Digital marketing trends are important to be aware of whether they will be relevant to your business straight away or whether they will be more important in the future. In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for businesses to succeed.
As technology continues to advance and consumer behaviour changes, it is essential to adapt your digital marketing strategy to meet the needs and expectations of your target market.
But how exactly can you keep up with the latest digital marketing trends and how can you implement them to your business?
This article will review all the current digital marketing trends, as well as the trends we expect to see in the future, why it is important to keep up with them, and how best you can implement the latest trends to get the best outcomes for your business.
Before understanding what the current digital marketing trends are, it is important to establish what a digital marketing trend is and why it is important to keep up with them.
Digital marketing trends are changes made to a digital strategy businesses follow to increase their engagement with their target market. This can include the evolution of marketing techniques, consumer sentiments, and the use of digital technologies.
Following these digital marketing trends is important as it allows businesses to provide new opportunities for your business, as well as allowing your business to break the boundaries of the market.
Through following digital marketing trends you can allow your business to continue to communicate your business values to your target audience, without the risk of seeming outdated.
Like technology itself, digital marketing trends are constantly evolving. Some of the most current digital marketing trends include:
Over the past year social media marketing has risen dramatically in a variety of different ways. One of the first digital marketing trends that has evolved is the use of TikTok.
TikTok has grown massively in the past twelve months. It currently has over 1 billion users and counting. Due to its ever-growing engagement it offers individuals and brands the opportunity for their videos to go viral in the social media realm.
Both businesses and influencers have played a role in TikTok’s rise with the number of sponsorship deals growing massively. Here the growth of social media and the number of users on TikTok especially has meant that businesses can reach audiences wider than ever before.
This also therefore has made social ecommerce more seamless. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok offer customers online shops that make it instant to purchase your products and services.
As this engagement increases it has also led to the popularity of social media analytics. Often called insights on many social media platforms. Here businesses can easily track their engagement across the social media platforms they use to identify how potential customers are engaging, interacting, and purchasing services, goods, and products of a business.
Similar to the rise of social media, another digital marketing trend that has grown rapidly in the last year is the use of video marketing, in particular short form videos.
Even though more and more people spend plenty of time on their phones, short form videos are more popular than ever. TikTok, Facebook and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are a great way to market your business to a wider audience and sell your business in the shortest pitch ever, even as short as 10 seconds.
The use of short form videos has grown rapidly over the last year so now more than ever it's become more and more crucial to create short snappy videos.
Another current digital marketing trend that has grown rapidly over the past 12 months is the use of AI. AI has been huge in the last 12 months. From its gradual development in 2021 it now has brought an irreplaceable league on user behaviour to build your buyer personas even further.
Now digital marketing campaigns can be automated to streamline your digital strategy further whilst learning to tailor your content better to your target market’s needs.
As we are well over halfway through 2024 it is not surprising previous digital marketing trends have continued to grow. But throughout the year we have also seen newer trends developing too.
One digital marketing trend we have continued to see developing rapidly is the use of AI and in particular GPT-4. Chat GPT-4 is a cutting-edge tool to help your business automate tasks and creates both website copy, and social media.
GPT-4 has been developed by OpenAI. It is a text-generation deep-learning model trained through content available online.
We expect this to continue to grow rapidly across the next 12 months. Despite the benefits of using the AI and Chat GPT it is also important to be aware of the disadvantages it can have for business so you can learn the best ways to use AI in your business.
As one of the best digital marketing trends currently used, email marketing will continue throughout 2024 and into 2025.
Currently 89% of businesses are using email marketing alone to generate leads. Almost everyone has an email account, this makes it highly accessible for your business to connect with your customers as well as potential ones.
Email subscriber lists are one of the best ways to keep customers updated and ensure your customers repurchase your products or services. Through email subscriber lists you can update customers on product launches, any exciting announcements, and monthly newsletters to inform your customers on everything there is to know about your business.
Through product launch emails businesses can also help significantly widen profit margins to make your business grow, which is crucial at the early stages of any company.
Another digital marketing trend which is worth noting is the use of real-time messaging platforms. They can be a great opportunity to reach customers quickly and directly to collect data on your customers.
