There’s a lot of noise in marketing, especially since Covid-19 is becoming a thing of the past.
Some marketers claim that interactive content is the new trick. Others say short-form videos are the future, while another group sticks with paid advertising like PPC. And I could go on.
But there’s no one to back these claims. Still, trying all these strategies at once doesn’t mean you’ll get your desired ROI.
However, a few marketers have managed to remain relevant after a disruption. They delivered high-impact work and stayed strong to meet the customers where they are. Plus, they’ve managed to create impactful and personalized marketing content to sell their product and service.
We reached out to 17 of these marketing experts to find out what they think the state of marketing will be in 2024. There is no need to bribe them with free coffee to tell you what they know. But first…
What was the goal and why we’re interested in getting marketing predictions for 2024?
As said earlier, we’re witnessing many changes in marketing.
For example, browser cookies are slowly becoming obsolete, personalization is going beyond “Hi (first name),” video is gaining more popularity, and the customer is gaining more dominance.
Wrapping your head around all of these is overwhelming. Your competitors might be making a kill from one strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’ll potentially work for you.
You have no choice, sadly. A portion of your marketing strategy is to prepare for the future by adopting early trends that are likely to bring more results.
But with experts who’ve kept an eye on marketing trends for years, they find it easy to predict what will happen in the future.
These marketing professionals have a wealth of information both from experience and by brushing shoulders with other experts in the field. They know how to prepare their marketing for 2024 – that’s the information we’re trying to get.
The collection of this guide will help you to:
- Learn from different experts.
- Know what marketing strategy is working in your industry.
- Know how to maximize the right strategy to work for you.
- Avoid making the same mistakes you made in 2023.
Let’s get started.
Storytelling! Storytelling! storytelling!
Irina Weber, Content Marketing Specialist, SE ranking
Storytelling in videos, storytelling by influencers, storytelling by experts, and storytelling by social audio in Twitter Spaces will become part of all marketing plans. It will drive more than ever before brand sales and conversions.
Customers use the audio format as the most accessible and effective medium to deliver targeted audiences.
Storytelling can showcase the value, offerings, or experience a brand brings to its customers instead of outlining the black and white points. That will create a more impactful and meaningful experience with a brand.
Online communities will become more relevant than email lists
Tom Bangay, Director of Content, Juro
Community-led growth will be a secret weapon in 2024 for those companies able to actually make it happen.
Most companies claim to have a community when they have a mailing list. Businesses with active and engaged members driving adoption and expansion are rare but likely to follow in Notion and Figma’s steps to deliver unstoppable growth.
Hyper-personalization, not Personalization
Ian Naylor, Co-founder, Hyperise
“Personalization” was selected by ANA members as the ANA 2019 Marketing Word of the Year. Fast forward to three years, and things have progressed. For 2024 Hyper-Personalization is the big prediction.
Marketing teams need to go beyond “Hi {firstname}” and create moments of delight for their prospects, to grab their attention and increase engagement.
Hyper-personalization does this by using purposeful personalization at each step of the funnel. For example, SDRs use Humanized GIFs, personalized to each recipient in their LinkedIn and email outreach, driving engagement and connection.
Also, you can personalize the landing pages with individualized videos when the prospect takes the CTA from the outreach. Luckily, AI aids in the production of personalization data.
Utilizing all these personalization tools in unison for a cohesive user experience will become more commonplace in 2024.
Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone
Phil Forbes, Marketing Specialist, Packhelp
It’s not all doom and gloom, but it will be more challenging. The supply chain crunch will ease, but the economic crisis will make effective paid marketing harder.
Similarly, I believe more VC funds will start to look at the significance that a startup can play in the world, rather than just the success it can find.
Brand awareness will be more than being active in social media
Alex Souchoroukof, Digital Marketer for Moosend
Although brand awareness is nothing new, in 2024 and beyond, we will see customers who are less interested in buying a specific product and more interested in investing their dollars in a brand they trust, believe in, and resonate with their fundamental values.
In that case, you’ll need to focus on raising brand recognition, cultivating an engaged community, and helping your potential customers in various ways.
One of these parameters is accessibility. Prioritizing accessibility in 2024 will guarantee that your company is ahead of the curve in terms of communication.
Reducing the obstacles that divert people from enjoying your platform’s design, features, and technology are referred to as digital accessibility.
