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Digital marketing is an ever-changing industry of trends and topics. In addition, it has pushed businesses to invest more in digital strategy since the pandemic. Many companies are now adapting to digital marketing to avoid the risks created by physical events or exhibitions, where the expenses spent are less likely to go to waste if cancelled or postponed. Not to say that physical events, printing, retail, or TV are dying, but that the marketing climate has changed. Wish to become the trendsetter in your industry? Read to know more about digital marketing trends!
Digital Marketing Trends of 2024 & Beyond
Marketing will not be the same anymore. Traditional marketing like TV & Print Advertising now has to compete with digital advertising and media. As digital technology continues to develop, it is necessary to grow with it. Digital transformation alongside marketing trends allows businesses to stay ahead of competitors in a similar industry. So, what are the top 11 digital marketing trends for 2024? Let us explore!
1. Lifestyle Image
Nowadays, creating lifestyle images for your brand is essential, especially when your target audience is Gen Z and millennials. Modern consumers look for authentic content they find relatable. Therefore, you should avoid content that sounds too ‘salesy’.
It is especially true in industries such as F&B, fashion, and sports, where people make purchase decisions based on evaluating alternatives. Even big brands like Nike, H&M, and Uniqlo took advantage of lifestyle images that capture people in situations and real-life events and tell the stories behind their products.
Regardless of your business size and niche, consider lifestyle imagery as part of your marketing strategy to improve social media engagement and increase business revenue. Focus on selling an ideal lifestyle and not just products. In return, it builds trust and long-term relationships with your customers.
2. Shoppable Content
eCommerce has changed tremendously, and so do the way people shop. Consumers have become more comfortable with purchasing products through shoppable content. According to the Hootsuite, on a weekly basis, 44% of Instagram users engage in shopping through the app, while 62.4% of individuals active on social media use Instagram to follow or investigate various brands, products, or services.
Shoppable content makes it easier for retailers to sell via social media by adding shopping tags on images, videos, stories, and live. Moreover, it helps to build a strong brand identity where you can make content that is story-driven and shoppable at the same time.
Instagram, Pinterest, and Meta released their shopping feature a few years ago, but it has already helped many businesses reach great sales potential. Not only that, but it is also simple to set up for Instagram Shopping and an excellent way to improve user experience.
3. Video Marketing
Video Marketing has dominated in the digital marketing world since 2019. With the global internet user count reaching 5.35 billion in January 2024, representing 66.2 percent of the world’s population, marketers and businesses are now embracing video content as one of the primary digital marketing strategies to achieve their goals.
Here are some video marketing statistics surveyed by Wyzowl:
- 88% of marketers value video as an ‘important part’ of their marketing strategy.
- 87% of marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
- 87% of marketers say video has helped them directly increase sales.
- 90% of marketers say video has helped them increase brand awareness.
Video marketing has proven effective since people tend to interact with a video far more than a static text-based post on social media. As a result, most social media platforms like Meta, Instagram, and Twitter have become ‘video first’ to meet the growing demand for video usage.
However, just creating one video after another is not sufficient. You need to make sure that you are well aware of the ongoing video marketing trends. A few of them are listed below:
- Live Streams
- Reels
- Story videos
- Customer testimonial videos
- Tutorial & Educational video
- Interactive AR content
- Shoppable Videos
- Virtual Events
4. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is getting bigger and bigger each day. The reason is that influencers promote brands in an approachable and relatable way. As such, it is essential that the influencer forms genuine connections with their audience and does not try to directly ‘sell’ the product.
Potential influencers you wish to partner with can range from:
- Celebrities such as actors or singers
- YouTubers of any genres
- Instagrammers with different engagement benchmarks
Some facts and figures on Adidas’s influencer marketing worth looking into:
- Adidas targets a younger crowd and gains online reach with the help of an Instagram influencer marketing campaign as 70% of IG users are below 35 years old.
- Collaboration with Selena Gomez and Iga Wysocka brings Adidas 12,000 entries for the contest via the #MyNeoShoot campaign, with a vast number of IG mentions as well.
- Instagram account followers increased by 41,000 since campaign commencement.
- Sales increased by 24% since campaign commencement as Nike suffered a decline in sales by 9.1%.
As the spotlight shines brighter on influencer marketing over the coming years, more brands see its potential to enhance audience engagement in the online realm. This is because the influencers’ recommendations have the ability to “influence” their supportive followers’ consumer behaviour. Since they always keep an eye out for the influencers’ feeds and are interested in what they use, it gives them a solid reason to buy.
5. Personalization
In the present day, your target customers expect personalization in the online platforms you provide. As a result, online users today are leaning more towards brands or companies that pay attention to their needs.
Personalization comes in handy when it comes to delivering convenient experiences according to online visitors’ unique profiles. Amid the digital age, most potential customers appreciate it when they spot whatever aligns with their interests from the personalization from your side
In addition, personalization has become part of the online experience. It helps to keep customers coming back for more, and you. Here are some of the statistics on personalization:
- 72% of online users will only engage with personalized marketing messaging tailored to one’s interests.
- 91% of target consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that remember their needs and provide related recommendations.
- 56% of online shoppers are more likely to come back to the website that suggests related products or offers.
- 63% of consumers will stop coming back and making purchases from the brand websites with poor personalization tactics.
6. Conversational Marketing
More brands and companies online are taking a conversational approach to engaging with their target customers. 90% of consumers prefer an immediate response from you. By instantly connecting with online audiences on a personal level across platforms, businesses can fulfil their needs on their preferred platform.
68% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they communicate with via convenience communications. It is undoubtedly that this marketing approach builds trust among target audiences. Apart from exuding trust, the conversational marketing approach brings conveniences to customers as they need not comb through the website for specific info anymore.
