Digital Marketing Changes You Need To Make For 2024
Marketing plays a vital role in every business. Therefore, keeping up with the latest marketing trends is a must. Thanks to that, enterprises gain their brand’s reputation and attract more potential customers.
The rapid increase in demand for social media has made it a means to approach new clients. As a result, businesses need to update social media marketing trends. The following two trends are native advertising and a comeback of AR and VR. Also, most web marketers have decided to invest more in leveraging AI this year. Content marketing trends, including blogs, podcasts, and infographics, remain the top choices in 2024. Another trend is to focus on Search Engine Optimization. SEO may sound new to many people, but it is a great tool to boost companies’ rankings on Google. That is why many companies are working on utilizing it. Lastly, privacy will be a priority for many brands to keep their customers’ data safe. Those brands that have applied this strategy succeed in becoming trustworthy and attracting new customers.
1) Social Media Marketing Trends
90% of people in the United States use social media regularly.
For this reason, social media marketing has gained popularity and is now a crucial component of practically any company’s overall marketing plan. You may humanize your brand by establishing a genuine personal connection with your audience through social media marketing.
Social media selling will become considerably more commonplace
Facebook offers Facebook Shops, Instagram offers Instagram Shopping, and TikTok is developing new partnership and e-commerce options.
The way that consumers shop is already being affected by this change. For instance, 71% of Gen Z-ers would instead learn about new products through social media. Regarding 51% of Millennials, the same is true. It is reasonable to conclude that social media purchasing will persist and become the new standard this year.
Source: HubSpot Blog Research, Consumer Trends 2023 Report
TikTok will keep attracting brand attention
With the most significant percentage of advertisers planning to raise their expenditure this year (56%), TikTok is expected to grow even more in 2024 than other social media apps.
Furthermore, nearly a quarter of the marketers in our poll (24%) believe that TikTok offers the best return on investment regarding social media channels.
Since TikTok first became popular four years ago, brands have been attempting to harness its potential. TikTok has positioned itself as an app for various audiences and marketers, with over 1 billion users worldwide.
You should reconsider if you believe TikTok is just for younger audiences. In the last three months, 38% of Gen Xers and 50% of Millennials have reported visiting TikTok, according to HubSpot’s 2023 Consumers Trends Report.
We forecast that these figures will keep rising as TikTok gains more traction.
Influencer marketing is still critical
In 2023, influencers were everywhere. It was impossible for me to browse social media without seeing influencers endorsing a wide range of goods. Spa brand La Roche-Posay executed one of my favorite influencer marketing efforts of the year.
Influencers such as Jae Gurley helped the brand advertise its sunscreen products during the US Open when spectators were outside in the sun enjoying the matches.
As do the marketers that participated in our poll, I do not anticipate this trend slowing down in 2024. Almost as many marketers as last year (89%), or 84% of those surveyed, said they will raise their investment in influencer marketing in 2024.
Marketers can increase brand awareness and win over followers from influencers’ audiences by working with thought leaders and influencers in the same industry.
Do you fear that working with a well-known influencer will be extremely expensive? Not a problem!
A brand can achieve greater success and at a lesser cost by collaborating with micro-influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers instead of working with celebrities or macro-influencers.
Micro-influencers were the most popular choice for influencer marketers in 2023, accounting for 64% of the marketers who worked with influencers and artists.
VR and AR
What is augmented reality (AR)?
By superimposing virtual features on top of an actual scene, augmented reality (AR) enables users to remain in the location they are physically in while also taking advantage of the enhanced elements.
One of the most well-known and well-known applications of augmented reality (AR) is Pokémon GO, in which characters from the game are projected onto real-world locations, such as someone’s backyard or the outside of their preferred restaurant.
What is virtual reality (VR)?
Any software that immerses users in an interactive, three-dimensional virtual environment, typically through a VR sensory device, that projects real-world activities into a virtual world is called virtual reality (VR). 360-degree VR experiences are common.
It is a computer-generated simulation, and users can engage in any virtual reality environment.
What is the difference between AR and VR?
The primary distinction between AR and VR is that the former enhances an individual’s current environment, while the latter submerges them in a new one. AR enhances an existing reality, while VR is a brand-new reality.
Furthermore, while AR experiences do not require headsets or other sensory devices to function, many VR experiences do. It is also frequently stated that while VR is 25% virtual and 75% reality, AR is 75% reality and 25% virtual.
They are comparable in providing users with virtual reality (VR) in a whole new universe and 3D and virtual content.
VR and AR can make a comeback
2024 may see a resurgence of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). 35% of marketers included AR or VR in their plans in 2021 and over half of them intended to raise their investment in 2022.
However, over a quarter (27%) of marketers intended to completely abandon VR and AR by 2023. Only 13% of marketers want to cut back on their VR and AR spending in 2024; 84% intend to increase their spending to levels comparable to those of the previous year.
