Digital Marketing Trends for 2024

While artificial intelligence continues to integrate into digital marketing, the trends in 2024 will shift towards human-centric approaches. Technologies will remain fundamental to online promotion but will serve as assistants to marketers in content creation, forecasting, and intensified personalization.

The upcoming year's trends will focus on user engagement and building customer relationships. Digital promotion will become more targeted and thought-out.

Let's delve into the specifics of digital marketing in 2024.

Human-centricity

The use of robots for content creation and user communication was meant to streamline marketing efforts and enhance brand positioning. However, it often leads to the opposite effect: people become less engaged when they realize that the text was authored by artificial intelligence or the image was generated by a neural network. According to research findings, over half of users react this way.

Furthermore, there's a growing amount of information inundating audiences with offers and news, leading to fatigue.

Therefore, in the coming year, brands should shift focus from pressuring customers with constant 'buy' messages to building trustful communication—creating emotions and demonstrating values. This approach can help establish a strong connection with the audience.

Personalization

Consumers expect brands to intensify personalization due to technological advancements and increased spending on companies' products. Therefore, individualized approaches will strengthen in 2024.

Offers based on purchase history, customer preferences, and online behavior are set to become the norm for brands aiming to remain relevant and retain their audience. Flexibility and omnichannel presence are also crucial: communication channels must be convenient for customers.

An added benefit will be personalization in offline touchpoints, where a salesperson can access information about a customer's orders when they visit a store.

In online personalization, the accuracy of offers sent through email services and messaging platforms will increase.

Advertising within marketplaces and apps

Major retailers, marketplaces, and aggregators are already positioning themselves as comprehensive advertising platforms and are creating their own retail media. They publish brand advertisements and generate revenue not only from listing products on their platforms.

Various formats are used: simple banners, story posts, articles, reviews. For instance, on Facebook Marketplace (owned by Meta, deemed extremist in Russia), paid-promoted items appear among general product listings.

This format will continue to evolve because advertising in online sales points is effective: marketplaces attract people who are already prepared to make a purchase.

Interactivity

Content that users interact with enhances engagement, increases viewing time, and drives users through the sales funnel. Interactivity is a way to stand out in the information flow.

This method of promotion in digital marketing will remain relevant in the upcoming year. Interactive formats include quizzes, surveys, and animations that respond to user actions.

An example of a social media game from a brand

Marketing technologies

Machine learning, AR, VR, artificial intelligence, and neural networks are making headlines in the marketing world every day. These are new tools that generate text, create designs, and produce images and videos.

Machine learning tools predict trends and consumer behavior, AI processes customer information and identifies patterns. The integration of these technologies is unstoppable, so automation in marketing will remain relevant in the coming years and beyond. For instance, the AI technology market for marketers is projected to reach $145 billion by 2032.

Chatbots will become smarter, capable of engaging in more effective real-time dialogues. This will expedite issue resolution for customers and increase loyalty.

Voice search will become more sophisticated, changing the approach to SEO optimization. Brands will need to incorporate long-tail keywords and even entire phrases mirroring natural speech into their content.

Another trend in the coming year is CGI advertising, where realistic, oversized brand products are inserted into real-world videos using computer graphics. For instance, in a Jacquemus brand ad, a bag might replace a tram traveling through the streets of Paris.

Data security

In 2023 alone, Russia experienced dozens of data breaches from databases of major companies. Such incidents decrease user trust. In 2024, threats to personal information will increase, making secure data storage a priority for companies.

While a few years ago, brand claims about preserving customer information were not frequently part of advertising promises, today, it has become an essential element of promotion.

This trend is also associated with policy changes regarding data collection (GDPR, CCPA). Obtaining third-party information from browsers and other sources has become more challenging. Therefore, brands are emphasizing first-party data collected directly from customers.

Continuing diversity trends

The world continues to embrace diversity — recognizing individuals of different genders, ages, nationalities, and health conditions while advocating against discrimination. This trend is evident in brand content. Photos now feature not only models with ideal figures and faces but also ordinary people we encounter in our daily lives. This trend is especially pertinent for the female audience, which has historically faced stringent beauty standards — slenderness, youthfulness, and smooth skin.

Diversity will persist and expand the audience for brands willing to engage with various people in their advertising.

For instance, on the Victoria's Secret account, known for its flawless "angel" models, there are now women of different body sizes. Likewise, the jewelry brand Viva la Vika showcases the hand of a mature woman to display one of its accessories, indicating an orientation towards diverse age groups.

Influencer marketing

Promotion through bloggers and other influencers is gaining momentum. The influencer marketing market reached $21.1 billion in 2023, a significant increase compared to $16.4 billion in 2022.

The trend of collaborating with micro-influencers—individuals with a small but engaged audience—will continue. Zoomers (users born in the 2000s and 2010s) are actively entering the online space and becoming bloggers themselves.

At the same time, advertising by bloggers is becoming more and more native: it is integrated into the content, sometimes into story clips.

More influence will be wielded by influencers who don't position themselves as bloggers but have an audience. The goal for these individuals isn't to profit from their media presence but to create content. Hence, their recommendations are trusted more.

Video content

The speed of content consumption favors the video format, which is easy to watch on the go, holding just a phone. All major social media platforms have introduced separate feeds for vertical videos: YouTube Shorts, VK Clips, Reels on Instagram (owned by Meta, prohibited in Russia), as well as on “Dzen”. Telegram launched 'Stories', where users can upload short video clips.

In the future, brands will continue adapting their content for short videos. Today, videos feature product reviews, storytelling, and user tutorials. Major YouTube creators promote their longer horizontal videos through short-form content like Shorts.

Storytelling is gaining momentum — it's a method of engaging and intriguing the audience while promoting products through video narratives.

Example of marketing by Kate Spade handbags and accessories

Kate Spade New York is a good example of storytelling. The series follows Anna Kendrick's escapades in a hotel, integrating the brand's products seamlessly. Throughout, she exclusively features Kate Spade handbags and accessories. This fictional narrative effectively promotes the brand while entertaining the audience, showcasing how a relatable storyline and credible portrayal can enhance brand credibility.

Long-form videos will remain a tool for digital promotion as well. Billions of hours of YouTube video views prove that the familiar horizontal format isn't going anywhere.

Conclusion

In 2024, digital marketing will become more human-centric: brands will shift focus towards building trusting relationships and pay more attention to customer experience. Personalization will reach new levels. There will be increased emphasis on the security of personal information that customers entrust to brands.

The backbone of digital marketing will continue to be AI, AR, VR technologies, neural networks, and machine learning, necessary for content creation and data processing.

Influencers remain influential. Bloggers with smaller audiences will become more appealing to advertisers.

Vertical videos continue to gain popularity for their easy consumption, but long-form videos will remain popular too. Brands will continue launching interactive ad campaigns to engage users and actively advertise on marketplaces.