Over-time the more they are used in your business, the more real-time messaging platforms can mature and collect more customer data to allow your business to understand more about your customers than ever before.
Influencer marketing has slowly but surely been growing year on year. It is not surprising therefore that it will continue to grow and gain popularity.
Currently on average it is estimated that influencer marketing brings in $5.20 for every $1 spent.
Previously this type of digital marketing was only used by a few businesses but now almost every digital business is getting involved in using influencer marketing in some way or another.
When working with the correct influencer that matches your brand it can generate great ROI for your business.
In order for this to be successful it is important to be careful when selecting which influencers should work with your brand. It can be easy for your brand awareness to plummet due to selecting the wrong individuals to promote your brand.
Similar to the growth of real-time messaging platforms we also predict to see the rise and development of chatbots on websites to improve user experience.
Chatbots are useful because they help small businesses only operating for a limited time each day to answer queries and engage with customers who may need assistance outside of working hours.
They are becoming one of the fastest-growing brand communication channels. This allows customers to potentially get their queries answered 24/7, or be signposted to a relevant person in your business to answer their query.
One of the final digital marketing trends we expect to be huge by the end of 2024 is the use of E-A-T focused marketing.
E-A-T focused marketing concentrates on publishing content that shows a specific page’s expertise, authority, and trust on a subject.
This is a crucial digital marketing trend to keep up-to-date with as it has been significant for digital content marketers to be aware of and strategise, to ensure their business still sits at the top of search results.
One of the biggest ways this can be achieved is through creating answer based content, including author profiles to demonstrate your expertise, and using experts to provide insight and publish guest posts. Here these initial strategies can help your website rank higher automatically.
In order to do this it is crucial to ensure you are following all of Google’s helpful content tips which are aimed to reward websites that produce high-quality content written for people not search engines.
It is important for your business to consider using this trend and follow it closely as Google owns a 92% share in the search engine market. By aiming to publish the most helpful content for both your customers and potential customers you can help your business rank higher organically and reach wider audiences quicker by answering all your target market's questions.
The importance of customer experience is never something to underestimate. In digital marketing that is no different.
Due to the digital world continuously evolving and growing, customer experience and customer reviews are becoming another crucial trend to be aware of and consider in your digital marketing strategy.
Online reviews can be found and made everywhere from TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Google reviews, and Trustpilot to name a few, and can have a detrimental impact on your business if your customers leave bad reviews.
You should therefore concentrate on giving your customers the best experience from the moment they interact with your business, which could be visiting your website or social media page, to the sale process and beyond. One bad review can be uploaded in a matter of seconds and can massively decline your business.
The use of social media can also be both a help and a hindrance depending on a customer’s experience. It is crucial therefore that you make their experience as seamless as possible, respond to their feedback, and make their lives easier for them.
Regardless of the size of your business it can be difficult to keep up with digital marketing trends as well as the everyday running of your business. It is vital therefore you find quick and easy ways to keep updated and follow the trends that are most impactful to your business.
Here are 7 top tips to help you be most prepared for the digital marketing trends we predict will happen in the future:
These tips above are a great way to start ensuring your digital marketing strategy is up-to-date with the latest trends to build your brand awareness and visibility to generate more leads.
In this article, we have reviewed what digital marketing trends are, examples of current digital marketing trends, as well as the trends we expect to grow massively for the rest of the year.
Through acknowledging how different trends will most likely grow across the next 12 months we have also provided some top tips on how best to prepare and keep up-to-date with these trends to help increase your brand awareness.
Some of these tips include collaborating with relevant businesses and influencers, keeping an eye on competitors to see what they are offering, as well as setting up Google alerts to stay-up-to-date with any new Google updates to ensure your digital marketing strategy allows your website to be at the top of search results.
At MEEDEA, we work to help businesses grow sustainably whilst keeping up with all the latest digital marketing trends. We know the importance of having the best digital marketing strategy possible to generate the most leads.
Whether you want to publish the most helpful content possible on your website, produce engaging and exciting blogs or social media posts, or create the best online user experience possible, we can help you. Contact us today to see first-hand how we can help revitalise your digital marketing strategy to get the best outcomes from the latest digital marketing trends.