Crafting a universal design that guarantees that all digital elements are accessible to those with disabilities is a huge step towards the future.
Over 1 billion people worldwide experience some sort of disability. As a result, brands should make their digital presence more accessible in 2024 when customer experience is a top priority.
Making your content available for everyone isn’t only a good idea but a necessity. Start by familiarizing yourself with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines if you’re searching for a place to start.
Companies will consider digital experience
Harmonie Poirier, Digital Marketing Manager, Agility CMS
Enterprises are going to start shifting to a composable DXP approach. This will entail moving away from traditional DXP in which marketing and software tools are preassigned and pricey – think Adobe Experience Manager.
Instead, executives will look to Marketing and IT leaders to identify the tools and implementations they need.
While this can be a daunting task, having a CMS which provides a fully comprehensive composable DXP will be the way of the future.
Agility CMS provides this by hosting web/applications in a content hub while delivering all the integrations/ implementations an enterprise needs with the flexibility to pick and choose which ones suit best.
Local SEO is becoming more popular and relevant
David Schneider, the Managing Director, BlindSeer
Google is moving on to its next major direction for search engine results. I’ve noticed that local businesses are ranking better and better for appropriate terms throughout the end of the year.
I’ve also noticed that people who optimize their homepage against the primary keyword instead of a brand term are seeing a high level of success.
I believe that through 2024, Google will continue to lean towards specialized and local websites. Because of this, there will be a further shift towards SEO even beyond what the global pandemic has already caused as companies try to adapt to the new search market. A good example of a company leveraging local SEO is Split My Fare, a UK-based train service. They targeted local SEO keywords relevant to their niche and used targeted backlinks to improve their organic traffic from 0 to 138,000 visitors per month
Specificity and user-generated content wins the game
Bianka Pluszczewska, IT Content Marketer, Brain Hub
Marketing trends change at lightning speed in the digital age – and never more so than the last couple of years.
Since the pandemic, marketing has become a more ‘touchy feeling’ in getting to know and understand customers. As a result, user-generated content has become the next big thing.
This will be very much the case this year – not only does user-generated content save brands a ton of money, but it also makes customers feel involved and therefore connected with a brand.
Because of this, brands should be laser-focused on bringing in those reviews and engaging with followers on social media.
It’s been proven that customers love it when brands interact with them authentically, which means liking and sharing a customer’s posts and starting a dialogue. It’s no longer enough to just post your content in 2024. You also need to dig deeper to get your customers onboard.
Short-form videos all the way
Gaurav Sharma, Founder, Attrock
While SEO and content marketing are the evergreen digital marketing techniques, in 2024, we’ll be focusing more on the latest social media trend—reels and short-form video marketing.
And we’re not talking only about Instagram Reels; there are other social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube that also offer short-form video formats.
Millions of people watch Instagram Reels and short videos every day, enabling us to reach a vast audience. Moreover, they’re highly engaging and can help us reach our target audience effectively.
Despite initially being bullied as a “TikTok copycat,” Instagram Reels has become very popular amongst brands and social media influencers.
Collect first-party customer data
Sugandh Sharma, Product Manager, Qualaroo
Although Google has delayed the discontinuation of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser till 2023, the death of cookie-based user tracking is coming eventually.
Plus, the pandemic has made digital the new normal as more and more customers adapt their habits towards online channels.
It means marketers and advertisers need new tactics to map customers’ touchpoints and interactions across the web to understand their audience.
That’s why adopting systems that can collect zero-party, and first-party data needs to be a priority to prepare yourself for the future.
Zero and first-party data is the information that a brand collects directly from the customers through various systems like SMS, email, CRM, surveys, customer feedback, website behavior, analytics, and more.
This data is vital for understanding the visitors’ intent, exploring restarting opportunities, and designing marketing strategies.
You can collect this data through customer feedback and surveys, CRM data, analytics, social media, and behavioral analysis.
The growth of social commerce
Bryan Philips, Head of Marketing, In Motion Marketing
This will mean an increasing demand for a better social media presence. According to a 2023 report from Accenture, social e-commerce is expected to grow three times faster than traditional commerce.
I suggest brands should re-evaluate their social presence and improve in the following directions:
- Long-term collaboration with influencers
- The usage of user-generated content
- Building an engaged online community.