The real-time conversations you have with your potential customers will create lasting relationships, seeing you as a friend instead of a brand. And at the same time, your chats with them will remind them of you when browsing said message platforms.
7. Metaverse & VR/AR
High sensory stimulation and immersive experiences are the way when winning over millennials and Gen Z audiences. As Meta and Instagram slowly evolve to better fit the new model of parent company Meta, the Metaverse continues to develop new features that make it prime for marketing. It is a versatile platform for different kinds of brand campaigns to reach users:
- Virtual world for digital 3D showroom, etc.
- The massive interactive live event for virtual music concerts, etc.
- Meta-influencers such as avatar models for clothing brands, etc.
- Brand assets such as digital collectables, etc.
- Virtual in-game advertising
Metaverse revolutionises the digital marketing landscape as more brands are starting to use this new platform to connect with audiences in a centralised way. In addition, like-minded Metaverse users from different places can communicate and interact with each other, building a community that keeps an eye out for your brand.
Brands can maximise their creativity and offer attractive and immersive interactions to keep users captivated in the long run. There is no better time than now to venture into this revolutionary platform, carving new ways and preparing to sell in the virtual realm. One of the bold brands, Nike, has announced the acquisition of RTFKT – a non-fungible token studio that creates brand assets, such as digital collectables in this case. Recently, their partnership has led to the public launch of its ‘cryptokicks iRL’ product, their first Native Web3 Sneaker.
8. Voice Search
The widespread adoption of voice search dominates the search landscape in the digital marketing ecosystem. This technology has changed how people look for info online without typing out their search query, instead speaking to their voice-enabled devices with voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. In addition, it brings tremendous conveniences whenever users are in to get answers or deliver specific commands.
Businesses online should take immediate steps to optimize their websites or e-commerce sites to rank for targeted keywords. When voice search users undergo “screenless” searches, they tend to ask longer questions. As a result, your website content should include sentences with natural language patterns with the right keywords. More websites have incorporated phrases that match up with regular keyword strings together in users’ enquiries.
Apart from conveniences for users to multitask, the voice search technology answers questions instantly. Let’s look into how the evolving landscape of voice search extends its influence in the digital marketing realm.
- 4.2 billion digital voice assistants are operating worldwide in 2024, expected to reach 8.4 billion by the end of the year.
- More than 50% of the adults reported that they use voice search daily.
- 71% of potential consumers prefer voice searches as compared to typing.
9. Instagram Reels
Online users and audiences these days expect swift, digestible information even when it comes to entertainment. Instagram Reels are helpful in this case and will continue to rise in popularity. Moreover, brands or content creators can now compile clips and create Reels up to 3-minutes long. Therefore, you can make good use of creativity as it is suitable for various types of Reels content to generate more engagement among different groups of crowds.
It is an effective way to showcase a brand’s personality through personalised editing and background music of choice. What’s more, apart from getting noticed from the Instagram Reels feed, your content will also appear under the audio page. With that, IG users with similar music taste are more likely to come across your content while searching. It is indeed a great channel to expand the online reach and community building, making your products or services a crowd favourite.
Make video content such as IG Reels under your business’s radar and brainstorm strategies to reach a new group of target audiences on Instagram. It is best to keep up with the most current trends to beat Instagram’s algorithm whilst grabbing the attention of millennials and Gen Z with your regular Reels upload. With your consistent appearances on Reels feed, online audiences will follow to keep an eye out for more.
10. Push Notifications
More and more brands are turning to push notifications that are capable of conveying a sense of urgency to inspire short-term conversions. Push notifications can be generally defined as short messages or notices that pop up on the user’s browser notifications. It is easier to gain a more immediate response from target customers, either new or existing, across any platform and app. Personalisation within push notifications based on each subscriber’s consumer journey can well-target their needs and minimise the irritation upon receiving.
Surprisingly, there are 52% of users enable push messaging on their apps. They wish to stay informed of the latest offers and promotions. Without a doubt, this number will grow as time passes, allowing brands to engage with platform visitors and even drive them back to their app or website. Push notifications are indeed here to stay, bringing a versatile approach for businesses online to reach, promote, and sell more.
11. Social Media Stories
With over a billion people using Stories across all of Meta’s platforms (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-stats-for-marketers/), more and more brands have jumped on the social media stories bandwagon to reach a new targeted crowd. Both Meta and Instagram Stories have a 24-hour expiration date yet have the ability to captivate social media users.
Located at the top of both platforms, users can enjoy content in the form of photos, videos, or text posts alongside add-ons such as polls, music, gif stickers, and so much more. In addition, the acquisition of Instagram by Meta allows the cross-posting of Instagram Stories, saving you the added workload of creating duplicate content for Meta.
It is a potential social media marketing approach to grow a brand. Social media stories that happen in real-time will lead to engagement among audiences almost instantaneously in the next 24 hours. What’s more, brands can save the previous Instagram stories as “Highlight”, thus allowing your followers to refer back to the content you set up for users’ future references.
Final Words on Digital Marketing Trends
There you have it! These are 11 digital marketing trends in different platforms and channels as 2024 unfolds. There’s no better time than now to grasp the opportunities and win over a new audience by implementing the features digital marketing has to offer. We urge you to connect with online users and build genuine connections that exude brand authenticity, thus generating trust.
Place all the focus on the best few approaches that suit your business the most instead of having your fingers in all pots. While trends are meant to come and go, some are here to stay and will continue to dominate the landscape. So, stay ahead in the marketing game by keeping a sharp eye on digital marketing trends to stay competitive.
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