While many of you aspiring marketers might think that you are fully ready to dominate the marketing scenario of the new decade, there’s much more to it!
2024 marks the dawn of a new decade and a lot is going to change in the marketing world. Although the marketing tactics may remain the same, the approach will be radical – the new age calls for something fresh, something pioneering. So, yes, you will definitely see data-driven marketing powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, there’s a lot more to consider for marketing in 2024. To gain more knowledge and get hands-on experience on digital marketing, check out our digital marketing courses from top universities.
This is precisely our topic of discussion today – marketing trends that will dominate 2023-24.
It is crucial to stay updated about the latest marketing trends since they will help you to keep your marketing game on point. For a business to remain relevant in a fast-evolving market, it must be prepared to readily adapt to the changes in the marketing domain – if it fails to do so, it is sure to be left behind in the race. Brian Solis puts this in perspective when he states:
“Each business is a victim of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behaviour when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to exploit it. Digital Darwinism does not discriminate. Every business is threatened.”
Why so?
The answer is pretty much transparent. Today, we’re living in an age where technology is changing at an unprecedented pace, and with it is changing the world around us. Marketing is no exception. The fast-changing tech scene and the ever-evolving interests and behaviours of customers make it more important than ever for marketers to up their game continually.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the marketing trends that you cannot (and must not!) ignore in 2023-24!
Learn more: Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert
Top Digital Marketing Trends – 2022
1. Google Analytics cannot be your only go-to analytics tool!
You’re probably wondering, what’s wrong with Google Analytics. Nothing is wrong with it actually. The only catch is that Google Analytics won’t suffice if you are to stay competitive and ahead in the market.
The fact that everyday new channels are cropping up with new features (for instance, voice search) is driving marketers to approach things from a modern perspective. Also, transactions aren’t as simple as before. Today, marketers must consider different factors like up-sells, down-sells, checkout bumps, repeat purchases, and so on. To top that, now you have countless innovative ways to boost company revenue such as webinars, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, etc.
Read: Google Analytics Interview Questions
Due to such massive changes in the marketing landscape, companies are resorting to using smart analytics solutions that can be better integrated into the company database. Amplitude and Google Data Studio are two excellent business intelligence tools that are becoming marketers’ favourite.
2. You must look for alternative communication channels.
While email is a wonderful marketing and communication channel and is here is stay for a long, long time, you must spread out your horizon. In 2023-24, it will be absolutely imperative for companies and brands to leverage the power of multiple communication channels so that they can reach a large audience base.
Chatbots make for an excellent communication channel. Since most chatbots are integrated with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, they allow marketers to reach their target audience on the most popular social media platforms. ManyChat and MobileMonkey are two impressive chatbots that you can consider using for your platform.
Apart from chatbots, push notification tools (like Subscribers) are also gaining popularity in the marketing sphere. If used wisely, the impact push notifications can create, will leave you spellbound!
3. Voice search is Gold
According to recent estimates, in 2022, voice searches will account for nearly 50% of all online searches.
While voice search has been here for quite some time, it has only picked up pace in the past five years. Brands are now leveraging and optimizing voice search to convert them into sales leads. But how to do that?
Jetson.ai is a fantastic tool that lets you cash in on your voice search traffic. It allows people to buy products/services from your website using voice search. Not just that, Jetson.ai is designed to learn from customer experiences and behaviours and interact with customers accordingly.
For example, if you order a particular size shoe from a specific brand more than once, Jetson.ai will note that down as your preference and help you make future purchases from the same brand without any hassle. The idea is to promote customization and personalization for higher customer satisfaction scores.
As more companies start leveraging voice searches, online purchases and transactions will become much more seamless. Read more about voice search optimization.
4. You cannot avoid AI and automation any longer
The marketing field is not the same as it was ten years ago. Heck, even five years ago seems like a whole other time! Today, marketing is all about technological inclusion and smart solutions. Artificial Intelligence is the tech innovation that’s all around us.
According to a PwC report, Artificial Intelligence is the biggest commercial opportunity for companies, industries, and nations. In the next decade, that is by 2030 AI will transform the productivity and GDP potential of the world economy – while the GDP will increase to 14%, AI will contribute an additional $15.7 trillion to the global economy.
With innovation being the primary focus of AI, companies are also seeking to leverage AI to automate routine tasks. This will help free up the time of human employees, enabling them to focus on more important tasks that demand human cognition. Most importantly, since AI solutions and tools are more accessible than ever, companies across all industries are using them.
In other words, the marketing field is highly even now, and if you wish to stay afloat, you must also adopt AI technologies and solutions for marketing.
