Three years into a wildly unpredictable decade, marketers face an ever-increasing number of challenges in their day-to-day work. In 2023, they had to find strategies to maintain sales amid growing inflation, navigate their brands through complex social issues, and overcome growing competition for consumer attention — both from other brands and world events. Anticipating what’s coming and being ready for change are critical for succeeding now and in the foreseeable future.
As we enter 2024, the new year represents an opportunity to reboot and take advantage of insights and new technology with a fresh perspective. Here are the top digital marketing trends for 2024 to keep in mind.
1. Getting Hyper-Personal
As transactions and customer interactions become increasingly digitalized, marketers and customer service professionals gain more and more access to valuable data and insights that can improve ad targeting and customer experience — a strategy known as hyper-personalization.
According to Twilio, over 56% of customers in 2023 said they would become repeat buyers as a result of a personalized experience, and this sentiment is true across the globe. For example, an Indian payment processing company called Mobikwik doubled its user engagement and grew retention by 20% after creating a hyper-personalized welcome campaign that guided users through app features relevant to their profiles.
AI is finally developing enough to mainstream hyper-personalization, making it one of several major marketing trends of 2024 and allowing marketers to personalize messaging, increase accuracy of micro-targeting, and more. Twilio also found that 92% of marketers surveyed are using AI-driven personalization to increase business growth.
Action Items:
- Review data collection methods and data quality and find ways to improve processes.
- Analyze existing data to find new opportunities.
- Find ways to tie in marketing initiatives with personalized customer service.
- Research AI-powered marketing solutions to start deploying
hyper-personalized campaigns in 2024.
2. The Rise of Voice Search
As smart speakers and voice-activated smart assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home become more popular, users are spending less time on traditional search engines like Google and Bing and more time finding information through voice search. This method uses speech recognition technology to convert spoken language into text, which is then processed by a search engine or virtual assistant.
As voice search becomes more prevalent, brands must adopt a new SEO approach. The voice and speech recognition technology market is expected to reach $26.8 billion by 2025. To keep up with marketing trends of 2024, marketers must increase their investment in this technology regardless of where they are in their voice search strategy.
Action Items:
- Begin optimizing keywords for natural language queries.
- Invest in local SEO (related to “near me” queries) to align with what most voice search users search for.
- Leverage the expertise of marketing agencies that specialize in voice search optimization.
3. Short-Form Content Is King
Screen time on apps like TikTok exploded during the pandemic lockdowns and hasn’t shifted much since the world reopened. Today, the average person spends 6 hours and 37 minutes in front of a screen each day. A significant portion of that is spent on social media watching short-form video content, including advertisements.
Apps like TikTok, with low CPM, are driving massive growth in ad revenue — with totals expected to reach $331 billion by 2027. With so much consumer attention focused on social media, advertisers must meet them where they are in this shorter format, making short-form content a definite marketing trend of 2024.
Action Items:
- Allocate more resources to creating short-form videos for TikTok that can also be used for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and other ads.
- Research the social media landscape to stay up to date on monthly and weekly trends — and opportunities for the brand to join them.
Get Ahead of Digital Marketing Trends in 2024
The digital marketing landscape is changing rapidly, and the speed of innovation will continue to accelerate through 2024. Make the most of the opportunities this year presents by partnering with a seasoned agency to make the most of ad spend. The team at Power Marketing has over two decades of experience optimizing campaign strategy. Get in touch to learn more about our services.
