Digital Marketing Trends To Consider In 2024

Digital marketing has proven its worth as a powerful marketing tool across various industry verticals. It’s visible from the growth of the digital marketing market, which is expected to reach a value of around $1099.33 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 13.1%. The future growth prospects are projected high because many people prefer consuming and creating content through digital channels.

In the last decade, with technology progress, users’ behavior and interests are changing, which mandates digital marketers to keep pace with evolving trends. Staying current while embracing the latest trends is an intelligent step every marketer must take to cut through the noise of competitors. Amidst many digital marketing trends, it’s difficult for businesses to select the best one to step in and embrace the shift.

Realizing the business needs for the latest trends to consider in 2024, here are some that will help create an effective digital marketing strategy. Let’s dig deeper to know more about digital marketing trends and how your business avails them.

Leverage these Digital Marketing Trends In 2024

Contextual advertising

With changing users’ preferences, businesses need to prioritize relevance, user experience, and personalization. That’s where contextual advertising under the digital marketing umbrella allows businesses to target ads to a specific segment of the user base. It involves analyzing the context of digital content before displaying an ad to ensure that ads are relevant to the content and the viewer’s interests.

The content relevance, high user engagement, high CTR, Dynamic placement, and real-time optimization of ads add more value to the advertising, which is expected to bring great results in 2024 and beyond.

Social media advertising

The growing usage of social media platforms provides enormous opportunities for businesses to harness social power with social media ads. Social media advertising continues to be a dominant trend in the years to come and helps businesses achieve success when it’s used tactically. Though social media channels have extensive user bases, businesses can extend their reach and engage the target audience with paid ads on social media platforms.

The ad campaigns on social media channels are customized to fit the business objectives and they help with precise targeting through the selection of users’ demographics, interests, behaviours, and location. Besides, businesses can control spending on advertising by setting daily or lifetime budgets. This way, all types and size of businesses achieve their digital marketing goals within budget with this trend.

Hyper-personalization

Going beyond traditional personalization, like- sending the same email with users’ names through the same platform, is all-important for businesses as users are no longer interested in the same. Making the users interested in marketing efforts requires hyper-personalization leveraging advanced technologies, data analysis, and AI. It helps deliver content, product recommendations, and messaging that uniquely suits each individual’s preferences and behaviours.

Say hyper-personalization in email marketing means creating individualized email campaigns with dynamic content blocks and product recommendations after understanding users’ emotional state (current browsing behaviour dictates the latest preferences for products).

The best example is Spotify, which implemented a hyper-personalization engine to create taste profiles and send personalized playlists to users.

Leverage social media as a search engine

82% of internet users will be using social media platforms worldwide in 2024, and the number is expected to reach more than 4.4 billion by 2025. As users turn to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), and Pinterest to discover and explore content, businesses can capitalize on this number using social media judiciously.

Brands and marketers use strategic hashtags to increase the visibility of their posts in search results. With growing interest in visual search by uploading images of items, the visual search tools on platforms like Pinterest and Google will help.

Analyze competition to market intelligently

Checking the pulse of competition is vital for knowing which plus points are enabling competitors to catch maximum eyeballs and the unrealized gap in the market. It provides insights into how businesses can strengthen their grasp of the target audience. With growing digital preferences, businesses need to perform competition research to inch closer to success.

For competition research, businesses need to perform website analysis, do keyword analysis, focus on marketing channels performance, identify keyword gaps, view paid activities results, monitor popular page performance, and track competition online. The old-school marketing tactics work well in digital marketing as well to gain competitive intelligence and stay ahead of the game in 2024.

Interactive marketing

Gamification marketing intrigues users because it involves two-way interaction in real-time. That’s why interactive marketing stands out as a dynamic trend in digital marketing. It allows users to interact with brands and content in a more personalized and immersive manner. There are various ways   help businesses to execute interactive marketing campaigns.

Adding gamification elements, such as points, badges, and leaderboards, encourages user participation in marketing activities.

Create content that encourages user interaction, such as polls, quizzes, surveys, and contests. The polls and surveys not only collect user opinions and feedback but foster user engagement as well.

Live streaming on platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube Live enables real-time interaction with viewers, offering opportunities for Q&A sessions and live product demonstrations.

