Navigating digital marketing in 2024 is mainly about keeping up with new trends that surface and implementing them into your marketing strategies. 

The year has already settled in, and marketing teams are already well on their way to making and implementing campaigns in order to reach their goals and milestones. 

In this article, we look at trends in the marketing sphere and how you can leverage them into your strategies. 

Paid media, earned media, and owned media

Marketing can be leveraged through various ways/ paid, earned, and owned media. As the name suggests, paid media is what you pay for in order to get traffic toward your brand; while earned and owned media are free to use means of marketing.

Paid media

Paid media comes in the form of adverts placed on websites, and sponsored adverts. Use of pay-per-click adverts, the use of paid influencers, and content sponsorships, to name a few.

Owned media 

This is media that belongs to the company you are marketing for. This includes websites, blogs, and social media sites. In order to use this, you need to have a domain for your business, so that it seems more professional and trustworthy to clients. The content you create can be used on these platforms. You can use both paid and earned media to push your strategy forward. 

Earned media

This is the marketing and traction received through efforts on social media, and content creation. The sharing of content, comments, and user-generated content comes into play here. This includes reposts, and views, to name a few. To gain attention from audiences you need to create useful content or short-form content to appeal to your audiences. 

Create short-form content to gain traction – and appeal to the audiences. 

Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

The current trend that is making the most waves is the use of Artificial Intelligence in marketing. 

It’s used in predictive analysis, content creation, personalization techniques, and chatbots. The use of AI in these areas is to create a unique experience with the customer in mind. While these tools are still in the process of being perfected, we have seen their use substantially assist in streamlining processes and easing workloads for marketing professionals. 

Personalization in marketing 

Here we see the use of targeted marketing. Marketers can reach out to their leads by using these tactics. You can pique their interest by touching on their demographic, needs, and how customers make purchases. 

In order to achieve personalization in marketing, you need to make use of all the data collected through surveys, engagement, and through the sales funnel. 

By using personalization in your marketing, you will see a satisfied customer reaction, more loyalty, and a better return on investment. However, you have to be careful of coming on too strong and making customers uncomfortable when collecting information – you also have to give them the option to opt out of data collection processes. 

One specifically useful channel to use for personalized marketing is SMS marketing. This method has a significantly successful open rate as you are reaching out to them with short and clear messages about your intentions. This is also better for campaigns that need a shorter period of time to elicit a reaction. Responses received by these SMSs can be managed just as easily by using an Android app to forward text messages to an email, which makes them easier to navigate. 

Putting user experience at the forefront

The customer experience in marketing is of top priority, using immersion technology like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is slowly making a resurgence following the popularity of AI. 

People are also leaning towards options that help them find their needs with ease. This includes companies responding with accuracy to voice searches and the use of image searches to acquire information. All these factors can help with inbound marketing strategies, but getting advice from a specialist consultant will help infinitely more.

One factor to keep in mind when marketing, is that clients would prefer the option to change their mind and not suffer any losses. You need to accept that clients can sometimes be fickle and in the event, that they sign up for a service or product and suddenly regret it, having in place a chargeback policy. This will make them feel more at ease knowing that they do have a choice to reverse their decisions. 

Search Engine Optimization 

SEO is one of the best means of marketing, not only does it improve the capabilities of your site and improve traffic, but you will also be able to improve the customer experience. 

Important aspects of SEO include off-page SEO, like link-building efforts and guest posting on other sites. In order for this to work out, you need great content creation, so that other pages will be confident in providing this link back to you. 

This comes in light of Google’s constant updates. Every SEO faction of a marketing team needs to be aware of this so that you can understand how these updates benefit the user experience and adjust your efforts to cater to these updates. It is important to trust SEO services are well-versed in current practices and trends. 

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

This is a form of advertising that sees marketers display their adverts on websites, which can be on search engines (the ad you see on the top of the results pages) it creates visibility and traffic for your website.  It targets based on keywords, and so you receive responses from the clients seeking out specific searches. The searches and keywords that you use to advertise need to be relevant, and popular for it to be useful.

Social media

You can create adverts on these sites, or you can use regular posting, has a great analytics feature so you will be able to measure your reach. Need to use social media pages that are relevant to your niche and are able to receive the most traction. You need to be able to engage with them, you will be able to analyze competitors.

The use of influencers

Coming off social media, the use of influencers has become a staple in marketing strategies. Either through advertising on their platform or by using affiliate marketing. These people have a large audience that is built on trust. And this trust is used in ways that are similar to companies and their clients.

User-generated content

User-generated content is when regular customers review content without getting any kickback on it, this can be leveraged by marketing. Credit your creators and check for copyrighted content so that you can use it. It acts as a testimonial, especially if they add videos and photos to their content. This media acts as proof of them actually purchasing and using what companies provide. Comments and reviews on social media are also great and can be used as well.

Sustainability

A trend that has gained traction, is to be sustainable and relatable to customers. This means to use resources that are renewable and practices that are ethical. Consumers are starting to more and more place their trust in companies that follow sustainable practices and are ethically sound. 

Conclusion

Trends are coming in at incredible speeds, and it is up to marketers to leverage these trends and implement them into their strategy. Some of the biggest changes thus far in 2024 are the use of AI, Search Engine Optimization, and prioritizing personalization practices.