumption, mobile promotion and mobile buying. Video marketing is becoming the most popular media tactic for digital marketers. 49 percent of businesses report that they grow revenue faster when they are using video content Customers are 35x more likely to open mobile messages than emails (Source : Wordstream).

Marketers desperate to boost digital marketing ROI in 2023, need to know much more about certain tools that can make things easier for them. With the right set of digital marketing tools, digital marketers will be able to execute the right strategies in the right way. In this context, experts are advising marketers to select the digital marketing tools offering capabilities like personalization, customization, automation, integration, interactivity, etc. allowing them to acquire, engage and retain more customers; earning more revenues in less time and cost.

Here are the top 5 most influential digital marketing tools which digital marketers should experiment with and try if they want to outshine their competitors’ marketing campaigns in 2023 :

1. Google Ads

As brands’ and advertisers’ behavior is expected to shift on account of factors like rising inflationary trends, pandemic, war, etc.; Google Ads commits to offer a better experience for them. It claims to work for all kinds of businesses - whether small, medium, or large. It happens to be one of the most powerful digital marketing tools in 2023 that is going to help businesses reach new heights.

Every second, billions of searches will continue to be performed on Google search engines, and the majority of search results pages will show Google ads. Paid for by businesses, Google Ads would continue to be an effective way of driving traffic to websites in real time, exactly when prospective customers are searching for products or services that businesses offer.

In 2023, Google Ads aims to make the ad optimization process simpler for brands and advertisers by implementing real time optimization. With few exceptions, Smart Bidding capability of Google Ads is expected to deliver better results and ad account growth with automation and machine learning considering hundreds of signals that manual bidding cannot. The more data points it collects, the better Google Ads can optimize ad campaigns.

Google Ads continue to drive website visits; increase calls from customers through a click-to-call button; increase footfall in retail shops. The new artificial intelligence (AI) features make the advertising platform a lot faster and easier to use. The artificial intelligence features can assist advertisers in getting results faster. The multiple targeting options will allow businesses to target their customer base based on different factors like age, gender, location, profession, etc.

The digital marketing industry is slowly moving to first-party data, moving away from third-party cookies. Google Ads is no different, creating its own tag to capture customer data points. Segments like customer match lists and specific site actions will still hold importance. In 2023, advertisers need to ensure that all customer data points are being tracked accurately and the segments can be uploaded to Google.

Google Ads will not generate ‘similar audiences’ for targeting and reporting starting May 1, 2023. Advertisers having active campaigns with similar segments, those will remain with their campaigns until August 1, 2023. After August 1, 2023 similar segments will be eliminated from all campaigns and ad groups.

Google’s automation and machine learning algorithms will continue to remain largely a mystery for advertisers. The algorithms of Google Ads take into consideration multiple signals, but advertisers have limited insight into what they are. Advertisers still don't have clarity on the signals Google Ads uses to optimize an automated bid strategy. This will continue to give advertisers a tough time in 2023.

Digital marketers need to learn Google Ads in a better way in 2023 to be able to use it more effectively; else they will be wasting their monetary resources without adequate advertising revenue generation.

2. moLotus

Novosol-owned innovative and disruptive mobile video customer interaction platform moLotus is going to redefine customer experiences and mobile ad campaigns in 2023.

moLotus integrates images, text, videos, and links into a single message and delivers directly to consumers’ mobile inbox. With its rich media ads, moLotus renders on all kinds of handsets without spamming customers’ inbox. It is a one-of-its-kind tool, not requiring any mobile app download or data connection.

moLotus marketing platform is able to deliver millions of customized, interactive, personalized, automated messages per day for customers across geographies and industries for a variety of marketing usages. Digital marketers are creating interactive campaigns with easy customer response options like SMS, USSD, Callback, Click URL, and more. The campaigns offer multiple customization options based on business criteria, demographics, interests, income, age, etc.

moLotus is going to introduce new revenue generation models for advertisers in 2023. The new technology not only offers video interaction but also assists in brand exposure awareness, lead generation, customer acquisition, rewards loyalty, retention, cross-selling, upselling, direct sales and more adding to digital marketing ROI. The advertising platform enables digital marketers to scale revenue and performance via easy online campaign creation, response management, big data reports analytics, digital transformation and mobile automation API.

In 2023, moLotus will give performance advertisers more opportunities to get extraordinary success by automating all customer processes. The digital advertising campaigns ensure high brand visibility customer response rate for the advertisers. Marquee brands like Amazon, Suzuki, HSBC, DBS Bank, L’Oreal, etc. are using moLotus technology to generate more revenues at low costs. The list is certainly going to expand in 2023!

The breakthrough tech and platform is targeting a USD 1.7 Billion Direct Marketing opportunity. (Source: Statista). In addition, the platform also targets the emerging USD 1.3 Trillion Digitalization opportunities together with 5G plus Transformation. (Source: Ericsson Arthur D. Little)

moLotus platform is partnering with big telcos like Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Airtel, Vodafone, Celcom, Maxis and more offering them innovative ways to tap into the global direct marketing spend while leveraging their enterprise and mobility assets together with current infrastructure together. It has rescued telecom players threatened by OTT entrants which have been cannibalizing the traditional telecom services.

With moLotus has come the unique subscriber data monetization opportunity for the telcos leading to increase of top-line and bottom-line revenues. It is bringing down headcounts in call center processes together with cost savings on training, printing, compliance, and distribution.

Industry verticals including Banking, E-commerce, Insurance, Consumer Electronics, Retail, Automobile, Government Sectors, etc. are getting benefited out of moLotus smart marketing technology.

