As we hit mid-2023, June delivered an energizing mix of AI enhancements, social media shifts, and a few cautionary tales. It was a month where digital marketers juggled exciting new tools with some industry reality checks. One of the biggest developments was Google Ads unveiling six new AI-powered features for Performance Max campaigns. Performance Max (PMax), Google’s automated campaign type, got a serious upgrade aimed at letting advertisers steer the AI more strategically.
Key among these were Customer Value and Customer Retention goals – tools that let you tell Google “Hey, prioritize high-LTV customers” or “Win back my lapsed customers.” For businesses, this was gold. Instead of just chasing any conversion, we could instruct the AI to chasevaluableconversions. My team jumped on this immediately for clients with lots of customer data. For an e-commerce client, we fed in their past purchase values and set theCustomer Value Modeto target big spenders. The result over a few weeks? A slight drop in total conversion volume but a boost in average order value – exactly what we wanted. It felt like training a talented rookie (the AI) with the wisdom of a veteran sales manager (“go after the whales, not the minnows”).
Another nifty addition was AI-powered asset creation in PMax. Google started suggesting new ad creatives (headlines, images) based on your site and existing ads. Essentially, the AI could draft copy variations or pick stock images to improve your ads. While I always caution clients that Google’s suggestions need human review, it became a great brainstorming partner. We’d get machine-generated ideas and then refine them. It sped up our ad refresh cycles, keeping campaigns from going stale. Overall, these features made PMax campaigns more hands-on and interactive, flipping the narrative from “set it and forget it” to “train it and tweak it.” It underscored a trend: man-machine collaboration in marketing was becoming the norm.
On the social media side, Instagram rolled out more engaging Story features. By June, users saw new interactive stickers, quizzes, and music options in Stories, all designed to keep people tapping and not swiping away. And intriguingly, Instagram began experimenting withfour sponsored posts in one ad carouselfor some users’ feeds (a very ad-heavy format). This signaled how aggressive monetization was getting – nearly blending into content. We advised clients to make their adsfeelnative and valuable, since users were getting bombarded. For instance, we created a Story ad that was essentially a mini-poll about a hot topic in our client’s industry – so it didn’t feel like an ad, more like a fun engagement. Strategies like that helped maintain good results even as competition for attention intensified.
Speaking of competition, an emerging narrative was LinkedIn’s rise in user activity. LinkedIn reported record engagement, with 1.5 million pieces of content shared every minute! That’s a mind-boggling stat that put to rest any idea that LinkedIn is just a resume site. In June, LinkedIn also launchedclick-to-message ads, allowing an ad to open a conversation in DMs. This was huge for B2B lead gen. One of our SaaS clients tested it – running a LinkedIn ad offering a free audit, where clicking it opened a pre-filled message to request the audit. It bypassed landing pages entirely. The campaign netted fewer clicks than a typical ad, but the conversion rate of those clicks to actual leads was much higher (because they were already in a one-on-one conversation). This confirmed that on LinkedIn, quality beats quantity; even ad formats that yield low volume can produce very high-value leads.
Now, a bit of drama: Twitter’s ad revenue was reported to be down 59% year-on-year in the US by this time. Ever since Elon Musk’s takeover and the ensuing content moderation issues, big advertisers had pulled out. For those still advertising on Twitter (which would later rebrand to X), the silver lining was lower CPMs and less competition. But many marketers reallocated Twitter budgets elsewhere until stability returned. It was a lesson that even established platforms can falter if user trust or brand safety is compromised. Internally, we continued Twitter ads only for select clients whose audience was very active there, and we monitored results closely. Some smaller businesses actually thrived with Twitter ads in this period due to the lower competition – a good reminder that broad statistics don’t always dictate individual outcomes.
In the world of web development, June sounded an alarm: a new WordPress update (5.7) was causing issues with some sites’ older plugins/themes. It broke certain layouts, leading to emergency fixes. This highlighted the importance of keeping web tech up-to-date and having a developer on hand for rapid response. A couple of our clients who self-managed their sites called us panicked; fortunately, we could troubleshoot and patch things quickly. We turned it into a teaching moment: we instituted a policy to test core updates on staging sites first for all our managed web clients, to avoid any live site surprises.
June also underscored AI’s accelerating impact on creative work. Adobe’s Generative Fill (which we touched on in March) was now widely tested, and the chatter was: “Is this the end of graphic designers?” Realistically, it wasn’t – but it was the end of graphic designers’ monotonous tasks. Our design team embraced it for moodboarding and quick iterations. Interestingly, savvy clients began asking if we use AI in design – not out of concern, but out of curiosity to ensure they weren’t missing out on efficiency. We’d explain how we use it as a tool, always with human oversight. That transparency actually reassured them that we were cutting-edge yet careful, likely strengthening our partnerships.
How we helped businesses thrive in June: One example that encapsulates the month – We worked with a mid-size retailer who was struggling to improve ROI on ad spend. In June, we adopted the new Customer Retention goal in their PMax campaigns to specifically target past customers with high one-time purchase amounts but no repeat purchases yet. Essentially, “bring back those big spenders.” We supplemented this with a tailored email campaign offering return customers an incentive. The result was a notable uptick in repeat sales that month. The client was thrilled as we turned dormant past buyers into active shoppers again, using Google’s AI on one side and our direct outreach on the other.
We also leaned into our social media expertise for real-time engagement. For instance, a client in the entertainment space had a post unexpectedly go viral on LinkedIn (thanks to LinkedIn’s algorithm changes favoring good content). We jumped in and turned that momentum into a lead-gen opportunity by quickly commenting an invitation for a webinar on the post and sponsoring that content as an ad while it was hot. Agility was key – riding trends as they happened.
Tone-wise, June was about optimism with a dose of vigilance. Optimism from all the new tools that promised better results (AI in ads, LinkedIn features, etc.), and vigilance in staying ahead of any hiccups (platform outages, algorithm weirdness, security updates). I often used a playful analogy with clients: “Marketing in June 2023 is like driving a cutting-edge electric sports car – incredibly fast and efficient, but you still need to keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.” That resonated. They saw that while automation and AI can accelerate growth, expert guidance is the steady hand preventing crashes.
In summary, June 2023’s evolving trends taught businesses that combining technology with human strategy yields the best outcome. By leveraging AI’s speed and scale with our nuanced understanding of customer behavior, we helped clients large and small achieve more with less waste. We also kept their brand voices and visuals consistent even as some tasks became automated. That harmonious blend of tech and human touch is exactly what defines our expertise – and it’s how we ensure our clients don’t just keep up with the industry, but set the pace in their niches.
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