12 Digital Marketing Trends to Explore in 2024
New year, new life, and also new digital marketing trends!
After a very eventful 2023 in all aspects – from healthcare to football – but with great positivity about the return of in-person activities, the year 2024 promises even more innovation, technological advancement, and new strategies for your business’s marketing area.
To help all marketers out there, the Leadster team brings you here 12 digital marketing trends that you can explore and test in your company.
Let’s go!
Hello 👋! Want to learn more about conversational marketing?
Did you know that by 2026 there is a forecast that the global chatbot market will grow and result in a leap from $2.6 billion (2020) to $10.5 billion?
Well, the tool that is growing more and more worldwide has everything to do with the concept of conversational marketing.
After all, the latter is about instant and personalized conversation with the visitor, assisting them in the buying process.
Even though many people still have reservations about this tool and are unaware of this concept, the need for this new trend is growing, and I can prove it to you.
Do you still have time and patience to wait more than 5 minutes for a simple but essential response for your decision-making?
I don’t think so.
Do you prefer to schedule a meeting, consultation, or appointment automatically, quickly, and personalized or wait in line for a phone call?
I believe it’s the first option.
Well, conversational marketing encompasses all these aspects.
With it, you can create humanized and personalized approaches, helping both the user, through speed, objectivity, and helpfulness, and the company, which can start a relationship with the customer automatically, assisting in the next steps of the purchase.
Moreover, see some of the benefits of conversational marketing and the use of chatbots in marketing:
- Increased website traffic conversion;
- Generation of qualified leads;
- Process automation;
- Improvement in commercial service.
Brands with More Personalization and Less Strangeness 🎭
Everyone talks about personalization, its importance, the benefits, but no one really tells you how to do it, right?
Well, just because we’re talking about something personalized for each audience present in your company doesn’t mean you need to know every user’s favorite color and push too hard, seeming like a stalker and creating an embarrassing situation with the visitor.
Enough with being creepy!
The trend for 2024 is strategic personalization, meaning you need to know who you’re talking to and what tone of voice and subject interests the user.
Besides that, think about what you want to achieve with this personalized approach, what is the goal of this conversation or content?
Let me give you an example from Leadster.
With our conversational marketing chatbot, it’s possible to personalize the approach according to each page, source channel, call objective, and what you expect from the user.
In other words, we won’t delve into everyone’s life details or push too hard to show that we know everything about the person’s needs; we’ll just talk to them in a way that brings us closer and shows that we relate to what they’re looking for.
Also, remember that with Leadster, you can filter these leads and group them into predefined groups so that they have an appropriate follow-up and response to the situation.
So, invest in just the right amount of personalization and with resources related to your business’s situation and proposal.
Artificial Intelligence Producing Content 🤖
With so much AI appearing in the news every day, will we soon be in a robot domination scenario? – We hope not.
Jokes aside, Artificial Intelligence is here to help and automate various processes in companies’ daily lives, as it has been doing over time – an example of this is AI-powered chatbots.
Currently, the trend is content creation by robots, as we already see being possible through technologies like OpenAI’s Chat GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer).
But don’t worry, writers and copywriters won’t be sidelined; the human touch in marketing, especially in content, remains indispensable – and technology can be used to improve processes.
From People, for People – the Desired Content 🗣️
I told you that you didn’t need to worry about laying off writers and copywriters.
While on one hand, AI is growing, on the other, we have a measure that controls this advancement a bit.
We’re talking about a rule, subject to punishment, that Google itself established: the Helpful Content System, which ensures that people find original, unique, truthful content written by real people.
This prevents plagiarism and content that’s merely basic and doesn’t deviate from what’s already on the search engine.
In other words, the goal is to provide readers with quality content that truly adds to their prior knowledge.
Omnichannel Marketing 🌐 Why Stick to Just One Channel When You Can Have More?
Currently, it’s impossible to settle for operating in a single channel because your audience isn’t exclusively on one medium.
Omnichannel Marketing is nothing more than a communication strategy that considers and integrates various sales and contact channels with a brand, using them simultaneously, interconnected, and planned to offer the consumer the best experience.
This means that all emails, social media messages, comments on posts and blog posts, and phone numbers go to one place.
This way, the consumer chooses which channel to follow, without being harmed by delayed responses or even the absence of a profile or account on that media.