3. Ahrefs

The debate for the best SEO tool has been there on for long and continues to exist in 2023. However, one SEO tool on which most digital marketers will agree is Ahrefs. It is the best answer for digital marketers in search of the best SEO tool in 2023 that can help in keyword research, track SERP rankings, and manage almost every part of SEO for brand websites.

Ahrefs continues to offer multiple search engine optimization capabilities, making it easier for digital marketers to optimize websites based on digital marketing strategies and requirements. It is used for both on-page and off-page SEO. Having a massive data index, the digital marketing tool is definitely one of the most sought-after digital marketing tools in 2023.

Ahrefs was launched long back in the year 2010 by Dmitry Gerasimenko, and now it is being used by the world’s several leading brands including Netflix, LinkedIn, eBay, Meta (Facebook), Shopify, etc. Bots of Ahrefs crawl websites and search engines providing actionable insights to the brands and advertisers.

Using Ahrefs, digital marketers can add as many verified projects as they want in the project’s dashboard showing them an overview of all projects. The next capability of Ahrefs is the Site Explorer which helps digital marketers to spy on competitors and get a comprehensive overview of their websites. Ahrefs claims to be the world’s largest index of live backlinks, being ahead of arch rival Semrush, refreshing data every fifteen to twenty minutes! Digital marketers can use Ahrefs backlink data to determine other metrics for a particular website, like domain rating, rank, and URL rating. Ahrefs offers one of the best keyword research tools, with a huge keyword index database.

However, there is a downside to the usability of Ahrefs as a digital marketing tool. The SEO tool requires huge investments in comparison with its counterparts making it unaffordable for small and medium businesses.

4. Canva

With visuals grabbing more customer attention brands need to add more visuals to their promotional messages and ads in order to keep their customers engaged in 2023. They need to create quality graphics visualizing complex data including colorful graphs and engaging infographics. The requirement of such quality graphics is ever increasing with platforms like Canva being sorted more in 2023.

Canva is an innovative tool that will assist digital marketers in creating original, engaging graphics in just a short span of time! Canva has been evolving over the past years. It is expected to offer more graphic design tools and templates in 2023: social media, eBooks, infographics, and anything else digital marketers could possibly require.

Canva will be offering more free as well as paid templates which brands and advertisers can use in 2023. Small businesses can benefit from using the already available templates on Canva, upload and polish up their existing graphics, or create brand new ones - all at low cost or even free. Most importantly, by embracing Canva they need not employ any graphic designer to create graphics.

The flipside of Canva is that it, as a digital business tool, lacks basic fonts from its database, which serves as a barrier for digital marketers sticking to brand guidelines. Also brands face hiccups in creating their own template from scratch.

5. WhatsApp

Every business or individual is familiar with WhatsApp which is already an integral part of everyone’s daily lives.  WhatsApp, in 2023, will become one of the most widely used mobile messaging apps by digital marketers for messenger marketing.

Whatsapp is a cross-platform instant messaging service for Mobile devices and PCs.  Brian Acton and Jan Koum founded it in 2009 when WhatsApp was only available for iOS users. The app experienced real user growth in 2010, when it was also made available for android. In 2014 Facebook took over the app for USD 19 Billion.

Presently, WhatsApp has approximately 2.44 Billion active global users. Without a doubt, this number is expected to grow significantly in 2023. From the starting of 2023, WhatsApp users may expect a number of new features for both business and personal accounts. Of Late, WhatsApp has increased the file sharing limit to 2 Gigabytes launching a new feature called Communities. Besides this, general users now get new message reactions.

Reportedly, WhatsApp is going to introduce Clickable links on WhatsApp status soon. It is expected to develop a subscription service for WhatsApp Business in 2023. Similar to premium services like Telegram, WhatsApp Premium for Business will give some extra perks to businesses, like custom business links and connecting more than four devices to a single account. Soon, WhatsApp users will get a new tab called Business Tool on the app’s home screen. This new tab will enable users to immediately get access to Business Tools without going to the in-app settings. The new tab will comprise a company profile, Instagram, and Facebook ad connectivity.

Facebook (Meta) has turned WhatsApp into a revenue-generating engine via Whatsapp for Business API. The app is expected to gain importance in 2023 helping businesses to reach a larger customer base and improving customer experience. Currently it has open rates as high as 98 percent. Furthermore, users can enter into secure conversations which are free of cost for the users. In 2023, WhatsApp Marketing opens new doors for brands and advertisers to expand their business to new heights.

WhatsApp, however, is not free from drawbacks. The biggest being the WhatsApp Business app data protection issues. For instance, the app automatically reads all saved contacts and their phone numbers that are stored. Another drawback of the app is that it can only be installed on one smartphone and up to four other devices. Each of these devices must be linked to the same number and shared between employees, if required. WhatsApp needs to overcome these and more drawbacks to reach the top slot in the digital marketing space.

Conclusion

In 2023, there is going to be a shift in mindset to technology-based marketing. This will require digital marketers to add more tools to their kitty. However, it could be quite intimidating to select the suitable tools. With the above-mentioned tools, brands and advertisers will be able to better manage digital marketing campaigns next year. However, each tool has its pros and cons which the digital marketers need to consider before adding to their marketing mix.

A new-age digital marketing tool like moLotus is worth considering as it bypasses the compulsion of an active internet connection or mobile app download. This gives it an edge and superiority; adding to the marketing revenues, ARPU, customer lifetime value, and profitability for brands in 2023.