What are the groundbreaking top digital marketing trends shaping 2024? This article zeroes in on the top five trends set to redefine the digital marketing landscape this year.
From the rise of AI-powered personalisation to the undeniable relevance of data-driven strategies, learn how these key developments can enhance your brand’s digital presence and offer a competitive advantage in a crowded online space.
Key Takeaways
- Brands need to adopt sustainable and purpose-driven marketing strategies, as over 70% of customers favour sustainability and are willing to pay more for such products, enhancing trust and brand loyalty.
- AI tools like Dall-E, Surfer SEO, and Hootsuite are revolutionising digital marketing by streamlining processes, and AI’s role in personalising search engine results is growing.
- Employee Generated Content (EGC) offers an authentic and relatable branding opportunity, fostering a positive company culture and consumer trust, and companies should encourage employees to share their brand experiences.
- eCommerce businesses should take advantage of social commerce by enabling the direct purchase of products from social media platforms for a seamless customer experience.
- Marketers need to base decision-making on data and platform insights to achieve desired results.
Trend 1 – Sustainable & Purpose-Driven Marketing
As we step into 2024, sustainability and social responsibility are at the forefront of digital marketing strategy trends. Consumers are increasingly caring about these aspects when making purchasing decisions, so transparency in these areas is key to building trust.
Over 70% of customers are willing to pay extra for sustainable products, reflecting the heightened awareness and preference for sustainability among consumers. This consumer behaviour is an opportunity for businesses to build brand awareness and customer loyalty by adopting sustainable practices.
A great example of successful sustainability marketing can be seen in Ikea’s campaign. They encouraged people to walk to their most eco-friendly store as part of their sustainability initiative. This campaign is an excellent example of social media marketing that seamlessly blends sustainability with brand promotion.
But what steps can businesses take to become more sustainable? They can start by:
- Examining their product or service lifecycle
- Asking for customer feedback
- Rethinking their corporate social responsibility strategy to be more sustainable
Leveraging digital channels for these initiatives can greatly enhance their reach and impact. This year is all about creating a brand that resonates with your target audience’s values and aspirations.
Trend 2 – Embracing AI Tools
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing has surpassed being just a trendy term. It is now an essential tool for marketers to streamline processes, optimise content, and improve their social media strategies in order to stay ahead of the competition. The need for AI-powered tools like Dall-E, Surfer SEO, and Hootsuite is continuing to grow, and quickly.
Dall-E or Surfer SEO are great for generating visual concepts that optimise website content, and now also offer free AI-generated captions and hashtags, making it easier than ever before to schedule posts on different social media channels.
To fully integrate AI into businesses’ digital marketing efforts, it’s crucial that they first assess their current skills in this area and determine if they want to simplify processes, speed up production, or revolutionise business operations. A clear strategy is also key, since understanding their own level of maturity with regards to using AI must be well established prior to opting for any change.
Within the next few years, AI is expected to revolutionise the field of SEO. As a result, search engine algorithms use AI and machine learning to analyse user preferences so that these are more tailored and personalised accordingly for each user. As we move towards a reality where AI plays a significant role in digital marketing, it’s still more important than ever to maintain that human touch.
Trend 3 – Employee Generated Content (EGC)
Employee-Generated Content (EGC) is set to have a significant impact in the marketing industry in 2024. EGC is any form of content (videos, images, blog posts, podcasts, etc) produced by employees within a company. This type of content offers an authentic glimpse into the organisation and can greatly enhance engagement on social media.
EGC brings numerous advantages for businesses. From a marketing perspective, it drives up follower count and interaction rates, humanises a business, and builds trust with a business’s target audience. Essentially, implementing this strategy is like running your own genuine influencer campaign right from inside your business!
From an internal perspective, encouraging employees’ involvement in creating original material fosters feelings of ownership towards company success, and improves employee morale and engagement levels.
Check out eCommerce brands LSKD and Naked Harvest for some great EGC examples.
2024 is the year of utilising genuine human perspectives and creating deeper connections inside and outside your business.
Trend 4 – Social Commerce
Social media shopping, particularly among Gen Z and Alpha consumers, is another one of our 2024 digital marketing trends. eCommerce businesses must adapt their strategies to take advantage of this trend, as online shopping through social media platforms in Australia is estimated to reach 6.4 million users by 2024.
The term “social commerce” refers to the direct purchase of products on social media platforms rather than traditional eCommerce websites or apps.
It’s important for brands to pay attention to social commerce capabilities because it can help engage a larger audience, simplify the buying process, and increase sales. This means focusing on creating a seamless customer journey that minimises obstacles that could discourage purchases.
The easiest way for businesses to harness the potential of social commerce is by using features like Facebook Shop and Instagram Shop which allow customers to make purchases within these apps directly. Brands with an Instagram business account also have access to tools such as Pinterest Shopping where they can tag products in Pins, making it easier for customers to shop while browsing content.
As these features are frequently updated, companies should work with digital agencies to optimise their marketing strategy and stay ahead of the curve. Monitoring key metrics from social media platforms’ native analytics tools is another great way to gain insight into what types of content leads buyers towards purchasing.
Trend 5 – Data-Backed Decisions
The success of digital marketing in 2024 will heavily rely on making data-informed decisions. Now more than ever, utilising data is essential for devising effective strategies, optimising campaigns, and improving overall digital marketing performance. The more data, the better!
There are various methods to evaluate the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. The best ways are to leverage native platform insights, and to work with a digital agency to gain deeper industry and campaign insights.
Along a similar vein, this year it will be important to avoid making decisions under pressure. With ever-increasing AI-generated suggestions and recommendations coming from Meta Ads and Google Ads representatives, we urge businesses to always use real data or confer with their digital agencies to inform next steps.
That’s All For Now
2024 is certainly shaping up to be an exciting year for digital marketing. With a clear shift towards sustainability and social responsibility, the incorporation of AI, the rise of employee-generated content, the growing popularity of social commerce, and the importance of data-backed decisions, businesses have numerous opportunities to connect with their audience on a deeper level.
Gear up, embrace these trends, and get ready to take your digital marketing game to the next level with our SEO, Google Ads, and Social Media Marketing plans. Feel free to check out our case studies to learn more about the variety of industries we work with and how we can work together.
Of course, the easiest way to get started is to say hi! Contact our Client Service Team here – we can’t wait to hear from you.
Until next time,
The Springboard Digital Marketing Team