Additionally, your business’s organization becomes more aligned, facilitating the communication process as it will be much easier to distribute these messages to the responsible departments.
Better Experience Across Channels and Devices 💻
Every year we hear more about the term User Experience (UX), and for 2023, it’s no different.
Now, more than ever, you need to invest in this strategy to stay ahead.
Keep in mind that people access your website, app, or blog from all possible devices; we’re not just using computers anymore; now we have tablets, laptops, and cell phones.
Therefore, investing in cross-channel and cross-device strategies is essential to offer a good experience.
Consider that a simple page on your website should have the same quality on a smaller screen, like that of a cell phone.
Value simple design and easy navigation, along with other trends such as:
- Minimalism;
- Voice-activated interfaces;
- Hands-free controls;
- Animated elements;
- Scrollytelling – tell a story while the user scrolls;
- Video content.
Events for All Tastes: Hybrid is Essential 📱👫
With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2022 marked the return of in-person events.
The desire to leave the house, return to “normal,” and meet professional colleagues again was the prevailing sentiment.
However, not everyone can or even wants to leave their cities to attend in-person events, so invest in a middle ground: the hybrid model.
This way, both those who prefer something in-person and those who choose to stay at home will enjoy the event, acquire shared knowledge, network, and even gain new customers, as event marketing predicts.
People Like Us: The Importance of Micro-Influencers 🤳
Who hasn’t been affected by the advertising of an influencer from their city?
I’m not talking about influencers with millions of followers, but those who are part of the community you belong to and have a daily life similar to yours.
We are living proof of how the social proof trigger works.
This happens because influencer marketing shows consumers that someone near you used the product or service and got good results.
To put this in numbers, a Stackla report showed that 79% of consumers say User Generated Content (UGC) – content generated by users – positively impacts consumer purchasing decisions.
More than a Brand: CEO with Public Presence 😎
Behind your brand is a person who represents it, right?
So why not show this to the public by putting your leaders as the “face of the brand”?
This is a trend exemplified by Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates.
They are not just CEOs of large companies, but they represent what your business brings to the market, thus getting closer to consumers.
If you’re still not convinced, know that a report from BrandsGetReal, by Sprout Social, showed that 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when the CEO has a public presence on social media.
From WhatsApp to TikTok, Shopping Never Stops 🛒
If you’re from Generation Z, you know that it’s common and even preferable to discover new products through social media like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
But the trend won’t stop at this audience – and brands have already understood that.
We’re talking here about social selling or just sales on social media, a trend that’s here to stay and I advise you to invest in it. Besides having another sales channel, you won’t lag behind competitors.
Native Ads Come in Strong 🚨
There’s no other explanation for the rise of native ads than their effectiveness.
As shown in a HubSpot survey, over 36% of marketers using this strategy said it’s effective, and almost 50% of them said it’s their primary ROI generation tactic.
In general, native ads don’t use direct texts or imperative verbs; they simply pique the user’s curiosity with information and explanations about a particular subject.
This strategy won’t interrupt the user’s navigation; it will capture attention by blending in with the content already on a particular platform.
No Cookies: More Tracking Difficulty 🍪
Unlike the other trends mentioned, this one is not the best; in fact, it can be seen as a warning for you to prepare.
The cookies we’re talking about here are called “third-party cookies” – cookies from third parties.
They are tracking tools inserted into other websites, such as Facebook cookies to track user activity on other platforms.
With this, the user experience can be improved through the collection of important data that helps better understand the audience.
However, this mechanism is coming to an end.
Now in 2024, Google plans to gradually eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome browsers.
This type of action has been happening – as we saw Apple end access to device identifiers on iOS – to ensure greater user privacy.
However, marketing professionals already anticipate that this will be a huge challenge, especially when we consider the difficulty nowadays in generating leads in such a competitive and uncreative landscape.
But, not all is lost; you don’t need to be 100% dependent on cookies. Instead, invest in optimizing conversion using strategies like Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
Okay, the best digital marketing trends for you to explore in 2024 are all in your hands. Do you know what the next step is?
Here’s a little push for you to apply conversational marketing and personalization trends… I’m talking about Leadster’s Chatbot that will capture, qualify, and distribute your leads intelligently and automatically.
Moreover, you can rely on personalized approaches, A/B testing, performance dashboards, lead location, automatic meeting scheduling, and much more!
And the best part is that you can adapt and adjust your strategies without solely relying on cookies.