Have you taken stock of where you would like to take your business marketing in 2024?
The beginning of the year is a great time to review your business goals and strategy, it’s a time to look at what has worked, what has not, and what you’d like to tackle this year. Marketing is an important part of your overall business strategy.
We’ve put together a handy 10 minute brain dump so you can begin to take stock of where you’d like to head. Click here to download the marketing review.
It’s important to remember it’s a brain dump – you could go with the first thought that pops in your head, or you can take the time to explore and delve a little deeper with your answers.
Once you’ve picked two areas you’d like to focus on for the month, take a look at how they stack up with other marketing trends coming our way this year.
If you’ve ended up with a number of areas needing improvement it’s important to look at breaking these into manageable tasks, you don’t want to get overwhelmed before you get started and of course you still need to juggle your business to do list too! If you need support working through your marketing priorities for 2024 please get in touch.
Four key marketing trends in 2024
You’ve reviewed your 2023 marketing and know what your goals are, so how do they match with current marketing trends? Here are four key marketing trends to be aware of, and that you could look to implement into your marketing strategy.
Trend #1: Personalising your marketing with AI
In a competitive market your business needs to stand out from others, one way you can do this is to change the way you market to your audience - stop talking at people and start talking to them.
This begins by personalising your marketing content so your customers know you care.
Getting to know and understand your current audience
Conduct surveys or analyse customer data to understand people’s preferences and behaviours.
Segment your audience based on demographics, interests and behaviours, such as people who buy a certain product often, and shape your content around each segment.
Regularly test different personalisation strategies. Tap into AI-driven analytics to measure performance of different strategies.
Begin to play with AI in your marketing
Choose AI tools that align with your marketing needs - for instance, content creation, email campaigns, customer segmentation, or personalised recommendations.
Play with AI tools - there are many to choose from to support your marketing, and many are being built into your current platforms, from Client Relationship Management Systems (CRM), to email marketing platforms, to design software.
Test to ensure the tools work with your current marketing platforms.
Trend #2: Embrace short-form video content
Short, easy to understand and engaging that’s the way video content is heading thanks to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.
These short form videos can be used on social and your website. But first: Get to know your audience (refer Trend #1).
Step 1: Create balance to inform and entertain
Research trends and topics that connect with your audience.
Plan content that is informative, entertaining or both. One short may be a video on a service you provide, another may be a how to guide, another may be a day in the office.
Step 2: Keep it concise and relatable
Create videos between 30 seconds - 60 seconds long. This length works well, especially for social media. You could share quick tips or a real-life look at your service in action.
Be authentic and creative. We don’t need editing and airbrushing, your audience wants content that is relatable and worth their time and not necessarily highly polished.
Showcase people! Whether it’s your team, clients, customers people love people and it creates a sense trust and connection.
Step 3: Use compelling, consistent visuals
Compelling content is dynamic and visually interesting.
Use design tools to easily add graphics, transitions and overlays to your shorts. This helps keep brand consistency.
Step 4: Adapt and analyse
Content creation is gold when you get more bang for your buck, edit the same video for different platforms and audiences eg. Reels vs. Shorts.
Track engagement metrics - as always you won’t know where to improve if you don’t track. Use insights to review views, likes and shares and see what videos perform best and when. Then you can fine tune your strategy even further as you get to know your audience.
Trend #3: Strengthen your local SEO and localisation strategies
Your potential customers are Googling for services near them, is your business showing?
Localising your content can help with being found – from your Google Business Profile to blog articles and landing pages. Here are four steps you can take to begin to localise your content:
Step 1: Use local keywords
Research region-specific keywords your local audience is searching for.
Begin to naturally incorporate these in your content, including blogs, website content and social posts.
Ensure you’ve got keywords in your headers
And do not to overuse keywords. Grab some SEO tips here.
Step 2: Create location-specific pages
If your business services different locations create service focused pages to cater for these locations.
Create an FAQ page and add in questions / answers that are tailored to local.
Use keywords to develop content that addresses local events, issues or interests that align with your business and are meaningful to your audience.
Step 3: Connect with the local community and build up reviews
At the end of each interaction with a customer ask for a review and where appropriate as for reviews mentioning location-specific experiences.
Creating content that is helpful which you can share to local news sources will boost your reputation as a knowledgable local resource
Join in local online forums or social media groups to boost your visibility, and share your content here too.
Step 4: Optimise for local search engines
Ensure your business info is up-to-date on your Google Business Profile.
Add your business and website to local digital directories, industry specific directories, and ensure these are up to date with hours, areas served etc.
And, review your monthly performance through analytics, then tweak based on results and/or local search trends.
Trend #4: Create and update content to evolve with Google
Google is continually fine-tuning how it delivers the best results to its users, and is increasingly consolidating its search results using AI and tapping into social media. Get ahead of the game by applying some of these tips in your content.
Tip 1: Showcase experience in your content
Google considers experience a big factor in its algorithm (besides expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).
Invite experts in your business to give their experiences and share their stories. Use real-world examples, challenges overcome, and lessons learned.
Include your customers’ experiences with testimonials, case studies and success stories. It builds trust if they explain what makes you great (vs. you telling people).
Showcase experiences in social posts, as you build the foundation of know, like and trust with your audience. Plus social posts are being pulled into Google results.
Tip 2: Refine your content to meet Google’s/people’s expectations
Avoid overt self promotion – know what your audience is searching for and create content that meets their needs, addresses their worries, or aligns with their interests.
Don’t waffle - create relevant content that is easy to consume, and make it appealing by using clear headers, bullets and graphics/media to enhance.
Optimise for mobile devices – consider your content layout and if your website is not mobile optimised - ie. you’re still running a desktop version - put this at the top of your goal list for 2024 to fix.
Optimise for voice search as this is how most people are searching - focus on using natural language and question-based phrases.
Next steps for setting and meeting your goals in 2024
Creating goals can feel daunting but selecting a couple of areas to focus on makes it more manageable.
In 2024, it’s worth focusing on AI personalisation, short videos, localisation and optimising content. And remember, some progress is better than none. One action each and every day can put you in the lead over your competitors.
If there's anything you'd like to discuss in this article please reach out, I'd love to support you with a great start to your digital marketing goals in 2024.