SEO will stay, but you’ll have to be more patient
Miles Smith, SEO Consultant, WhyStuffSuck
With the pandemic forever changing the online landscape and recent ad changes limiting advertisers’ ability to target and convert customers, the cost of paid online ads has dramatically increased.
As a result, more companies will look to Google SEO as a growth strategy, but the quick hacks to zoom our way to the top are long gone.
SEO traffic + leads/sales growth will remain elusive and dramatically crucial for others as the SEO arms race divides the “haves” from the “have nots.”
The future is for those willing to make a long-term (and strategic) investment to yield long-term gain.
Due to the complex nature of SEO (selecting/optimizing keywords, using internal link equity, gaining local search placement, garnering a multilingual audience, implementing ideal content strategy, pruning low performing pages, nurturing email leads, etc.), having an experienced strategist to guide and prioritize strategies will be crucial to compete and win the Google box.
Relatable content across all content marketing channels
Sophia Solanki, Founder of Narrato
I believe organic marketing in 2023 will revolve around these four trends that I would put my money on:
- Podcasts – You just can’t ignore podcasts as a content format anymore. Getting traction can be challenging initially. But if you can hit the right note with your podcast content, you may gain a highly receptive and tuned-in audience.
- Content creation and workflow automation – Technology is bringing about the most significant revolution. AI writing, generating automatic data-driven content briefs, automating content workflows for productivity, etc., are necessary now. Content creators and marketers are going for dedicated software to take the pain out of content creation and marketing.
- Usable, high-value content – Success in content marketing is no longer about volumes. Google is doubling down to identify the most valuable and relevant content for searchers. Focus on empathetic, usable content that delivers real value to the audience will be essential.
- A/B Testing to improve content performance – A/B testing goes beyond landing pages or mobile apps today. Content marketers also use A/B testing to see which marketing copies and formats deliver the best results. It is one thing you’d want to implement in 2023.
Social listening
Luis Magalhaes, Director of Marketing, DistantJob
Social listening is going to be massive. I’m going to invest in having people find and answer queries in groups and communities all over the internet, from Slack to Quora, from Reddit to Facebook and LI groups. Especially questions about competitors.
Cold outreach for link building is becoming obsolete
Janice Wald, Blogging Coach, Mostly Blogging
According to the Authority Hacker podcast, Google made links a hot commodity. Cold outreach fails since competing brands are willing to open their wallets and pay for links.
Luckily, link-building agencies bridge the gap between bloggers and brands. The brand hires an agency who’s work is searching for a blogger open for link-building. The agency will then arrange for the blogger to insert a backlink to the brand’s page.
Both the blogger and the agency make money. As a result, links are expensive. Finding a link you can buy for even as low as $100 is impossible.
According to the podcasters, Google hasn’t penalized anyone for this Black Hat technique in over five years. In fact, this practice of buying links is now commonplace and will continue to be trendy as long as Google continues to see links as a sign of quality content that should get a boost in the Search Engine Results Pages.
Identifying customer source plays a big role In determining marketing strategy
Zack Grove, Founder, Zack Grove
In 2023, more marketers will simplify how they measure where new customers come from.
Instead of relying on complex attribution models or Google Analytics alone, marketers will simply ask customers, “where did you first hear about us?” and make decisions accordingly.
To make this happen, in B2B, marketers will collaborate with their sales reps to ask this question on intro calls and pull answers from transcripts to review.
In DTC/eCommerce, marketers will use tools like Kno to survey customers on their post-purchase confirmation pages and build “revenue by self-reported source” reports.
When it comes to attribution, in 2023, more marketers will realize that the simplest approach wins.
Influencers are becoming less effective
Ben Kazinik, Director Content, Mayple
I think influencers are going to take a backseat, and online communities will get a boost, especially in the world of B2B marketing.
Slack communities have been incredibly helpful for us this year. They’ve helped us find partnerships, work on content collaborations, find top talent, etc.
Along with that, video is going to become even more prevalent. Cold outreach, employee communication, and how customers interact with brands will involve more and more video content.
Conclusion
The common prediction from all these experts is that marketing is becoming more personalized. Customers want brands to hit their pain points from their levels.
Whether it’s SEO, paid media, blogging, video, or any other channel, the goal is to make each experience memorable by personalizing the content.
Plus, more marketers believe that customers are getting wiser, hence don’t need any convincing from someone to decide. That’s why methods like influencer marketing are getting less popular by the day.
