The marketing world has been evolving pretty fast. In the first few months of 2024 Artificial Intelligence brought lots of new possibilities and challenges to professionals around the globe.
Keeping up with the trends is a must if you are willing to be a successful marketer. We can easily see trends on social media, but in order to make complex decisions, deeper information is required.
In order to provide richer valuable information regarding the recent marketing trends, Hubspot partnered up with Rock Content, Litmus and Wistia to develop The State of Marketing Report 2024.
These world class brands built a complete report gathering data from over 1,200 marketers across the globe to help marketers define their strategies and reach their goals.
Here are the insights that caught my eye.
1. AI and Automation
The year barely started and marketers were going wild about generative artificial intelligence. Some excited, others, concerned.
When we look at the data, 42% of marketers responded that the number of campaigns they worked on increased from 2021 to 2022.
With that in mind, many professionals saw AI tools as a good opportunity to make things easier. In fact, it can really help in streamlining processes, but we need to keep in mind that content creation requires a considerable amount of originality, creativity and personalization, and AI tools are not able to deliver these human approaches.
By the way, if you need a hand to scale content production, using AI features with content written by real people, I recommend you to visit the WriterAccess AI page.
2. Data Privacy
This is a topic that has been getting attention from marketers for some time now. Third-party data are expected to be phased out soon, so marketers are finding other ways to collect market insights and provide personalized approaches.
The report found that 86% of marketers had been affected by data privacy changes over the past year.
From the professionals who are working with alternate ways to collect useful data, some invest in social media, others in the Google Topics API or contextual advertising. Meanwhile, only 28% of them are collecting first-party data from their customers.
A good way to collect first-party data, increase engagement and conversions on websites and content experiences is by using interactive content. If you want to know how to create interactive pieces like quizzes, ebooks, calculators and much more, check out our Ion Page.
3. Videos keep sticking out
Short form videos like Tiktok, Reels and YouTube Shorts benefited from a boom in the last few years and according to the report, they are still on top of many marketers priorities. Providing a casual and entertaining approach, this format creates good connections with the audience.
The report stated that 50% of marketers are creating and sharing videos, while 69% intend to invest even more in this format when compared to last year.
Videos for social media are great, but there are other ways to explore this format. Videos are great for educating the audience, acquiring new customers, demonstrating products and features and much more. 60% of the surveyed people responded that they held a webinar last year. This is a nice way to deliver authority, engagement, education and even conversions.
4. Marketing in a Time of Recession
The last few months showed an uncertain scenario for businesses. Inflation, war in Europe and massive layoffs got professionals concerned about the future of their companies.
During these tough periods it is extremely important to know where to invest and save budget. The report brings 5 tips to help business’ employees and owners get through these challenging times. Here they are:
- Don’t go dark — If you can keep spending
- Organic Content Experiences are on the rise
- Brand Awareness, not just lead gen
- Prioritize emotions over logic, but be distinctive
- On-demand creative talent can help scale your creative ops
If you want to dive deeper into each of these topics, they are fully explained in the report.
5. Social Media and Email Marketing
Both channels can be considered traditional in digital marketing. Of course, the format of content and the way people interact through social media is changing, but it is still an important marketing channel. It is cheap and gives marketers the ability to get good results and collect insights from the audience. The report says that 30% of marketers evaluate the quality of their content according to how it engages on social media.
Since short videos are currently the hype, TikTok leads this format and has been growing. 42% of marketers already use the platform and 26% plan to use it for the first time this year. Besides that, there’s something else that has been trending on social media: influencer marketing.
Having someone with considerable numbers and an engaged audience can help brands spread the word and deliver content to specific niches. This is getting more common and according to the report, 89% of marketers that have invested in influencer campaigns, intend to increase this investment in 2024.
When it comes to email marketing, the channel brings good returns: $36 on every $1 spent. Of course, if you want to have good email marketing results, the strategy and tactics must be very well designed.
Keep in mind that you are talking to many different people, so your content needs to be accessible, at the same time, they want to have their problems solved, so an email needs to be segmented and personalized as much as possible. Having a good plan will get you on track and the report delivers great insights into that.
Next steps
In this article you were able to see that we have many big moves in the digital marketing fields but at the same time, some traditional approaches that still bring results.
Whatever the channel or tactic a brand decides to follow, it is important to keep one’s eyes wide open as to what is trending, and what to expect from the near future. This is the main goal of the State of Marketing Report.
So, I strongly recommend you to access the full report and read all the valuable information available. The content is delivered by Hubspot and other world class tech companies to bring expert insights that will definitely help you make important decisions this year.
Click on the link below and access it now!
Free Access: State of Marketing Report 2024
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