Digital marketing has experienced massive growth and will be dynamic when new technologies come up.
In the last ten years, digital marketing has become a completely different thing, which is going to be changing even further with new emerging opportunities.
Some tactics will disappear but digital marketing in 2024 will be drastically different than today. Now, let’s look into several major developmental points that will probably dictate the course of the industry in the upcoming period.
Tailored experiences will be part of the baseline.
A notable trend towards personalized digital experience is one of the huge moves we’ve experienced throughout the year. By 2024, most of the consumers will expect personalized experiences as part of their daily lives.
Companies that want to stay competitive will need to utilize extensive customer data and AI/ML technologies to deliver hyper-relevant, One-to-One Interactions across all digital touch points.
Personalization is not all about recommending products, which consumers have previously bought. Understanding what makes every single consumer tick, what they prefer, and how they behave allows for predicting future purchase intentions and reducing friction along a customer journey.
Brands such as Amazon have set a benchmark in terms of customization of the digital experience, and customers will demand the same in the coming two years.
Some ways digital marketers can optimize for personalized experiences by 2024 include:
- Utilizing first party customer data across web, app, social, and other channels to build robust multi-touchpoint profiles.
- Leveraging AI assistants and chatbots that can adapt conversations based on a user’s stated and inferred interests, locations, and previous questions/searches.
- Utilizing AI recommendation tools that continuously acquire knowledge of specific preferences and tastes towards recommending fitting content and offers only in the near future.
- Using dynamic creative optimization to deploy hyper-targeted adverts informed by time-bound signals including location, weather, and events.
- Personalizing at a global scale employing methods of clustering, micro-persona, etc
Being able to deliver well-tailored experience consistently on every channel for winning and keeping customers in, and after, 2024.
Content Marketing Moves Beyond Text
Indeed, in the last ten years, content marketing definitely become an essential component of the digital marketing field. However, come 2024, plain text-based blogs and articles might not be enough. Content marketing is about to be taken to a whole new level through video, AR/VR, and other immersive formats.
Particularly, the popularity of video content is growing rapidly. Video marketing will become an essential tool for all brands by 2024. Today, consumers consume mobile content mostly using visually oriented means – that’s why you have to use video as a way of breaking away from the crowd and capturing people’s attention.
Be ready to watch videos embedded in multiple stages of the buying funnel. The unique value will be delivered by explainer videos, promo clips, “how-to”, product demos, live streams, etc at each stage. All platforms like dedicated channels such as YouTube, social networks, and even on product/service pages.
By 2024, augmented and virtual reality content may become crucial. These emergent technologies are VR tours and demonstrations to AR product visualizations which give new opportunities to embed buyers’ attention with their message. Seek out AR/VR innovation in companies and use it to your advantage to gain an upper hand.
Furthermore, other new formats such as interactive content, podcasts, user-generated content and others will emerge to coexist with conventional blogging. The future of content marketing demands moving beyond text and leveraging new immersive and engaging multimedia channels.
Voice Assistants Become Mainstream Shopping Tools
Voice technology has made waves in recent years with devices like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri becoming household names. But this is still relatively early days for voice assistants – by 2024, they will have evolved into mature shopping and information channels.
As voice interfaces improve and become more ubiquitous through smart speakers, cars, smartphones, and other connected devices, consumers will grow accustomed to using their voice for tasks like searching for products/services, placing orders, and getting support.
Brands hoping to meet customers via voice will need robust conversational strategies. This includes optimizing websites, apps, and entire catalogs for voice discovery by considering common queries, structured data, and natural language responses.
Behind the scenes, voice platforms will incorporate powerful tools like AI/ML, NLP, semantic understanding, and personalization capabilities to anticipate needs. Dynamic integration between online/mobile touchpoints and voice will become table stakes.
Some innovative brands may even opt to build their own first-party voice shopping experiences. In any case, digital marketers ignoring the voice revolution do so at their own peril. By 2024, being discoverable, shoppable and bookable through conversations with virtual assistants will open valuable new customer channels.
Social Commerce Comes of Age
Social commerce – the act of purchasing products directly through social media platforms – is still a nascent concept for many consumers and brands today. However, as platforms improve commerce capabilities and consumer trust grows, social commerce looks poised for explosive growth through 2024 and beyond.
A few platforms like Facebook and Instagram have already started rolling out robust shopping features across various surfaces like Marketplace, shoppable posts, and checkout integrations. But additional social networks will jump on the bandwagon and each will innovate new shopping concepts. For example:
- Pinterest: Leverage its strength in visual inspiration by allowing users to purchase pins directly or add all pinned items to a shopping cart with one click. Improved shop the look capabilities may let people replicate entire visual mood boards worth of products in a single transaction.
- TikTok: Currently known more for viral videos, TikTok will likely incorporate more commerce through livestreamed shopping events, swipe-up links on videos that lead to purchases, and shoppable hashtags. TikTok is primed to unleash a new format of entertainment-led social shopping.
- Snapchat: As a popular platform amongst younger demographics, Snapchat can capitalize on AR-based try-on technologies to power virtual “try before you buy” experiences, especially for cosmetics, fashion and jewelry. They may also integrate shoppable object/image recognition into the camera.
