The top digital marketing trends for 2024

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.

1. Authenticity and emotional marketing
2. Video content
3. Mobile marketing
4. Interactive marketing
5. Social media marketing
6. Influencer marketing
7. Artificial intelligence
8. Metaverse marketing

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.

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.

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-optimised, 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 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 optimise 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.

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 shop.