What Is the Next Big Thing in Digital Marketing? Gone are the days of local businesses avoiding the omnichannel marketing approach. It’s something we noticed going into 2023 and kept seeing as the year progressed. You’re expected to provide multiple touchpoints for your customers or clients as they are interacting in several ways now rather than just one or two channels. And with those channels, you need to offer a different yet similar and seamless experience for your audience across the board. Businesses of all sizes are having to adopt a multiple-channel approach that’s consumer-centric and use them in tandem to reach their target audience—a large portion being the digital atmosphere. Your online presence is now just as important, if not more than other traditional methods of marketing. It’s where more and more people are searching for solutions to their problems and businesses that can help solve their issues. You need to invest in your online presence to complete your approach. But the online space is no longer just a website. There are multiple platforms to share your story and offerings on. Each platform has tools and trends to leverage if you want to stay ahead of the competition. Remain competitive in your industry by learning 2024’s digital marketing trends and developing a strategy for how your business can utilize them. 5 Digital Marketing Trends to Embrace in 2024 1. Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) When AI first took over the digital scene, everyone was worried about their jobs becoming obsolete. However, it’s now understood to be more of a tool rather than a replacement. This is especially apparent in the shortcomings of AI, where we get to add our expertise and humanity. Additionally, more and more companies are developing their own AI to be tailored toward their needs—creating more useful tools rather than artificial employees. This once-feared development tool has now become a welcomed and useful partner for automation, research and brainstorming. Digital marketers can now save time or resources by leveraging AI to inspire and inform them. These tasks include: Idea or rough content generation Sentiment analysis Segmenting your audiences FAQ generation Researching marketing best practices Customer engagement and help (AI Chatbots) Having access to AI as a tool has improved many processes and the rate of output across the digital marketing industry. With 61.4% of marketers having used AI in their marketing activities, it’s becoming the calculator of the new digital era. Businesses will have to learn to use it or unfortunately get left behind. 2. Writing Human Content and Using Storytelling In the wake of AI, people are craving authentic content now more than ever. Audiences are more engaged when they know the content was written by an expert source that is trustworthy, authoritative and has a human touch. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, your audience is going to be looking for that authentic human conversation and be especially engaged if you utilize storytelling. Storytelling is how adults communicate with us as children and that love for stories will always be internalized in us for years to come. Digital marketers can tap into this with their content regardless of their industry. Years ago in 2017, the rise of storytelling started with 62% of B2B marketers rating it as an effective content marketing tactic. Our team has only seen this number grow as time went on. Once seen as only a B2C tactic, it’s now become used more often in B2B as marketers realize that beyond the titles, you’re always speaking directly to humans in any industry (B2H). On top of this, Google’s Helpful Content Update in September of 2023 fully embraced the need for human and helpful content. While the September update may have left leeway for AI to be used, it still stressed that the website content must remain useful for users—which is where humanity is still needed. Writing content for your users that speaks to them rather than at them is now more important than ever. 3. Leveraging Micro-influencers To Reach Your Target Audience Businesses have already been through the wave of hiring influencers. If they haven’t done it themselves, they’ve at least heard about it being a good way to promote their company. As the influencer craze struck several industries, some organizations realized that larger influencers with millions of followers were often unauthentic in their messaging or cost too much to maintain. Additionally, their audiences sometimes didn’t fully align with the businesses’ target audiences. In comes micro and nano influencers, which are influencers with a follower count of around <10,000-100,000. These types of influencers utilize user generated content (UGC) in a similar way as large influencers but speak to a smaller audience. They are also often found around local areas rather than only in big cities like larger influencers. Micro and nano influencers’ benefits include: More genuine in their content and build better trust with an audience Provide more localized content Promoted business can field influencers’ followers more easily to determine a better fit with their target audience Promoted businesses can afford to maintain them Promoted businesses can interact with their audience more locally Micro and nano influencers also have higher engagement rates at 1.06% and 2.53% respectively. Having micro or nano influencers as part of your digital marketing strategy for 2024 can increase the loyalty of your target audience as they see your product or service being used by a real person—especially a local figure. 4. Leaning Into Video Content Another great tool to help you build up the digital piece of the omnichannel marketing strategy is video content. Business owners may think about video content such as short-form UGC from influencers but it’s also video ads, testimonial videos, storytelling videos, team-at-work videos and more. Having video content not only provides another medium or touch point for your audience to engage with but it’s also easier to digest. Video content being more digestible allows it to be more engaging for your target audience. This is especially important for your website users with 80% watching a video while only 20% are reading content. Video content also gives your audience a way to put a name to a face as personability is becoming increasingly important. This media phenomenon is and has been happening across many different industries, with one study showing that photos of patients increased empathy among doctors. People like to see who they are working with, and media—especially video content—helps them identify and trust you. Even digital advertising has seen video content start to take the main stage as it showed the largest growth from 2020 to 2022 compared with Search, Display, Audio and Other categories. As video content has become more common in the digital atmosphere, it’s started to influence digital marketing. It’s a chance to market your business in an easy-to-understand and personable manner. 5. Updating Existing Content To Stay Relevant For Your Audience and Competitors Do professional athletes stop practicing their craft once they win? No. They continue to sharpen the saw until they perfect their skills and then keep working on what could be better. Digital marketing is very similar, especially when it comes to your content. Whether you’re publishing ad content, website content or social media content—measuring performance and adjusting is crucial. To go even deeper, your business’s SEO performance may rest heavily on your ability to audit and edit content to keep up or better compete with your competitors. If you needed more convincing, 61% of marketers audit their content two or more times a year and 53% have seen increased engagement or 49% witnessed an increase in traffic or rankings. Google’s Update, also created the necessity for your website content to be helpful. Analyzing the usefulness of your content based on user engagement metrics and then making edits is a great way to reach your users better. Understanding how your content stacks up or pulls in your target audience and then making tweaks can be what sets you apart from the competition in 2024. Pro Tip: If your competitors are outranking your site, doing a competitor audit on their comparable web pages or overall keywords can help. Understanding what’s working for them can influence your content audit and editing process for better success. Stay Ahead of the Digital Curve in 2024 Want to ride the curve instead of following it? Keeping up with the digital marketing world and its trends can help your business succeed online. With more and more consumers getting online, being on top of your game brings in business more effectively and oftentimes more cost-efficiently compared to other marketing efforts. Staying proactive is easier when you have a digital marketing partner. Key Web Concepts offers monthly marketing plans, website redesigns, SEO management, and more. Our team has been a premier digital marketing partner in Richmond, VA for over 16 years—specializing in helping businesses create better marketing campaigns. Contact us to schedule a consultation and see how our marketing services can secure your business’s digital future.
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