We start a new year, and not just any year. 2020 brings a new decade, and that means a turning point on trends and habits we have as consumers.
Over the next 365 days great changes are coming in digital marketing, would you like to meet them all to get ahead of them and start putting them into practice now? Then you can’t miss this post!
Trends in digital marketing for 2024
As I said, changes in the habit of consumers are coming. And, as you well know, any change in consumers affects us as a company. That is why I wanted to collect the trends in digital marketing for 2024 that you should know if you do not want to be left behind.
Changes to Google in 2024
Google is always in constant motion. It is not surprising to see how they modify their algorithms to always try to give the best response and solution to user searches. One of the last modifications that has caused more stir was announced on October 25, 2019 under the name of Blue world city Islamabad .
BERT is the acronym for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, whose translation would be “Representations of Bidirectional Transformer Encoder”.
Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze user queries and better classify the results that appear in SERPs. For this, an analysis method is applied that allows contextualizing each query within a more natural environment. How do you get this? BERT is characterized by “bidirectionality,” a feature that allows you to analyze a sentence in two directions. To achieve this, the words that are found both to the left and to the right of a keyword are analyzed, so that it is possible to better understand what a user wants to look for when entering that phrase in Google.
With this, Google tries to take another step when it comes to interacting with the user by offering the result you are really looking for. To achieve this, the keyword itself loses some strength in favor of naturalness and contextualization of its use. In addition to this, BERT also stands out for the following:
- Zero-click results : it is important to keep in mind the searches that have 0 results (56.10% of the total searches on mobile and 34.85% of the total on desktop) to see how we can take advantage of this type of search for our benefit . It seems that the trend this new year is going towards that model; It is not always necessary for us to click, that is, we may lose traffic but gain visibility. A sample of this is the importance of structured data here to be able to appear in these positions.
- Organic traffic : lately organic traffic has begun to stagnate, so it is increasingly difficult to position content for all the amount of content on the Internet on the same topic. Hence the importance of taking advantage of zero-click searches results that we talked about in the previous point.
- SEO on SERP : the homepage of a brand is not the home of its website but what users find when they use Google’s search engine to find that brand. Therefore, we must carry out actions focused on having a good image in the Google SERP and making SEO optimizations in that regard.
Changes in user habits
As I said at the beginning of the post, the change in user habits will mark a lot of trends in digital marketing by 2024 that must be taken into account.
Increase in voice searches
The first trend I am talking about is the increase in voice searches. While it is true that some time ago the first voice searches did not provide good data (90% of users showed their disagreement with the result obtained), this situation has been changing in such a way that these failures have been polished to make Voice search is a reality.
Previously, the reason that voice searches did not work well came from the inability of search engines to correctly process the sound emitted by users, making the search incomprehensible like seen in Capital Smart City.
Now, the development of web pages has escalated to another level, so that the vast majority of services successfully process speech requests, even those that show a defect or are processed by children.
Since now these applications can be carried out successfully, it is expected that by 2024 half of the searches will be carried out directly by voice. According to PWC, 65% of users between the ages of 25 and 49 speak at least once a day with their mobile devices and smart speakers (such as Google Home or Alexa) to find solutions to their doubts or problems. If we continue with more data, OC&C Strategy Consultants expects that in 2024 the voice channel will be 40 billion dollars.
All these data are not surprising, since voice searches are much faster and more direct to formulate, so it is gaining relevance among all age groups.
Of course, it is important to keep in mind that voice searches are different from traditional searches in search engines. A clear example would be that, in traditional searches we use words that are sometimes unconnected, such as “best restaurant Barcelona”. In voice searches, the phrase would be formulated with “What is the best restaurant in Barcelona?”
Payments with the mobile and greater use of the mobile in general
Traffic is increasingly mobile, and not only does my experience tell our customers, but there is a large amount of data that corroborates the use of mobile phones compared to the use of computers. For example:
- Almost all reports on email opening rates state that virtually 50% of openings are made from mobile devices, according to HubSpot .
- Mobile users check their email three times more than users who do not have it linked to their mobile phone. In addition, 35% of professionals claim to see their emails directly from their mobile.
This data leads us to an even more interesting one: according to Campaign Monitor, 52% of customers are less likely to commit to a company, since they have suffered a bad mobile experience.
With all this, it is important that by 2024 we set, within our objectives, to work well the mobile version of our web pages and the adaptation of images in social networks, as well as to make the payment with the mobile phone well located and signaled to not lose sales
Boom of conversational marketing
Another trend that is going strong this 2024 is the rise of conversational marketing . Conversational marketing is understood as the conversations that occur between users and the company directly.
To encourage these conversations, from the company, certain actions that encourage the user who visits your website to ask the questions you may have can be implemented, thus creating a trust bond between the company and the potential buyer. To achieve this, actions such as:
- Chatbots configuration .
- Live chat facilities to talk to a real person in the company.
- Link WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to get a faster and more fluid conversation.
Greater variety of channels
Companies must keep in mind that it is important to be in all the channels in which their target audience is, so an omnichannel marketing strategy should be carried out .
