Marketing & Strategy
February 19, 2024
Digital Marketing Strategies for Your Business to Thrive in 2024
PDC explains the buzzing trends set to change the digital marketing game in 2024, and how you can use them to boost leads and grow your business.
PDC explains the buzzing trends set to change the digital marketing game in 2024, and how you can use them to boost leads and grow your business.
It’s the start of a new year, which means it’s time for marketers, social media gurus, and web experts to peer into our crystal ball and forecast the future of marketing. Well, maybe not a crystal ball, but we do reflect on the past few years’ evolution of digital marketing and use that info to think ahead.
In this blog, the PDC experts look to the future and delve into buzzing marketing trends for 2024 to help businesses stay ahead of the curve. We delve into the potential impact of these trends for businesses and think about how you can align these trends with your business goals and objectives. And hey, we’re not all talk – check out our blog forecasting 2023 trends from last year to see well our crystal ball works here.
In the second half of 2023 we personally saw a huge rise of LinkedIn as a powerful platform for organic engagement and growth. Long gone are the days where LinkedIn was for showing off your CV! Businesses are seeing substantial traction by creating authentic connections on this professional network. Integrating LinkedIn into your marketing strategy could prove massively beneficial, especially if your target audience is active in the professional sphere.
Several of our clients can testify that weaving LinkedIn into their social media strategy has generated a LOT of traction for their business: in fact, one client saw an average of 150% increase over the span of 2023 in engagement since posting on LinkedIn, not to mention a whopping 3000% increase since partnering with PDC for social media strategy. If you’re not using LinkedIn, you’re missing out on reaching a big sector of businesses and brands.
While engagement and following has traditionally been a key metric for social media success, we’re seeing a seismic shift in focus towards retention in 2024. Building a loyal, engaged customer base is now the primary objective, emphasising the importance of delivering consistent value and personalised experiences.
Basically, retaining more engaged followers = more leads and sales. We’re no longer trying to build massive followings, but instead focused on growing and retaining engaged followers. Think about your business’s social media account for example: say you’ve got around a thousand followers, but on average only two hundred of these people are active and engaged with your content and business. Retaining and growing this engaged following is now the focus in 2024.
These are the followers who are more likely to buy from your business, so we’re seeing a major shift in targeting social media content and advertising towards them, rather than trying to appeal to the masses. In the past, the priority was growing that thousand to two thousand – in 2024, we’re trying to grow that engaged two hundred to three hundred for more engagement and ultimately more sales. Think about it as the opposite of mass marketing.
Since building and retaining this kind of following is the focus, we’re also seeing a massive rise of micro influencers and what we’re calling ‘Big Little Marketing.’ Unlike major influencers with massive followings, micro influencers possess smaller but highly engaged audiences – exactly the kind of outreach this new wave of retention-based marketing is trying to achieve! In an era of Big Little Marketing, the depth of connection that micro influencers hold with their engaged followers helps businesses prioritise authenticity and relevance within their brand partnerships.
While influencer partnerships might not be for every business, the marketing trends we’re seeing here are still useful: the focus is on creating social media content that really resonates with your engaged audience and helps retain their interest in your brand.
Feeling a little lost when it comes to organic vs. paid marketing strategies? We can help with that! Check out our handy guide here.
We’ve already seen the impact of video and short form content in 2023. Reels, stories, and short video content have already been performing well across all social media platforms: a dominance which will only continue to grow in 2024. This brief, visually compelling content aligns with consumers’ need for instant gratification in an era of dwindling attention spans.
To stay ahead of the curve, businesses should consider creating visually compelling and concise content to capture and maintain audience attention. Platforms like Instagram Reels continue to be pivotal for brands looking to make an impact. While posting on your business’s social media can feel like just another thing on your to-do list, it’s important to remember that your audience is looking for content that resonates – so don’t just churn out posts without substance. Use the power of short form content for more than advertising, and consider creating video content that resonates, such as product launches, and customer testimonials.
Have you heard of live streaming? It’s not just for video games anymore. Live streams are on the rise for businesses and brands as a method of connecting with their target audience and driving traffic to their website. We’re seeing brands use live streams to showcase, launch new products, and run tutorial sessions with experts. Live streaming is growing in popularity as a marketing tool because it allows direct connections between businesses and their audience, as well as letting their audience engage with each other and ask questions about the product. This kind of direct discussion and feedback offers brilliant market insights. Then, after the stream, the footage can be reformatted and used for short form content on your other platforms. It’s a multitasking win-win.
You can’t talk about modern digital marketing without talking about AI! The two are becoming intrinsically linked in digital marketing strategies, and the role of AI is set to grow even further with Google’s upcoming updates to their search engine: these new AI-powered generative search results are set to change the SEO game this year. It’s major and will massively impact how businesses and brands’ SEO strategy, so check out our blog here for the full run down.
From SEO and beyond, we know that AI can seem daunting with its rapid growth and incredible knowledge, but don’t think of it as a threat: AI is an awesome tool for marketers, able to do the data-crunching, mundane heavy-lifting for you while you focus on bringing the creativity and strategy to your marketing. AI can be implemented across the board to streamline and automate your processes: from data analysis to content creation.
Here’s a couple of AI advantages to consider in your marketing strategy for 2024:
Think of AI as an assistant to your marketing, but don’t rely on it completely. You still need to bring your business knowledge and customer insights to finesse the content and ideas generated by AI.
If you’ve read our previous blog about marketing for the modern attention span, you’ll know that the importance of a seamless website experience with quick loading times cannot be overstated. These days, you have a matter of milliseconds to capture the attention of your users, so slow page speed and poor UX (user experience) can be massively detrimental to your conversion rates because visitors are more likely to bounce before engaging with your content.
Consider the user journey from the moment your consumers land on your site. Is it intuitive and engaging? Are they guided seamlessly through the pages, or do they encounter roadblocks? Updating your website to provide a smooth, user-friendly experience can enhance the chances of converting visitors into customers. If your audience is bouncing out of your webpage because it takes too long to load or the design feels unintuitive, you’re not generating leads from those site visits. This is why investing time and resources into optimising your website’s UX can yield substantial returns, so be sure to consider the UX of your site when looking at marketing plans for 2024.
“In 2024, it’s about the destination as much as it is about the (user) journey.”
- Jess Stanley, Marketing Director at PDC
While good social media and ad content will generate clicks, the destination that those clicks lead to matters just as much – if not more. If your website fails to live up to user expectations, those clicks are far less likely to translate into leads and sales.
PDC’s web experts can help you get started in assessing and refining the flow of your user journey to make a significant impact on your conversion rates. Making even small adjustments to your website’s UX and page speed can yield substantial benefits. By prioritising a user-focused approach, you’re not only improving the experience for your audience but also boosting your chances of converting each visitor into a valuable lead.
By staying adaptable and embracing purpose-led content that resonates with their audience, businesses can not only survive but thrive in the evolving world of marketing. While staying up to date on marketing trends is essential for businesses and brands to remain competitive and achieve their marketing goals, it’s important to remember that these strategies also aren’t one-size-fits-all, and it’s important to adapt trends to your business and objectives. For instance, if your goal is to generate more leads, then trending social media strategies designed to generate more engagement might not be the best approach. Trends are all about picking what works for you and adapting to the new!
The effective strategies for marketing are always changing, and we know for many businesses keeping up can feel like a struggle: that’s where we come in. Here at PDC, our goal is making your digital marketing a breeze so you can connect with your customers and generate leads. Get in touch with the PDC marketing team to discuss how we can optimise your marketing in 2024.