5. Personalization is what you should strive for!
If you are still creating one, unified marketing strategy/campaign for all your customers, you are so on the wrong path. This is the era of personalization, and there’s no way around it. Sadly, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to marketing.
Your customer base is made of many different customer segments who have unique tastes, preferences, buying behaviour, demographics, and so on. Then, how can you treat them all alike?
The key is to identify the unique customer segments and buyer personas. Then you must create tailor-made marketing strategies, campaigns, offers, discounts, etc., for each customer segment. The more visible and well-planned your personalization efforts, the faster you can attract visitors and also convert them into potential customers.
Think of Amazon’s or Netflix’s Recommendation Engine. These platforms use recommendation engines that can study the taste and preference patterns of customers and curate highly customized shopping/watching list for individual customers. This is immensely useful for boosting conversions.
6. A single marketing channel won’t make the cut anymore
Yes, many brands have established themselves by leveraging a single marketing channel. Case in point, Facebook was built off email addresses. By tapping into email addresses, Facebook invited the people in your contact book to use the social media platform. Then again, Dropbox expanded its market through referral marketing.
While brands could afford this luxury earlier, it is no longer applicable now. This is because all in-demand channels tend to get saturated in a blink. Although a single channel could lead to immense growth, be assured that the growth would be shortlived.
The focus of marketing has now shifted to “marginal gains.” The idea of marginal gain builds on British cycling coach, Dave Brailsford’s philosophy that if you improve every single aspect of cycling even by 1%, all the small improvements would add up to create a significant improvement overall and help you win the race. That’s what marketing has become.
Instead of focusing on one single aspect of marketing, you should try to divide your focus on improving the various little features of marketing (SEO, content, title tags, checkout bumps, etc.). When you enhance all areas of your marketing strategy even by a little, in the long run, all the small improvements will add up to show a substantial overall improvement.
7. It is time to invest in Conversational Marketing
With chatbots becoming a pivotal Digital Marketing tool in 2024, it is time to include Conversational Marketing in your marketing strategy. People now love to engage and talk to brands – they want brands to interact with them in real-time. In fact, 63% of people prefer online messaging via chatbots to communicate with brands and nearly 82% of users demand an immediate response.
This is where Conversational Marketing enters. It allows for one-on-one communication between brands and their customers in real-time. What’s great about Conversational Marketing is that unlike conventional marketing strategies, it is available across multiple channels. This lets brands/marketers to interact with customers on their terms, that is, on the platforms/devices and the time that best suits the customers.
The primary goal of Conversational Marketing is to improve user experience and customer satisfaction by promoting a one-on-one feedback-driven model that facilitates higher engagement.
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8. Influencer Marketing is the next big thing
The rapid rise of social media has given birth to Influencer Marketing. As the name suggests, it is a type of word-of-mouth marketing that is propagated by prominent influencers or personas in the industry. The fundamental goal here is to leverage the credibility and network of social media influencers to promote your brand and expand your brand reach.
While influencers can be renowned celebrities, usually, they are popular Instagram or YouTube stars with a huge fan following. People trust influencers who offer honest and unbiased reviews of brands and their products/services. The impact that influencers have is so big that it can make or break the perspective consumers have of brands. This is because influencer reviews and opinions are much more authentic than corporate ads.
63% of consumers trust the opinions of influencers on products way more than what brands say about their products/services.
However, it is essential to remember that partnering with any and every influencer will not get you the exposure you desire. You must collaborate with such personalities who have the same values and agendas as your brand. When influencers aren’t in sync with the brand values and objectives, it is no better than paid advertising.
According to a Mediakix study, the ad spend on influencer marketing may reach $10 billion by the end of 2022.
There it is – the eight marketing trends that you must incorporate into your 2023-24 marketing strategy!
The year has just begun, and now is the time to start chalking out the marketing plan for your brand. Getting an early headstart will only help you plan and prepare for everything that’s to come in the year ahead. The first step will be to outline your brand goals for this year and see how these marketing trends fit with those goals. Once you get a clear picture of your goals, connecting the dots will be so much easier.
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Conclusion
We’ve crafted this post to make your 2023-24 marketing journey more comfortable. Now that you know what trends you need to look out for, you can take a proactive stance to act on them. This is a rat race, and if you wish to stay ahead in the game, you have to make continual efforts to hone your marketing strategies FTW!
The career opportunities in digital marketing are plenty; you get to choose what you want to become. If you are curious to get into the world of digital marketing, check out upGrad & MICA’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing & Communication.
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