Taking the Stage: Trends and Strategies for 2024 and Beyond

December 19, 2023

Author: Andrew Warden, Chief Marketing Officer at Semrush

In the fast-paced, often unpredictable world of marketing, 2024 will be a year of change. In 2023, all anyone could talk about was “generative AI” and the “looming recession,” and marketers had to be really prudent about spend, campaign prioritization, and how to level up their AI game. Now, as we embrace more optimistic signals like lower inflation, we think more about the overall improvement of the macroeconomic environment. Coupling that with increasingly helpful AI tools, marketers are at a crucial inflection point. How will you position yourself for recovery? How are you thinking about your team(s) differently for next year? How are you experimenting with AI to move 2, 3, or 4X faster? Here are four trends–or ways to think about leveling up your marketing game in 2024:

1. Trend #1: Prioritize Organic Growth Amid Economic Ambiguity

Even if the economic environment improves, marketers should absolutely prioritize organic growth. It's time to focus on activities beyond paid ads to foster genuine connections and make authenticity the heartbeat of your strategy. The era of real, unfiltered engagement is here, and it’s within this space that you have the opportunity to grow your brand and your overall impact on your business. Organic growth sustains online visibility and positions brands for a robust resurgence when the tides of recovery come in.

Marketers who prioritize organic strategies should see significant upticks in traffic and engagement over time, so make sure to double down on those traditional unpaid tactics like Search Engine Optimization, blog content, and social content, to keep current and future customers in your funnels and always top of mind.

How to embrace it:

Get started on your organic growth plans right now! Once you begin executing, it takes several months to see the return.
Don’t stop experimenting, even in tougher financial conditions. Challenge yourself with three organic experiments in 2024.
Paid ads should be used in highly targeted scenarios where conversions are expected. If you’re not converting, stop.

Trend #2: Confronting the AI Dilemma: Unleashing Efficiency, Not Fear

AI. Are you still afraid? No way! The prospect of AI-induced disruptions in the workforce may seem daunting, but marketers must shed their fears and view AI as an enabler to their work, not a replacer. It can and should enhance efficiency in many ways. We all have seen the scary headlines about AI’s impact, like McKinsey predicting 12 million job switches and a 30% automation of U.S. work hours by 2030, but the more important thing to remember is that if you don’t embrace AI early, you may lose out to someone who already has, or at the very least, you’ll be bringing campaigns slower to life than others.

Fiverr summed it up well.

Fiverr

How to embrace it:

Integrate AI into marketing tasks to enhance efficiency in daily routines. Use it to help you create content with a simple prompt, in seconds. Use it to draft replies to customer reviews, and to suggest social posts.
Use tools like ContentShake to draft and scope out your content pieces, then spend less time in editorial and more time publishing and realizing the benefits.
Take it as an opportunity to expedite tasks, freeing up valuable time for more strategic thinking.
Test tools, and educate your teams on them.
Challenge yourself once per month for 30 minutes to look for new tools that hit the market, it’s happening so quickly.

Trend #3: Putting Mental Health at the Forefront of Brand Initiatives

In a world where mental health dominates the list of the most searched societal issues, (see Semrush’s Annual Global Issues Index) marketers should consider prioritizing mental health-related content, campaigns, and overall initiatives. Marketers can not only encourage the wellness of their colleagues, clients, customers, and partners, they can also run unique marketing campaigns that raise awareness of the growing mental health crisis, whether it's providing resources, or considering brand partnerships to drive social change. Being helpful to society, or giving back to society in these ways, will engender trust for your brand and lead to stronger advocacy and stronger customer stickiness.

Semrush Annual Global Issues Index

Some companies are already raising awareness of mental health in compelling ways. Snack company Walkers released a festive advert after its research revealed that 51% of the UK nation feels additional pressure to be happy at Christmas and pretend that everything is okay. From the campaign: This Christmas, let’s talk more. Because it's good to share. Just not your crisps. The company gave £2 million to Comic Relief to support mental wellbeing programs.

Walkers/Comic Relief

How to embrace it:

Integrate mental health initiatives into company wellness programs.
Encourage open dialogue about mental health to destigmatize the issue.
Consider aligning brand values and unique campaigns with mental health awareness to create a meaningful impact.
Challenge yourself to run at least one (1) campaign in 2024 that connects mental health, your customers, and your brand.

Trend #4: First-Party Data or Nothing At All: The Post-'Cookiepocolypse' Imperative

In the world of online ads, big changes are happening thanks to the 'cookiepocalypse' – a shift driven by stricter privacy rules. Given the world is moving away from third-party data, businesses are now relying more on first-party data to continue to connect with customers.

This means companies need to be smart about how they engage with customers. Not just with the messaging, but how companies are engaging with customers, and later, how companies plan to collect information from customers to deliver a more tailored experience.

The good news is that personalization isn’t going away. 86% of consumers are agreeable with sharing their contact details for a more personalized online experience, according to Accenture.

Personalized, loyalty-focused strategies drive better engagement from customers, and the only way to do this going forward will be via first-party data collection.

In this new landscape, businesses have to play by clear and ethical data rules and make sure that customers feel their privacy is being protected. It's a challenge for marketers to rethink how they engage with customers and keep them happy, all while respecting their privacy.

How to embrace it:

Thoughtfully engage with customers and adjust your data-collection practices to harness the power of first-party data.
Fuel loyalty programs and refine audience targeting through personalized strategies.
Acknowledge the transformative potential of embracing customer uniqueness.

As the curtain rises on the marketing stage of 2024, the script is bold, and marketers are the protagonists. Embracing the winds of change, from prioritizing organic growth to unleashing the power of AI, championing mental health, and navigating the post-'cookiepocalypse' era, the opportunities are grand, and the risks are worth taking. Yes, even in the macroeconomic environment that we are currently in.

As you take the stage in 2024, the question will be: How do you plan to not just survive but dominate in 2024? The time for audacious strategies is now; the spotlight is yours. What will be your next bold move?

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