That is why you have to analyze very well in which channels you must be present if you do not want to stay out of the game. My recommendation is that, first, work on all channels of brand positioning before starting to perform other actions. The reason is very simple: a strong and distinguished brand in each of the communication channels will make it much easier for the rest of the actions to have a higher success rate.
Greater importance of local results
Surely you have already heard that local positioning is gaining popularity among companies. Here are some reasons:
- 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within the five kilometers that surrounded them (Wordstream).
- 82% of smartphone owners perform searches “close to me” (Search Engine Land).
- Local searches take 50% of mobile device users to visit stores in one day (Google). Source: HubSpot .
With this data, it is important that you work your local positioning during this 2024 to take advantage of the high conversion rates that these types of searches present. Do not miss it!
Increased awareness
Users are saturated with the stimuli they receive every day, so, as a company, you have to be aware of it. In addition, everything is no longer valid on the internet. More and more platforms are fighting against those known as “fake news”, eliminating them or making their reach smaller, so it is important that all information you share is well founded.
On the other hand, users want more privacy on the Internet, so they flee from what is more intrusive. If we add to this the disconnection in social networks that want to carry out a lot of users, it is important to rethink how to reach them in a more aware and not intrusive way. Do we reflect on it?
News in digital marketing to take into account
In addition to all the trends in digital marketing that you have to keep in mind this 2024, there are certain novelties that you have to consider to take full advantage of all the existing potential and meet the expectations of the users. Take note!
WhatsApp Marketing
WhatsApp is a powerful communication tool that you may not be working in the most correct way. It gives us a great deal of possibility when it comes to instant messaging. With it, you can incite conversation with users, as well as send valuable content.
Thanks to this tool, you can get a more direct and personalized treatment with users, so that you get a warmer and more fruitful relationship that results in the maturation of a lead until the purchase phase.
If you are interested in learning more about how to get more out of WhatsApp to integrate it into your marketing strategy, I recommend you read this post .
Extremely personalized campaigns
To be able to stand out in 2024 it is important to give weight to the personalization of content in all possible formats . As I said, users receive a lot of visual and communicative stimuli throughout the day, so you have to stand out to try to get the user’s attention and memory. You already know how?
In addition to this, we must bear in mind that users are increasingly making purchases through social channels . As the Annual Social Networks study of 2019 in Spain demonstrates, 55% of users say they are looking for information on social media products or services before making a purchase.
This trend is going to grow, so the ideal is to create publications that are known as “shoppable posts”. As you may know, platforms such as Instagram or Facebook allow you to include products in your catalogs to actually make purchases from the same platform, something that helps improve the conversion rate. However, you can always continue to make publications that redirect your ecommerce. If this is the case that compensates you the most, I recommend making short videos or publications with a very worked image to capture more user attention.
There is no future without automation
Marketing automation is essential to improve productivity, but also to maximize communications to leads in order to prioritize content personalization.
In addition, there are many data that support the investment in automation:
- Expenditure on marketing automation tools is expected to reach 25.1 billion dollars annually in 2024 (Martech Today, 2018).
- Companies that automate lead management observe an increase of 10% or more in revenue within 6 to 9 months (Strategic IC, 2017).
- Companies that use automation and lead maturation obtain 50% more sales with a cost 33% lower than the unnourished prospects (Strategic IC, 2017).
- 79% of high performance companies have been using marketing automation for three years (Venture Harbor, 2017).
More visual and interactive content
The content remains the king, but the truth is that the type of content will be guided more towards the visual and interactive. Thanks to this, the video and the podcast will continue to gain importance during this year.
· Podcast
The podcast is booming. It is a content increasingly consumed by users, since its listening is very simple and does not require paying attention to the screen, which makes it a perfect content to be consumed while other activities are being performed. So much so that 27% of men and 24% of women listened to podcasts in the last month.
According to HubSpot data, 17% of marketing specialists plan to add podcasts to their marketing actions in the next 12 months. I leave another one of my articles in this link so you know more details about how to integrate it into your strategy.
· Video
The part of the video continues to grow as it has been doing in previous years. Omnicor data states that video content is 50 times more likely to generate organic search results than plain text , so it is a great help to improve positioning.
In addition to improving positioning, including a video in a publication increases the organic traffic of search results by 157%, so all are benefits. If we add to all this that millennials prefer video content to written content, we can see how video will continue to be trends for several years.
Within the video, we must make a separate mention to video-advertising as it is an extra way to improve the results of advertising campaigns.
Solid incorporation of artificial intelligence
Although today only 15% of companies are using artificial intelligence, it is expected that in the next year the quota will reach 31% of companies. Artificial intelligence is named by PWC one of the eight essential technologies in business, since its utilities can help improve productivity and service.
As you can see, trends in digital marketing seem to be focused on offering a better user experience and personalization of the services and communications made.
Ultimately, the purpose of all of them is to tear down the boundaries between companies and users to create more fruitful, lasting and warm relationships. Would you like to share with me your opinion about these trends? Write it in the comments section to continue the conversation!