Interactive elements, such as clickable images, surveys, and call-to-action buttons, are also added to encourage user engagement.

Online reviews

Users trust online reviews the most, considering them as unbiased, genuine feedback from existing users. Nowadays, online reviews, aka user-generated content on business websites, social channels, and other review aggregator sites such as TopDevelopers.co becoming a source of information to assess businesses and their offerings performance. Not only users but Google also consider online reviews for website indexing.

Online reputation management companies will help businesses manage online reviews, such as text reviews, video reviews, and others. When there are any negative reviews from the users, using the right digital marketing strategies, helps businesses to address users’ concerns and know where can they improve their brand image and satisfy customers.

Video Marketing

Video content is already a medium to get better customer engagement and gain maximum response. The leading brands leveraged video marketing as a prominent tool to showcase what their product is and better sense the product. It has helped businesses to increase conversion rates and also turned out as a cost-effective marketing tool under the digital marketing trends umbrella.

The twists and turns that the global pandemic has brought to the world have increased the online video consumption rate, which has become another reason that helped businesses to grow and gain success with video marketing. The positive effects on traffic, sales, ROI, and retention have made video marketing a key priority for marketers, which is expected to continue in the years to come.

Personalized video content, Live video, such as Facebook Live and Instagram Live, and product videos are trending under video marketing hood that 86% of the businesses leveraging in the upcoming years.

Metaverse marketing

Metaverse, a term popularized by Facebook (now Meta), is a digital reality world that combines aspects of social media, online gaming, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Cryptocurrencies to allow users to interact virtually. According to tech giants like Apple, Facebook, and Adobe Metaverse is not like a sci-fi concept, but the future of digital marketing. Facebook has already invested $10 billion in Metaverse and will create 10,000 jobs in the future. By 2025, the global Metaverse market is expected to be valued at around $280 billion.

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne, Founder of Marketoonist

How can businesses build new digital marketing strategies around Metaverse?

Businesses will need to tie real-world experiences with their brands. For instance, Stella Artois is a beer brand that funds horse racing events. It has now ventured into the Metaverse by sponsoring a digital horse racing online platform where the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) horses are traded, bred, and raced.

Big Stack is an ad tech company that made the transition from placing ads on physical billboards to placing ads on games.

Metaverse is especially important for startups as it will enable them to gain traction in a relatively unknown sphere. The businesses that will adapt their marketing strategy with this futuristic digital marketing trend, according to Metaverse, will be the ones who will taste success in the upcoming future.

Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is another promising trend that has the power to shape the future of digital marketing. The market size of AI is expected to reach $641 billion by 2028. Digital marketers know that AI and digital marketing are a perfect match and 6 out of 10 marketers say that it is the most important aspect of their data strategy. AI is a trend that can help to spot other trends as well with user preferences. This helps to mold marketing campaigns accordingly.

Furthermore, AI can help businesses make critical decisions like how to allocate budgets efficiently, the customers they should target, and the type of marketing campaign they should design. Using AI, one can produce smarter, more targeted advertisements and increase their conversion rate.Impact of position zero on digital marketing

Mobile-first marketing

If you want to succeed in 2024, you will need a robust mobile commerce strategy. Mobile commerce is showing phenomenal growth across diverse markets. It has a 44% share in annual eCommerce sales. It is estimated that mobile commerce (mCommerce) will be valued at $250 billion by 2024. Its exponential growth is the reason why a mobile-first marketing approach can become one of the major digital marketing trends in 2024.

Mobile devices are the preferred medium for marketers, even for social media marketing. This is because of the fact that 95% of Facebook users use the platform using their mobile devices. The same is true for Twitter, as 8 out of 10 Twitter users access the social media platform through their smartphones.
Businesses can receive the following benefits from a mobile-first marketing strategy.

• Improved reach
• Chance to rank higher
• Better customer experience
• Gain Critical data insights
• New revenue channels
• Stronger relationship with Customers
• Increased visibility

There are a plethora of mobile channels available where you can engage with your audience. Mobile banner ads, native app ads, SMS, and social ads are just a few examples of the wide range of mobile channels available. A mobile-first strategy needs to be adopted, especially by small businesses as they stand to gain much from it. This trend will be an important part of any digital transformation of small businesses. Moreover, In 2024 smart brands will take advantage of the wide range of avenues to reach mobile customers.

