Marketing Trends for 2024: 5 Trends To Add to Your Marketing Strategy This Year

The old adage “the only constant is change” proves true in most aspects of life…including marketing your business!

To keep your business top of mind with your audience, it’s important to stay up to date on current marketing trends and adapt your strategies accordingly.

As technology advances and consumers change where they’re spending their time online, your digital marketing needs to change as well. In other words, you need to continually adjust the ways and places you market your business.

So, what changes are in store for 2024? We’re glad you asked! 😉 Read on for five marketing trends you should consider working into your marketing strategy this year.

1. Video Content Is King

This trend isn’t necessarily new, but it’s one that will only continue to gain ground in the new year. 

As the widely preferred way to consume content online, video content is changing the face of digital marketing. Content in the form of short-form videos (think TikTok and Instagram Reels), live streams, and interactive videos will be key to effectively engaging your audience in the coming years.

The goal of video marketing is to create compelling, visually appealing, and highly shareable content. This can take the form of:

• Product demonstrations
• Interactive tutorials
• Storytelling
• Behind-the-scenes content
• Live Q&A sessions

…and more. Include videos not only on social media but also throughout your blog and website. Add short-form videos to blogs, your home page, your FAQ page, and so on to foster engagement with your audience, build brand loyalty, and connect with your readers on a deeper, more personal level. 

Video enhances your website’s user experience and gives you the chance to communicate your brand message in an engaging, dynamic way.

2. Optimizing for Image and Voice Search

Another important trend to add to your marketing strategy this year is optimizing your content — not only for traditional typed Google searches but also for image and voice searches.

In the U.S. alone, 312 million people use smartphones, and 200 million households have smart speakers powered by voice assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant. These days, typing a few words into Google isn’t the only way people are scouring the internet for answers to their questions. They’re also asking Siri, Alexa, or Google questions using their voice.

In addition, more and more people are using images to search: Google Lens, for instance, is used for 12 billion searches each month!

This means that any content you put out into the interwebs (blogs, videos, images, landing pages, etc) needs to be optimized for both voice and image searches. 

So…what does that mean exactly?

Here’s an example: When people use their voice assistants to ask a question, they’re much more likely to use conversational language and longer phrases than they do when they type out a search. This means you’ll need to adjust the keywords you target to include longer, more conversational phrases and create content that answers common questions.

It’s also important to update your Google Business Profile so voice assistants can offer the best results in response to a question about your business. And if you sell products online, make sure to add accurate product data and high-quality images to Google’s Merchant Center to better enable the identification and display of your products.

Optimizing your content for voice and image search will help make your content easier to find and improve your ranking in search results, giving you the chance to reach more people with your products and services.

3. Personalized Customer Journeys Fueled by AI

Personalization is another aspect of marketing that will be crucial to enhancing customer experience and driving customer loyalty in 2024. And AI tools are what will help make the next level of personalization possible.

AI tools and algorithms are capable of analyzing huge amounts of data and identifying patterns in that data to predict consumer behavior and deliver more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. This makes personalized experiences possible across all types of content, from emails and social media ads to website product recommendations and in-store offers.

This level of personalization allows brands to offer highly tailored experiences that cater to consumer preferences, elevating the quality of their interactions with consumers and improving customer engagement and conversion rates.

AI-powered chatbots and messaging apps, for example, are able to provide nearly instant support by answering customer queries with human-like responses and offering personalized recommendations based on the customer’s preferences and purchase history. 

But while AI tools like this can certainly help you build more authentic customer connections, it’s important not to rely too heavily on AI alone. It’s best to consider AI a tool to add to your tool belt — not a replacement for human interaction — and to find ways to “co-create” with it.

Used well, AI can help you build a seamless customer experience that cultivates greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Privacy and Data Protection 

Yep, we know, this one isn’t nearly as sexy as AI or video content. Nevertheless, data privacy is a crucial element of any good marketing strategy. 

After all, building trust with your audience is key to good marketing…and being transparent about your privacy and data protection efforts helps show that you’re trustworthy.

Using more and more technology in our marketing (such as the AI tools mentioned above) often means gathering more and more customer data — data that is protected by a variety of privacy regulations. 

Regulations typically require you to: 

• Obtain explicit consent from a customer before collecting their data
• Clearly explain how you collect and use data
• Implement secure data collection and storage methods
• Comply with evolving privacy regulations

Given the amount of personal data floating around on the internet, many consumers are concerned about what happens to their data. That’s why, in addition to ensuring you comply with privacy regulations, being transparent about your collection, storage, and use of consumer data is so important: it helps build a strong, trusting relationship with your consumer base. 

Always be open and honest about how you use any consumer data that you collect. Building this trust with your customers is a crucial part of driving customer loyalty and growth.

5. Building a Cohesive Brand Experience 

Finally, ensuring that you offer a cohesive brand experience across all marketing channels is more vital than ever. 

Today’s consumers don’t shop or search using a single platform. In many cases, a customer’s journey can span several different channels for a single purchase. For example, a potential customer may initially encounter your brand on social media, and then hop over to your website to peruse your offerings. They may decide to buy there and then, or they may choose to visit your brick-and-mortar to get more information before taking the plunge.

This is why it’s so important to ensure you have a seamless flow of content across your marketing channels: to make sure consumers have a consistent experience of your brand no matter where they encounter it.

Having a well-thought-out marketing plan and automating your marketing can help you maintain that consistency.

Want more tips for marketing your business in 2024 and beyond? Sign up for our email list to stay up to date on all things marketing. Or, if you’re ready to get some help with your marketing tasks this year, schedule a free, no-obligation exploratory call to discuss your needs and see how the Wild Fig team can help!