FIVE MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2024
Google ‘Marketing Trends’ for 2024 to get 136 million results. We love our trends in marketing. But it’s easy to fall down rabbit holes as we fight to keep up.
Like always, the question of why the trend is the best place to start in working out how to surf it. So here’s our take on five big themes from this year, why they’re filling our feeds with stories and what they might mean for marketing in 2024.
WRANGLING ROBOTS
The biggest news of 2023 is the explosion of Generative AI. In particular, the power of large language models like ChatGPT. Humans have built robots that can generate credible content at an incredible pace. And the marketing world has piled on. Never has a new tech made such a splash so quickly.
The question is how best to use them. We can do more of what we do faster or use their power to make things better. The answer is in listening to customers over counting clicks.
FOCUS ON: VALUE OVER VOLUME
Robots enable hyper-personalisation at scale. But we’re all fishing in a finite pool where customers only take bait that excites them. So the win is in crafting content people like.
GETTING BACK TO BRAND
Through the chaos of Covid and addictive clicks of digital, brand advertising has slid into the back seat. But those big brand experiences and ‘old school’ ads are starting to come back. And it makes sense. In a world where most people don’t trust what they see online it’s those confidence boosting brand conversations that deliver sales.
Brands that connect on an emotional level are nearly always more effective. The winners list from this year’s Effies was a who’s who of delivering feels.
FOCUS ON: FEELS OVER FACTS
Humans make decisions emotionally and justify rationally. So promos and clicks work best behind strong brands. The truth of The Long and the Short of it has never been more true.
DE-LOOTING LOYALTY
Loyal customers are the holy grail of marketing. They have a lower cost per acquisition, greater lifetime value and 70% will pay more for brands they’re loyal to. But the math of buying people to make money is evens at best. Offering points for purchase is yesterday’s game and the large-scale loyalty schemes of the noughties are in decline.
The reality is that most people buy the product, not the incentive. Real loyalty is earned in the hard yards of consistently delivering great products with amazing service.
FOCUS ON: PRODUCT OVER PROMOS
People come back for more when you impress them. So loyalty isn’t a comms game, it’s a product play wrapped up in a bow of customer experience excellence. Just ask Apple.
RE-FOCUSSING SOCIAL
The big news of 2023 was the re-brand of Twitter to X. Elon broke it. But it wasn’t just the confusion of a name change. It was the statement about ownership. Social platforms work because they’re social. People believe their opinion counts. Highlighting the reality that money buys influence breaks the thing that people like about the platforms they love.
Social is lurching back to the old advertising model of chasing an audience and interrupting them with ads. People are clicking off because they don’t like to be talked at.
FOCUS ON: ENGAGEMENT OVER INFLUENCE
Social works when you foster engaged audiences. Recognising what they’re into and adding value to their conversations. Sharing relevant content beats selling the latest fad.
REMEMBERING COLLABORATION
If what we do makes a difference in the market, how we do it is worth a conversation. From disparate teams in 2021, we’ve all schlepped back to the workplace this year. Or have we? Hybrid working is the new normal and the juggle of coordinating brains in a room is harder than it’s ever been. Constant catch ups and updates make collaboration feel transactional.
In the new reality of three days back-to-back and the other two back-to-slack, the magic of bouncing ideas and corridor conversations have been sanitised by chat tools and email.
FOCUS ON: CONNECTION AND CONVERSATION
Creating time to think together is the best value humans can bring to marketing. And in a world that just gave birth to incredible robots, human value is the only thing we’ve got.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Chasing trends is exhilarating. Learning new stuff. Making new metrics. Being first in market with the next big thing. But it’s also a relentless game of marketing whack-a-mole that bounces your brand all over the map.
The big wins, like always, are in knowing your market. Who are they talking to? Why will they care? Why should they believe you? So whether it’s loyalty, brand, social or using the robots to make stuff awesome, the big winners of 2024 will be the ones who focus on why over what.
That’s what I reckon, what do you think?