NFTs have opened up new ways

NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) is one of the trending crypto business ideas. According to Nasdaq, the global NFT market will grow to a size of $370 billion by 2031. An NFT is a blockchain-based digital asset that operates just like a physical asset. One of the major reasons why they have gained prominence is that they represent digital files like art, collectibles, virtual real estate, virtual world, fashion, and other physical assets.

How can NFTs help a business with its brand and marketing strategy?

NFTs have opened up new ways of brand storytelling and consumer interaction, the two main pillars of an effective marketing strategy.

With NFTs, the brands can avail the following benefits.

• Increase brand awareness
• Create unique brand experiences
• Encourage interaction
• Engaging digital services
• Managing supply chains
• Raising funds
• Building a strong community
• Generate new revenue streams

This is how business brands are using NFTs in their marketing strategy. According to research, 8 out of 10 millennials prefer to give business to brands that align with a cause. For example,  Taco Bell put up 25 taco-themed NFT GIFs to support the Live Mas Scholarship that Taco Bell has been doing for years through its foundation.

SERP Position Zero

According to a HubSpot study, the content ranked for position zero registered a 114% rise in CTR. Position zero is the term used to describe the featured snippet block at the top of the Google search results. Google first introduced position zero to directly deliver the answers to user queries right on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

The position zero information contains a summary of the answer, a link to the webpage from which the information has been extracted, the page title and the URL. Marketers call it to position zero as it is displayed on top of the SERPs, making it the top organic result.

It is not necessary that every search result has a featured snippet, but when it does, the snippet is designed to answer the user’s question. Google has introduced snippets in its search results to deliver the most relevant information to users quickly and efficiently.

Impact of position zero on digital marketing

As search engines get better at delivering answers directly on the SERPs, the businesses that do not adopt take the risk of seeing decreasing organic web traffic. On the other hand, those that are able to optimize their content for position zero stands to benefit from it as their website would be the first result that the users see on the SERPs.

Getting to position zero is difficult, hire SEO experts to build a strategy that will rank your webpage on position zero for priority keywords.

Automated bidding and targeting for paid campaigns

Automated bidding and targeting for PPC campaigns are one of the major trends in digital marketing that promises to change the landscape of advertising.

Automated bidding

Automated bidding consists of a set of bid strategies that use advanced machine learning to help marketers tailor the correct bid for every auction. This strategy  tweak and adjust bids, ad phrasing, and keywords to provide the advertisers with the best results within the allocated budget. The major advantage of automated bidding is that it takes the guesswork out of setting bids. This enables the businesses to meet their performance goals.

How to Build an Auction Website like eBay for Online Bidding?

Automated Targeting

Google Ads has introduced the optimized targeting feature for its display network ad campaigns. The idea behind optimized targeting is to look beyond the manually-selected audience segments in your ad campaign. In manual selection, sometimes you are tend to miss the audience segments that could be targeted for better returns. Optimized targeting eliminates this error. Through display automated targeting, Google shows the ads to an audience that is similar to the one that the you have specified. For display automated targeting, Google pulls the data from the historical performance of the ad campaigns and puts an emphasis on conversion history.

Intelligent Chatbots for Conversational Marketing

Chatbots are rising from just being automated customer service robots to smart assistants helping in digital marketing. Conversational chatbots are increasingly being used in businesses to drive sales numbers up by improving engagement levels with customers. According to a survey, on average successfully implemented chatbot can help to get an engagement rate of approximately 35-40%.

Also, they lend a hand in taking the customer experience up a notch, which makes it one of the effective trends of digital marketing for businesses. Conversational commerce leverages messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, and other platforms to enhance customer interactions, customer support, and product sales.

For instance: – Natgeogenius is a chatbot that talks with users in the voices of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso. National Geographic used this marketing tactic to promote their show “Genius.” Users could communicate with Albert Einstein and have meaningful conversations with the genius physicist in his voice!

