Courtesy Mannix Marketing
By Sara Mannix
To best predict the leading stories of 2024, we must first look at and understand what happened in 2023.
Mannix Marketing has relationships with many other digital marketing agencies. In 2023, for the first time in a decade, we saw agencies that have been in business for years simply close their doors. Web development agencies were hit especially hard. Although a number of factors contributed to this, chief among them were that the easy money policies from 2020-2022 went away. Businesses these agencies served started to demand marketing that returned results. Under the increased spotlight some agencies struggled with showing returns.
We see the need for marketing agencies to provide demonstrated proof of their value as a trend that continues into 2024. For a web design and development company, this means they need to know that their clients will no longer be satisfied with just a pretty website. Websites will have to play a vital part in generating new leads and achieving company goals.
And we have seen this firsthand. At the same time some web development agencies have been closing their doors, the demand for search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search services has increased. Why? Because SEO and paid search marketing allow a business to be found by the customer who is searching for the exact product or service they offer. As businesses tighten up their marketing budgets, they will be more focused on results-oriented marketing that is both predictable and reliable. SEO and paid search are easy to justify in a marketing budget as both are trackable to the return on ad spend.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) will also be a major focus for businesses in 2024. CRO means increasing the likelihood someone will convert from a browser to a buyer. As search results now incorporate more answers to search questions in their results, it’s possible that fewer people will land on any given website in the future. This means that converting those that reach your website becomes increasingly important.
All the online data a business needs to make informed decisions about their website and their business will be tracked on marketing dashboards. In 2023, many marketers were forced to switch to a new website analytics platform to make decisions – GA4. This is a powerful tool, but it is very different from what many people have been using for website analytics over the past 15 years. In 2024, the agencies that survive will be experts in reading and understanding the data, and possess the ability to showcase it to clients in a way they can understand and make decisions from.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change the way we work (you were waiting for that one, weren’t you?). Smart companies are leveraging AI to be more efficient in most, if not all, of their departments. How your business chooses to use AI is critical. Agencies and their clients must be aware of the advantages and limitations that AI has when it comes to marketing. AI is not a copywriter. AI is not a marketer. AI is not a designer. AI is a tool. SEO companies need to work closely with their clients to create meaningful, unique and ground-breaking content. Content that AI produces simply won’t return results, as what it outputs can only incorporate what has been developed already.
Make no mistake, this is great news. SEO and marketing has changed for the better. It means higher quality websites that deliver trackable results. Now that AI can build a website and write generic content , it means there is no need for lower quality, low cost agencies and designers that just put out a beautiful website with no marketing strategy behind it.
We can’t talk about marketing in 2024 without talking about the pivot we expect to see when it comes to social media marketing. As you may know, social media marketing drives top of mind awareness and purchase intent. In 2024, a strategy that includes influencer marketing and ‘collabs’ is key. Collabs are when two or more parties get together to promote a product or service (think Nike and Michael Jordan promoting Air Jordan sneakers). Collabs are not usually cheap, but when done well the result can provide a significant impact on a business’s overall market share.
Recently, singer Rihanna’s beauty brand did a collab with her rapper husband A$AP Rocky. He rapped on Instagram about a line of lip balm. The result? The press went wild for the collab, and so did fans.
For businesses that are looking to create more value from their marketing, collabs may be the solution. On Instagram, when two parties do a collab on an Instagram reel, that reel will be shown to both of their audiences, which increases engagement and views exponentially. Meta is putting a lot of focus on making reels a force to be reckoned with for brands. Smart marketers will find like-minded partners and produce a collab. At Mannix Marketing, we have used collabs very successfully with micro and nano influencers to build awareness for Winter’s Dream. The results of these were millions of additional views of promotional content in our target downstate markets.
Influencer Marketing is today’s Word of Mouth marketing. When I first started in marketing clients would tell me their #1 source of new business was Word of Mouth. This is true today, just not strictly in the old-fashioned meaning of the term. In the past the control you had was to create a great product, or offer a terrific service, and ask/hope your customers would tell others. Now you can do so much more. Social media puts businesses in the driver’s seat of Word of Mouth marketing. You can work with influencers who have a targeted audience to promote your business. You can work with partners to collab and amplify your message. Social media is an art that marketers must master to be successful in 2024.
Moving forward, another investment companies looking to grow will want to make is in video. We have become a nation of people (a world of people, actually) who want our information fast, and video is an ideal way to do that. Whether your story needs to be told through video webinars or quick clips like those popular on TikTok and YouTube, today’s technology makes it easy to produce what you need. Powerful, easy-to-use tools like CapCut have removed video production obstacles for businesses so they can now easily produce high quality videos at very little cost.
In 2024 budgets will be highly scrutinized, agencies that are not delivering high quality results will go out of business, and those that remain will need to balance the use of AI to be more efficient with their marketing expertise to generate online results. Businesses will develop online partnerships and collaborate with influencers and other partners to further their message. Demand for SEO, paid search and CRO will increase as companies demand results for their marketing spend.