The top digital marketing trends for 2024
IONOS editorial team9 mins
Much like technology itself, today’s online marketing is in a constant state of flux, and as a result, new trends are emerging all the time. Top priorities for digital marketing professionals will include crafting an authentic and emotional corporate image, creating a wide range of video content, and implementing mobile and interactive marketing. In 2024, you will also see an increase in the use of AI and metaverse for digital marketing initiatives.
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Online marketing 2024: 8 trends to watch out for this year
- Authenticity and emotional marketing
- Video content
- Mobile marketing
- Interactive marketing
- Social media marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Artificial intelligence
- Metaverse marketing
Authenticity and emotional marketing: Engage with customers on a personal level
Authenticity is a keyword for online marketing trends of 2024. Companies should focus on presenting their products and services as honestly and genuinely as possible. After the hardships of the past few years, people are eager to form a deeper bond with brands. In particular, emotional marketing can play an important role in building such relationships with your customer base.
To implement this digital marketing trend successfully, companies and individuals should consider how they can best address and win over (potential) customers or clients on an emotional or personal level. Some possibilities include:
- Incorporating amusing elements into the brand image such as a company mascot
- Giving a behind-the-scenes look of the company and its employees
- Offering reliable support that is responsive to customers’ questions and needs
- Showing accountability as well as a willingness to help
- Building a social media presence
One example of this is a recruitment video from Accenture. This video not only highlights their diverse workforce, but also shows how individual employees are accomplishing goals that have a major impact in their respective industries as well as the world at large.
To display this video, third-party cookies are required. You can access and change your cookie settings here. Video content: Live streams, tutorials and much more
In the last few years, the frequency of videos has skyrocketed. Events are now held digitally, new movies are released directly to streaming services, and TikTok is flooded with entertaining clips. Video content is also used increasingly amongst online marketers to engage customers in a visual way. The following types of content are becoming increasingly popular:
- Livestreams: Streaming live events is not just popular among sports fans. During a livestream, you allow customers to participate in special events and can offer them a glance behind the scenes. This creates a sense of community.
- Tutorial videos: Written instructions are tried and tested, but well-structured videos in which an expert explains the structure and function of a product, for example, are employed more frequently, not least because complex details are often easier to understand when displayed visually.
- 360-degree videos: The recipients of this type of video are given an all-round view. This is suitable for presenting events, but also to give customers a first impression of products.
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Mobile marketing: Mobile websites and AMP
Mobile marketing makes content and services available on mobile devices. What’s crucial is that the design of digital content aims to optimally display content on a mobile device, be it a computer, smartphone, or tablet. There are several ways you can generate a mobile website, but the most common is called responsive web design. By adding the right CSS or HTML code, your website is automatically adapted to mobile screens which boosts the user experience.
Additionally, you can use the open-source framework Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP for short, to increase mobile page loading times. This is made possible by showing users the most important elements first, such as the page layout, while subordinate or larger elements, such as images, appear later.
If you want to check whether your website is mobile-optimized, the mobile-friendly test from Google is a good option. Simply enter the URL of your website and the answer will be displayed shortly thereafter.
The way to a mobile-optimized website is not difficult. With the mobile website builder MyWebsite from IONOS, you can design one in no time.
Interactive marketing: Augmented reality and voice search
Interactive content is a great online marketing tool for engaging customers and strengthening their bond with a brand. In addition to sweepstakes, quizzes and surveys, there are numerous other strategies that are becoming popular. Two of these are augmented reality and voice search.
The former is a popular web design trend that combines reality with digital components. In other words, a technical device such as AR glasses or a smartphone is used to add information and/or graphical elements to a person’s view.
AR technology has previously been implemented by Nintendo, for example, by using AR cards for 3DS to create 3D characters and minigames. Companies like Apple are using the technology to give their customers an impression of the appearance and size of their products. This is also the case with the latest iPhone 14 series.
The digital marketing trend voice search is a feature that lets users ask search queries, set reminders and more. Voice assistants such as Siri (Apple) and Alexa (Amazon) have also long since moved into numerous end devices and provide a wealth of information upon request.
Online marketers should aim to optimize website content for voice-based search queries. SEO for voice search is important for marketers in the sense that companies will have to consider classic search queries such as “Where can I buy potting soil?”. It pays to name your products sensibly because complex or foreign language terms could potentially be mispronounced.
Interactive content is a popular email marketing trend. Picture carousels, feedback options, and GIFs are just a few ways to vary newsletters and make them more entertaining for readers.
Social media marketing: Social shopping on Instagram and co.
The importance of social media platforms and influencers in online marketing continues to grow. The former are long established marketing channels that enable brands to reach a large consumer base and to offer a wealth of (product) information.
There are many ways to successfully employ social media marketing. Beside social media advertising on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, social shopping is currently among the most popular social media marketing trends. Social media is a place where users converge to exchange information about products, get purchase recommendations, and enhance their shopping experience.
Popular platforms that offer social shopping include Instagram, where online sellers showcase their products photographically and users can comment and like them. Another example of social shopping can be found on Pinterest, where users can place Pins of shoppable products in the shopping category.
Influencer marketing: Advertising with social media personalities
Another component of social media marketing is influencer marketing, also called corporate or micro marketing. Individuals who have a strong online presence in social media use their notoriety to promote certain values and/or products. People are more likely to buy something if a charismatic or likeable person gives them good reasons to do so. For example, how about a tutorial that explains how to use a product in detail? Or an unboxing video followed by a review? There are many ways in which influencers can put your product in the right light and increase traffic to your website as a result.
Kim Ji-soo, a well-known influencer in the US, regularly promotes products on her Instagram feed. Due to the number of subscribers she has on her channel, she’s considered a mega influencer. Smaller businesses and brands of niche products may be more interested in working with micro influencers (5,000 to 100,000 subscribers).
Artificial intelligence: Data analysis, chatbots and co.
Artificial intelligence, AI for short, sounds like science fiction, but it’s a technical achievement widely used in marketing. In online marketing, for example, the technology analyses and evaluates campaign data. Companies gain important information about the purchasing tendencies and trends of their customers, their behavioral patterns, possible churn, and more.
In addition, artificial intelligence is used in the form of chatbots in online marketing. These can communicate with customers, answering questions, advising them on the checkout process, or referring them to a support agent if necessary. All the while, the AI continues to “learn” and improves its performance over time.
An example of a chatbot is that of Swedish fashion company H&M. Customers can access customer service through the website and click on the speech bubble in the lower right corner. This opens an additional window in which the H&M chatbot provides them advice and assistance.
Metaverse marketing: Numerous possibilities in virtual reality
Another online marketing trend that is gaining increasingly more attention is the metaverse. This digital space, which users can access with the aid of VR glasses, offers the opportunity to implement all the aforementioned trends in virtual form. This makes communication with users more immediate and more personal.
In the metaverse, users have a 360-degree view of products, which allows for a significantly more realistic representation of an object. The assembly and functionality of a product is also easier to communicate in this context. For example, a furniture company could show someone how to assemble a piece of furniture virtually.
Another example of how the metaverse can be used to enhance shopping experiences comes from Gucci. The iconic fashion house used the online gaming platform Roblox to create a virtual store.
The online marketing trends highlighted here are not just for large corporations. Individuals and small businesses can also use online marketing tips to improve their web presence and increase their sales. If you’re just starting out and don’t know where to begin, we recommend starting with the basics of online-marketing.