- Twitch: Beyond just streaming games, Twitch influencers are already dabbling in live hauls and unboxings that could become shoppable. Watching a favorite streamer geek out over products may inspire impulse purchases through seamless integrated shopping.
- YouTube: Rather than solely relying on affiliate links in video descriptions, YouTube will likely implement Shopify/WooCommerce-like integrations so creators can sell merchandise and digital goods natively on their channels.
As social platforms facilitate shopping embedded into organic social behaviors like scrolling feeds, sharing pins/videos, and engaging with livestreams – commerce will feel like a natural extension of the platform rather than an external disruption.
Social commerce’s biggest promise lies in capturing impulse buys during moments of inspiration, which perfectly dovetails with social media’s flywheel of real-time interest and sharing. Brands tapping these shopping evolutions can unlock immense untapped demand by lowering the barriers between inspiration and purchase within the sociability of networks.
By streamlining the path to purchase directly within the social experience, these networks make impulsive and inspiration-driven buying easier than ever. Users may soon come to expect frictionless shopping within their social feeds without needing to hop elsewhere.
Brands wise enough to move inventory and fulfill orders natively within social platforms themselves will gain a strong competitive advantage. Those merely pointing users elsewhere risk disengagement and missed sales opportunities.
Leveraging shoppable media, social ads, live shopping events and more, digital marketers can tap into the immense buying influence of social by 2024 to drive new revenue streams. Social commerce opens promising new frontiers for customer acquisition, engagement and conversion on a massive scale.
Location Data Takes Center Stage
Location data has been integral to digital advertising and analytics for some time. However, by 2024 this powerful source of customer insights is poised to become even more prominent. As both physical and digital experiences continue converging, location will serve as a core backbone connecting the two.
Location data analytics tools already provide immense value for optimizing store layouts, staffing and targeted communications based on who visits when. Going forward, proximity targeting using precise location data harvested from countless devices, maps integration, and IoT systems will open up hyper-local marketing at massive scale.
Contextual signals like weather, events, dayparting, and more fused with location intel create ripe opportunities for timely, relevant messaging. Digital ads targeted to in-market customers currently near-by a physical storefront at that moment will prove irresistibly compelling.
Privacy ethics will continue evolving but location-driven personalization promises to overhaul the customer experience across industries like retail, dining, travel and more. Companies embracing real-world signals and the opportunities of digitally-enriched physical shopping stand to gain powerful competitive differentiation moving ahead.
The Rise of Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing rapidly grew as a phenomenon over recent years. In 2024, marketers will gravitate toward newer models like mining authentic micro-influencers with highly engaged but narrow audiences.
While macro-influencers remain impactful for reach, followers of micro-influencers often view them as true peers lending authentic credibility to endorsements. By partnering with hyper-targeted micro-influencers aligned with specific niches or interest, brands gain finely tuned promotion.
AI and analytics further empower the identification of ideal micro-influencers based on finely granular attributes. However, success also demands a human touch – building genuine relationships with influencers passionate about specific products/services.
Techniques like user-generated content challenges, co-creation partnerships and social shares rewards tap real enthusiasm while feeling organic versus paid advertising to followers. Micro-influencers facilitate personalized conversations at scale where macro celebrities remain aloof.
Uniting micro-influencers worldwide driving passionate niche conversations defines a new chapter for impactful digital marketing. Brands leveraging these grassroots promoters gain vibrant community cultivation moving forward.
Preparing Your Business for Digital Marketing in 2024
With so many changes on the horizon, it’s crucial for businesses both large and small to take steps now to prepare their marketing strategies and organizations for success in 2024. Here are some key things companies should focus on over the next two years:
- Invest in improving your customer data capabilities. The more you understand individual customers, the better you can personalize experiences and optimize touchpoints. Prioritize tools for collecting robust first-party data via the website and other owned properties.
- Experiment with new content and format types. Don’t wait until 2024 to start creating video, AR/VR and other immersive content. Test what resonates now so you have a large body of fresh engaging content ready as consumer demands evolve.
- Ensure marketing technology enables agility. Future trends will require rapidly scaling, testing and optimizing campaigns across channels. Evaluate your martech stack to verify it supports modular testing, automation and self-service access by various teams.
- Optimize for voice and location-based interactions. Do an audit of your digital properties to identify gaps in voice and geo-personalization readiness. Whether building skills, enriching maps integrations or proximity targeting, lay groundwork well in advance.
- Cultivate influencer relationships. Partnering with both macro and the right micro-influencers takes time. Use the coming years to build your network of advocates engaged with your niche who can authentically represent your brand.
- Up-skill marketing talent. The demands of 2024 will require evolving skill sets around data analytics, AI, multimedia content creation and more. Develop training programs now to ensure your teams gain certifications and hands-on experience.
With digital transformations constantly underway, staying ahead of key industry shifts requires diligent preparation. By focusing on these areas over the next two years, businesses can effectively lay the foundation necessary for excelling in digital marketing through 2024 and beyond.
Conclusion
As the past decade has proven, digital marketing transformations occur rapidly spurred by emerging innovations. While specific tactics continuously evolve, certain overarching trends like personalization, immersive content, voice technology and marriage of digital/physical appear set to drive change through 2024 and beyond.
