Businesses are a product of their environment and when the prevailing dynamics change, they must change with them. Nowhere is this truer than in the marketing space. As marketing professionals, it’s important to have a finger on your audience’s pulse so that you’re abreast with emerging trends and know how to connect with your customers.
2023 has proven to be a transformational year when it comes to new marketing developments. AI alone has upended the marketing landscape in so many ways. Over 61% of marketers now use artificial intelligence in their day-to-day activities. Consumer trends such as conscious shopping and carbon-positive purchases have accelerated and marketers everywhere are preparing for a cookie-less future.
2024 promises to be no less different. Here are our top predictions for marketing trends likely to rule 2024.
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Marketing Trends for 2024
Video Marketing
Nothing beats video when it comes to grabbing eyeballs and driving conversion. Including a video on your landing page, for instance, can increase conversions by up to 86%. It also significantly contributes to your SEO, making your pages that much more discoverable.
In particular, video is likely to prove central to ecommerce retailers and their marketing strategies in 2024. The trend of featuring a couple of product images in a lightbox doesn’t enthuse shoppers anymore. They want to see high-res 360° surround views of the product, see it being set up, being used, and more. Video is the medium that helps you meet those expectations.
A massive 88% of people have bought a product or service after watching a video about it. Including well-produced product demos, product spotlights, brand videos, and testimonials can vastly improve your sales and search ranking as well.
Social Media Marketing
Between April 2022 and April 2023, there were over 150 million new social media users, or approximately 410,000 new users every day.
Social media use has accelerated at a stunning pace as a new generation has arrived on the scene. As a result, social media marketing will continue to be a top marketing trend in 2024.
Customizing marketing strategies for each platform will be critical in 2024. For example, short-form, vertically-shot video is incredibly popular on TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels whereas LinkedIn is excellent for reaching out to business professionals and capturing B2B leads.
Consider adding subtitles to your social videos since they’re often set to autoplay on mute and ensure you’re creating content that resonates with current consumer buzz and any viral trends in 2024. Your marketing campaigns can capitalize on these by running similar themes and using hashtags to improve visibility.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer partnerships are widely expected to become an even more mainstream marketing strategy in 2024 for brands across industries. They can prove to be very profitable, particularly for consumer brands in competitive spaces.
At first, you may think it’s a good idea to collaborate with some of the bigger names, but that isn’t always the way to go. It can be more beneficial and cost-effective to collaborate with ‘mid-level’ or ‘micro’ influencers who have between 5-10k followers than someone with over 100k followers. While these influencers have a smaller following, their audience is often much more engaged and they can deliver excellent leads for your business.
Influencers are also a great way to source user-generated content (UGC). UGC is often more relatable and less sales-y than something a corporate marketing department would produce. For that reason, it generates excellent traction by feeling more authentic. It’s also cheaper to acquire and is a valuable source of web and social content.
Personalization
It’s a very safe bet that personalization is likely to be a standout marketing trend in 2024. If you’re not familiar with the term in the context of marketing, personalization implies customizing content, products, offers, and communication for individual users based on their demographics and behavior.
The goal is to make content that is able to ‘speak to’ the user and provide a human touch amid the barrage of generalized content consumers are subjected to on a daily basis.
Businesses are already gearing up to deploy personalization as a marketing strategy in 2024 and beyond. As many as 90% of them say it contributes significantly to their profitability.
Artificial Intelligence
AI has taken the world by storm since the popularization of generative AI. It’s easy to see why it’s such a top marketing trend for 2024. Its accessibility has proven a real game changer for companies and consumers alike. Businesses see real value in integrating AI to help automate and simplify tasks while cutting down on workforce requirements. Around 76% of marketers have already reported using it for article writing and content generation. The reported breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence (AGI) are likely to further increase interest in and uptake of this technology.
Extended Reality (XR)
2024 could well be a breakthrough year for XR-driven marketing trends. Extended Reality is an umbrella term for a range of technologies that digitally enhance human experiences. It encompasses Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR).
AR is perhaps the most commonly deployed one of the three, given the relative ease with which it can be integrated into consumer experiences. It involves augmenting the real world with digitally-created images and elements. AR software superimposes digital images onto a real background. It is often used by home decor brands to give users a feel for how the new furniture might look in their home space.
Email Marketing
Email is among the most powerful marketing strategies you could use in 2024 — or right away! It offers you outstanding ROI — $36 for every $1 spent — and can prove transformative in building customer relationships and improving customer lifetime value.
One of the marketing trends you can expect to see in 2024 is an increase in brands offering newsletter subscriptions to their customers. This is a great way for you to capture a lead when a website visitor isn’t ready to make a purchase. By curating genuinely valuable content for your readers, you can create a community that facilitates user-led growth for your business.
Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization is a 2024 marketing trend you simply can’t ignore. Over half of all global traffic originates from mobile devices. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of potential customers.
A key point to remember when optimizing for mobile is the limited screen space. This will affect how you design your navigation, for example. ‘Hamburger menus’ are much more mobile-friendly than extensive navigation bars. It also affects your text-to-image ratio, heavily tilting the scales in favor of the latter.
Essentially, you want to deliver a seamless user experience that offers the same convenience as if a person were browsing on a desktop.
Voice Search
Voice search has long been an emerging marketing trend and 2024 is only going to accelerate its adoption. With over 125 million voice search users and the proliferation of smart assistants like Alexa and Google Home, businesses will have to rethink how they create their content. Voice queries tend to be much more colloquial and feature long-tail keywords. You may also want to use structured data to better optimize your site for voice search and have it featured higher in search results.
Data Privacy
Users are increasingly wary of what kind of data they share and with whom. Driven by rising online security threats and cybercrimes, they want to make sure their data is used legitimately and with greater transparency. By providing customers more control over how their data is used and shared, they can improve consumer trust while inspiring loyalty and maximizing their own profits.
2018 was a watershed year for data privacy worldwide as the EU launched its General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) framework. 2024 is already shaping up to be another landmark year for this marketing trend given that Google itself is making some changes in the data privacy space. By late 2024, they plan on throwing out third-party cookies from Chrome and replacing them with a new API called Privacy Sandbox that will have its own set of trackers.
Experimental Marketing
Amidst the milieu of popular 2024 marketing trends, it’s important to remember how this progress came about — through experimentation. Consistent innovation can be the ultimate competitive advantage for businesses in any space.
Consider being flexible with your business model, your audience segmentation, the channels you leverage, and the tactics you deploy. Technologies like 5G, AI, and blockchain are real disruptors and will fundamentally change the way people interact with your business. Keeping abreast with these changes will give you an edge over other players and capture a bigger slice of the market.
Stay Ahead of the Curve With Coalition
Coalition Technologies is a multiple-award-winning digital agency, recognized as among the best in the world. We’ve pioneered marketing techniques and effectively deployed solutions like custom AI technologies to generate over half a billion dollars in revenue for over 1,000 clients worldwide.
Trust in a proven expert to navigate 2024’s marketing trends with confidence. Reach out to schedule a strategy review and personalized consultation for your business.