In general, because of the expensive gear and large headsets, marketers may have been slower to embrace this trend. However, the trend is turning around as more people have access to VR glasses and AR applications.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing Trends
According to our survey, 92% of marketers intend to continue investing in search engine optimization or increase their investment in 2024. Your company will become more discoverable online if you use SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to optimize for particular consumer behavior types.
SEO for images and videos will not be overlooked
SEO goes beyond simply editing a page’s text. To help a website rank in Google Photos or search engine video carousels can also involve selecting and optimizing relevant videos or photos for the page.
Video optimization techniques include integrating a video with a related topic or keyword into a blog post. In contrast, picture optimization entails compressing assets to improve page speed and adding alt text optimized for keywords to an image.
53% of SEO marketers have an image and video optimization plan. According to 49% of those marketers, optimizing images and videos is their best SEO strategy.
Optimization for voice searches may take precedence
In 2024, 41% of marketers intend to raise their voice search optimization spending, and this will become a higher priority.
In 2023, more than a quarter of marketers (28%) plan to discontinue using voice search optimization. That percentage, nevertheless, has decreased to 14% concerning their 2024 ambitions.
“How can I leverage voice search optimization?” may be on your mind. The simple solution is to structure your content around questions.
Consider this: these virtual assistants respond to brief, factual inquiries like “Who is the actor in Mission: Impossible?” or “What’s the weather in Boston today?”. Furthermore, they are now processing a more significant number of tailored, conversational, and local searches.
These may sound like, “Where’s a nearby coffee shop I can work from today?” “How late is it open?” and “Do they serve iced coffee?”
Aja Frost, Director of Global Growth at HubSpot, says:
“Businesses should look at a topic and say, ‘What questions could users ask about this?’ Then, they should plan sub-topics accordingly and look for opportunities to insert questions as headers.
This will allow voice assistants to grab questions and recognize content as solutions quickly.”
Conversational marketing will remain more streamlined thanks to chatbots.
According to a Tidio survey, 53% of participants found that the most annoying aspect of doing business with a company is having to wait too long for a response. According to the same survey, 62% of respondents would prefer to talk to a chatbot than wait 15 minutes for a response.
Therefore, I believe it’s safe to assume that in 2024, chatbots will be used more often to meet customer expectations. According to our survey, most marketers (58%) plan to expand their chatbot investment in 2024.
Bots are driven by software that performs specified activities automatically, usually by interacting with users via a conversational interface.
Bots are made possible by artificial intelligence, which enables them to comprehend complex requests, customize responses, and enhance interactions over time.
While working with hundreds of consumers, bots offer the impression and commitment of a 1:1 service experience, something that no team or customer support professional could ever accomplish.
Listen up, customers who detest having to repeat themselves to different sales or support agents: chatbots exist and will continue to simplify your life.
When utilized properly, they may aggregate data from many data sources, including calendars, knowledge bases, blog entries, and videos, and manage discussions at scale.
Jon Dick, SVP of Marketing at HubSpot, says: “It’s on you to make things as easy as possible.”
“Do your buyers want to use live chat? You should give it to them. They’ve had the same problem three times in the last month? You should already know and have a plan to fix it,” Dick concludes.
Privacy Marketing Trends
Data is precious in the marketing industry, and not only to you as a marketer or business owner. Customers consider their data valuable and privileged, regardless of whether it is an email address, credit card number, or smartphone location. As such, you must safeguard it.
All businesses, software houses, banks, government agencies, or lemonade stands rely on data to run their operations. It is essential to sales, marketing, customer service, and other areas. However, when valuable data is mishandled or diverted to the wrong people, it breeds deep mistrust toward companies and may even expose vulnerable customers to exploitation.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented for this reason. The EU attempts to offer customers more control over their data under the GDPR. GDPR requires organizations to guarantee that their data is legally and securely obtained and that the individuals who gather and handle the data will do so in a way that protects consumer rights.
While adhering to the GDPR may seem onerous, the consequences of breaking them — which can amount to fines of up to 4% of a company’s yearly worldwide sales — will feel far more severe.
Furthermore, in 2022, GDPR will not be the only organization enforcing privacy laws. In actuality, businesses such as Apple and Google are also increasingly advocating for consumer data. Users of iPhones and iPads could choose which applications might follow their third-party data in 2021 thanks to an Apple IOS rollout. This data is frequently utilized for hyper-targeted advertisements. Apple completed releasing a new iOS upgrade in 2022 that gave Apple Mail users even more email privacy security measures. Google plans to stop utilizing third-party cookies on Chrome in the interim and will instead encourage advertisers to use its Privacy Sandbox.
Ultimately, companies and regulatory agencies are working harder to provide consumers with more excellent options over releasing personal data. While this is fantastic for consumers, companies that use personal data for advertising must devise backup plans and tactics in case they misplace important data pieces.
