2024 Marketing Trends: What to Expect

Another year has almost gone. It’s time to review what strategies worked for your business in 2023 and put the final touches on your marketing strategies for the beginning of the new year. Digital marketing rapidly changes as technology advances and customers become increasingly demanding. So, as you focus on your marketing direction, you will want to look at the top 2024 marketing trends. Many of these trends may have been around in previous years but will not continue and increasingly dominate the scene in 2024.

Livestream Video Shopping

We’ve already talked about short attention spans. If you don’t engage your audience, you will lose them. Nothing is more engaging than a livestream video enabling you to comment in real time and see what others in the community say. But now you can sell products during your livestream videos. It’s the next best thing to standing in someone’s living room and talking with them in person.

Expect livestream video shopping to become increasingly popular in 2024. Many platforms offer it, including Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, YouTube, and TikTok.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence has been with us for quite a while, but it has been all the buzz in the last year with the popular adoption of Chat GPT, which was trained on more data than ever before. Not only can it answer questions in a credible human voice, but it can also write content and programs and create digital images.

But we are constantly surrounded by AI that serves many purposes. AI is critical in breaking down big data and serving audiences’ preferences. For example, Netflix uses it to create over 1300 audience segments and serve those audiences their preferred content.

In June, we told you about AI marketing tools you can use for your small business. We’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg; expect many more AI tools to be developed as part of the 2024 marketing trends.

AI Chatbots have also increased in popularity. Expect more and more businesses to adopt AI Chatbots in 2024 to serve their customers 24/7 for less money, even making sales in chat. AI chatbots will continue to improve as AI becomes increasingly capable of mimicking natural human speech patterns and understanding context. People are no longer willing to wait until your business opens in the morning to get answers to their questions. It’s time to examine how AI Chatbots can serve your business if you are not yet using them.

Hyper-Personalization

Though we have long been preaching the need to personalize content for maximum effectiveness, 2024 will see a whole new level of hyper-personalization thanks to technological strides. AI, machine learning, and other big data technology enable marketers to analyze big data in real-time even better than before and serve customers just what they are looking for. Of course, privacy and security will continue to be of concern as we balance what’s possible and what’s ethical.

Short Form Video

Hopefully, you already use video for your marketing in everything from your website to ads to social media. Short-form video has come to the forefront in recent years with the advent of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts. Audience attention spans have decreased, and short-form videos have further influenced that trend.

Short-form video requires you to capture attention, get to the point, and get your message across quickly. Creating short-form videos is both an art and a science, and it will continue to explode. Just be sure that when making a short-form video, you focus on the parameters and trends for the platform where you intend to feature it. If you make one video and scatter it on many platforms, don’t expect it to go viral or get much exposure.

Short-form videos will become increasingly popular and major players in 2024 marketing trends.

Voice Search

People don’t want to waste their time, and they want to search the Internet in the easiest way possible. In-home voice-activated devices such as the Echo are continuing to grow in popularity. It’s easier to ask Alexis or Siri to search for nearby hardware stores while making dinner than to pull out your computer or even your phone.

And speaking of phones, almost everyone has a phone with a voice assistant today. It shouldn’t be surprising that over 50% of adults use voice search daily. That will increase in 2024.

Be sure your website and directory listings are optimized for voice search in 2024. This is not a one-time thing; it requires ongoing maintenance. If you don’t, you are leaving business on the table.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality creates an all-digital environment that enables us to have an experience without being physically in a place. This has a powerful impact, and the marketing possibilities are endless. Sometimes, it requires a VR headset, but not always.

You may have already digitally “toured” a house for sale or virtually interacted with new products. This is no longer a novelty. Even small businesses will use VR to interact with customers as part of the 2024 marketing trends.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality is not completely digital like virtual reality, combining the real world with a digital aspect. For example, perhaps you are considering buying a specific couch but are afraid it may appear too big for your space or too modern or bright in color.  With AR, while looking at your actual living room, you can use a device (often a smartphone) to add a digital overlay showing a digital image of the couch with its size, color, and other attributes in your living room.

Given the choice, why would anyone buy a big ticket item for their home without using AR to see if it fits well?

Interactive Content

You have probably already tried various types of interactive content, perhaps quizzes or polls on social media posts. In 2024, you should be thinking about how to increase your digital interaction with your customers. Interactivity not only gets your audience’s attention but also gives a personalized and sometimes memorable experience.

It’s now so easy to create interactive content on platforms like Instagram that there is no reason not to do so. Those businesses that don’t interact with their customers will increasingly appear dated. But beyond image and entertainment value, interacting with your customers gives you an unparalleled opportunity to gather further information about them that you can use in your marketing and sales efforts.

VR and AR are some of the most forward ways of interacting with your customers. Still, you can also use social media (probably the most common channel for interaction), your website, email campaigns, ads, and more.

Search Box Optimization (SBO)

At INLocal, we have seen a huge and growing interest in SBO, and we expect that to increase in 2024. Search box optimization enables businesses to reserve keywords in certain geographic areas. When users type the keyword, the name of the business or their product appears in autosuggest. When a user clicks that autosuggestion, they are only taken to a page of search results about that business.

Of course, this is only effective if people click on autosuggestions. People searching Google click autosuggestions 23% of the time. After all, autosuggestions reduce typing and take less time. We explained this in depth in our blog post-Search Box Optimization for Small Business: Why You Need It.

 SBO is not a replacement for SEO. Use them in tandem. SBO is a cost-effective tool to get people to your website and make sales.

Are You Ready for the 2024 Marketing Trends?

The marketing landscape is shifting swiftly, and 2024 will see some major shifts. If you need help staying on top of the latest marketing trends, schedule a free consultation with us, and we can help.