2024 Marketing Predictions
- Jade Faulconbridge
- Dec 29, 2023
- 4 min read
Making sense and digesting the wealth of 2024 marketing predictions is a little overwhelming, which is why we’ve created this blog - to take the hard work away from you. Here you’ll find a consolidated list of the most common predictions being made for 2024 - some of which were covered by our founder and CEO here, but mostly from brands such as Google, Gartner, and Forbes.
Think something’s missing? Let us know on LinkedIn.
AI is the future
By far one of the hottest topics of 2023, AI is going nowhere this year. Instead, marketers can expect a growing demand from customers to provide them with a better customer journey, a more personalised experience and faster engagements. These expectations are setting out the need for ambitious investment and adoption of AI - if 2023 was the year of testing, dabbling and exploration, 2024 is the year to embrace, implement and scale up usage.
With this, some people (including us) are predicting that job losses will occur. You’ll see marketers who believe AI can write their own content as good as a content writer (spoiler: you can’t yet), but you’ll also see businesses look at a way to offset any investment in other areas, and that will likely mean identifying automation opportunities and headcount reductions.
In a similar vein, the role of senior marketers, in particular CMOs, will become even more demanding. They’re going to have to be on top of AI, what it does, what it could do and how you use it. They need to know all about practical implementation plus understanding the art of the possible. Watch out for an increased number of events targeting senior leaders, AI roles increasing in-house plus a surge of thought leaders showcasing true examples of how this works. Get ready, as we’re about to move past the theory.
Growth and consolidation
This year’s predicted to be tough, with many brands going back to marketing basics: focusing inwards in order to drive growth. This is being predicted to mean a lot more mergers and acquisitions as businesses seek to add more revenue to the bottom line as fast as possible.
These mergers and acquisitions will require businesses to look at how they can consolidate multiple systems, people, teams and activities into one functional and streamlined version. It’s going to be the year that efficiency and the phrase “doing more with less” really comes to fruition - at least until the back end of the year.
Marketers will be asked to find ways to optimise, consolidate and streamline (marketing operations will be your best friends) in order to find extra opportunities.
Search will get a makeover
Search has been changing for the last couple of years or so. People don’t just type their questions into Google anymore - they’re getting answers from social media (Tik Tok & YouTube), through AI voice assistants (Alexa, Google), and using images (Lens), or combining multiple approaches. And more often than not, people are finding answers without ever clicking on a search result. This is lightyears away from where we were 3 years ago, and with both Bing and Google fighting to provide the best integrated AI tool, it’s going to be an interesting year.
With organic search changing so much, and people finding answers outside of your website, there’s going to be an increase in people fighting for ad space in order to drive traffic. This will increase costs and marketers need to adapt how they’re thinking of search as a whole. Now is the time to adapt or die - 2024 won’t be the same year so you’ll need to change KPIs, and that means moving away from simply increasing traffic.
Attribution will become assumed
Marketers need to alter how they think about ROI and direct attribution and start looking at ways they can integrate channels into the total customer journey. Take the example of search, as position zero increases and search engines attempt to answer more queries directly, then you’re going to see a reduction in any attribution. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad channel, it’s simply changing. If it’s used in the initial research stage or at the top of the funnel, and your content is helping drive answers, that’s a great result.
Add in the upcoming cookie removal and the need for better first party data and tracking tools, attribution is going to be a battle most companies will have to fight next year.
Understanding how your customers are using channels (and which ones) and then advertising across all of them at different stages of their journey will start providing better value at a campaign level. But this is a mindset shift away from direct ROI, and it’s a huge education piece for the c-suite. And CMOs will need to grapple with communicating this without losing marketing sponsorship.
Creativity will be paramount
As marketers seek to stand out the prediction is that creativity, in particular the surge in use of video and ephemeral content (content that disappears after a specified time) will become popular. Disappearing content, such as on WhatsApp’s Status, Tik Tok Reels, or Insta Stories, will become increasingly popular for time boxed promotions and deals for specified audience groups. Whilst this is primarily a B2C prediction there’s no reason businesses can’t embrace or test some of these tactics where channels already exist.
Sustainability will add value
Sustainability will remain a talking point but predictions are that it will become more poignant as brands adapt their offerings to be better value. Buyers will be comparing different products or services and sustainability will provide the edge - adding extra value. Whilst still not a primary factor for most, having a focus on it and promoting the value of sustainable practices to the consumer and environment will see an increase in engagement (and revenue).
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2024 is going to be a year to remember for most marketers, but it feels as though change is needed and excitement is brewing.
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