Baby Center UK is another brand that is leveraging conversational bots to promote its content. The brand is a good source of childcare and pregnancy-related information. The Facebook bot of Baby Center asks relevant questions to expectant mothers and solves their queries regarding pregnancy.

Chatbots will continue being trusted companions and help organizations to engage with their customers in meaningful conversations.

Social media eCommerce

There are around 3.48 billion social media users all over the world. With such a broad base of consumers, businesses must focus more on social media marketing to grow. It is going to emerge as the leading channel of e-commerce in the not-so-distant future.

Brands focusing on social media shopping will be at a distinct advantage over competitors. Social media users now prefer to buy directly from social media channels.

Take the example of Superdry, which is an apparel brand focusing on Instagram’s shoppable posts. They designed one of the most innovative marketing strategies in social media. Once the user clicks on the shoppable post of Superdry, the user is seamlessly channeled through the post to the purchase journey.

Social media is more visual; hence,  businesses that want to improve their foothold in the social media shopping genre must focus on creating share-worthy visual content.

Instagram is the most popular platform where people come to view visually engaging content. You must craft a strategy to develop visually appealing images of your products and post them on Instagram. The shoppable posts introduced by Instagram give you the freedom of instilling your website’s links into organic posts. Compelling visual images will help your ecommerce store stand out from the crowd.

The best thing about social shopping is that ecommerce businesses are able to approach their targeted customers at a time when they are most receptive. Smartly crafted ads will boost the sales of the brand instead of traditional digital marketing methods. For example, Facebook has launched the Facebook marketplace, which directly competes with the likes of Amazon and Etsy.

Hire social media marketers to help your business drive more revenue through social media channels.

Voice Search

The next-gen users are so acquainted with digital devices that they like to do everything using the same. Now, the latest voice search capabilities take this experience to a new level that even eliminates the need to lift a finger to initiate actions as they are able to do the tasks with their voice commands.

The popularity of voice assistants can be estimated from the growing sales of smart devices providing in-built digital voice assistants. Many popular brands are already utilizing the power of voice in their marketing strategy.

It highlights the importance of Voice SEO which requires businesses to devise unique strategies for voice search to stay up-to-date with trending marketing needs. Local businesses are mainly going to benefit from voice search as according to a survey, around 6 out of 10 people said that they have searched for a local business through voice search in the past 12 months.

Data-driven marketing

Humans are producing data at a mind-numbing rate. By 2025, we will generate 463 exabytes of data every day.

Successful businesses analyze the data of their customers to provide them with a more personalized experience. Why is it important to personalize the experience? To increase sales.

According to a survey, 52% of customers and 65% of B2B buyers would switch brands if they did not receive personalized communication. The efficacy of data-driven marketing makes it one of the most compelling digital marketing trends to follow.

Companies are opening up to the idea of using the power of data-driven marketing. A prime example of this would be the Amanda Foundation, which is a non-profit animal rescue working to find a suitable home for vulnerable animals. The foundation analyzes various data points like browser history, demographics, and other factors and sorts out the best possible combinations. An outdoor person would love to adopt an athletic pup while introverts can be matched up with cute kittens.

Content will continue to wear the crown

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” –Andrew Davis, Bestselling Author and Keynote Speaker

As they say, content is king, and it shall remain throned in 2024 also. Going forward, live content will be a trend to watch out for. Many people think that inbound and content marketing are the same, which is far from the truth. There are subtle differences between inbound and content marketing. Popular social media channels like Facebook and Instagram know this and have already started live video streaming services, allowing users to connect with their audience live.

It’s no secret that video content is more engaging than static posts. The emergence of short video apps like TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts is an example of brands leveraging the power of short videos. The trend of short videos is expected to continue in 2024 as well.

Ephemeral video content is one of the most thrilling digital marketing innovations. Ephemeral videos are those videos that disappear after a while. Such video content adds a sense of urgency in the minds of customers and compels them to see the videos before they disappear.

Takeaway

You need to be on top of the tide to gain the maximum number of customers in the fast-paced digital marketing world. The trends listed above will dominate the genre of digital marketing in the year to come. Crafting an effective digital marketing strategy by hiring a professional digital marketing company will aid you in gaining an advantage over the competition.