Research from our team shows that 53% of business leaders plan to invest more money in digital marketing in 2024.
But where should you focus your time and budget to get the best results?
To help you get the most from your digital investment, WebFX leaders weighed in on the top trends for each digital channel in 2024.
Keep reading to learn what they revealed and how to set yourself up for success in the new year!
Methodology
We asked WebFX leaders to weigh in on the top trends and channels for digital marketing in 2024. Learn what they revealed, and get actionable insights for your company!
AI-powered snapshots, like the example below, give searchers quick overviews and serve as jumping-off points for exploring more info.
As SGE alters the search landscape, Jordan encourages businesses to prepare for more zero-click searches with query answers displaying directly at the top of search results.
Jordan Duras WebFX’s Sr. Internet Marketing Consultant & Performance Support Operations Lead
For SEO in 2024, we need to continue providing value for users by offering the exact information on the page that they expect to find based on their search query. This needs to be formatted (both in terms of the way the content appears on the page and the structured data providing context) in a way that Google can understand because the better that Google understands your website and content, the better it will perform.
3. Lean into MOFU content to expand search territory
Continuing this year, we’re seeing results for top-of-funnel, definition-intent searches (like “what is seo”) favor established, high-trust websites.
To expand your territory in search results, Jordan recommends adapting your content strategy to include more middle-of-funnel (MOFU) content.
MOFU content includes pieces like:
Comparison articles
Product reviews
Case studies
Webinars
Customer interviews
Adding more MOFU content in 2024 will help you maintain a consistent presence in search results and connect with people who are actively evaluating product or service offerings.
Paid ad trends
Key Takeaways
Elevate campaign performance with automation and machine learning
Use first-party data for ad targeting
Experiment with Microsoft Ads
*Insights from Rebekah Leach, WebFX’s Paid Search Results Lead
4. Elevate campaign performance with automation and machine learning
AI provides a host of benefits for your paid ads in 2024 — from improving targeting to streamlining costs and more.
Expert insights from
Rebekah Leach WebFX’s Paid search Results Lead
I see PPC continuing to lean more into automation and machine learning, which can help us run more efficient campaigns. With the time we’re saving from automations and machine learning, it’s increasingly important that we re-invest that time into our campaigns to provide the signals that inform those strategies to improve their learnings and performance.
5. Use first-party data for ad targeting
By now, you’ve likely heard the chatter surrounding first-party data.
With Google phasing out third-party cookies, you’ll want to leverage first-party data — information you collect from customers, site visitors, and app users, for ad targeting.
First-party data allows you to understand how people engage with your business, and combining it with machine learning allows you to target the most valuable prospects.
This year, Rebekah anticipates more advertisers turning to Microsoft as a way to reach new users, especially with Microsoft’s AI features.
She shared, “Historically, Microsoft advertising has been best for B2B users. Recently, it has had an increase in B2C interest because of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.”
With Google becoming more competitive, Microsoft Ads can be a good option for providing clicks at a lower cost.
Social media trends
Key Takeaways
Leverage videos and user-generated content (UGC) across social platforms
Use social shopping to power up ecommerce revenue
Create brand partnerships with content creators
*Insights from Hunter Nicholson, WebFX’s Director of Social & Media Advertising
7. Leverage videos and user-generated content (UGC) across social platforms
Hunter shared, “We’re anticipating more presence in the advertising space for TikTok, but also for Instagram, where videos will lean more authentic/UGC-style to blend into a user’s feed of followers more and grab their attention.”
With social users getting better at recognizing ads in social feeds, more native-looking content (such as UGC) can enhance engagement with your brand.
8. Use social shopping to power up ecommerce revenue
Hunter explained, “We’re seeing growth in last-click purchases directly on Meta’s platforms and growth in touchpoints from social during the last 25% of the user journey.”
Users are becoming more trusting of buying on social since it isn’t seen as “new” anymore.
9. Create brand partnerships with content creators
More and more, it seems like influencers are taking a back seat to content creators.
Creators are essentially micro-influencers.
According to Hunter, “Brands won’t likely see a lot of traction from the user posting a video on their individual personal profile. But they’ll be able to capitalize on the creator content in the brands’ paid and earned media, which is in some ways an even bigger win.”
Expert insights from
Hunter Nicholson WebFX’s Director of Social & Media Advertising
As we look ahead to 2024, it’s important to consider the presence and impact of social advertising throughout all stages of a buyer’s journey. We’re able to reach brand new audience members with our efforts and also connect with people at various points on their conversion journeys to stay top-of-mind for new and repeat customers.
Content marketing trends
Key Takeaways
Showcase E-E-A-T
Share a unique angle or insights to stand out in SERPs
Scale up your strategy with diverse types of content
*Insights from Megan Phillips, WebFX’s Lead Content Strategy & Content Marketing Consultant
10. Showcase E-E-A-T
In 2024, demonstrating first-hand experience with content topics is big for brands looking to stand out in SERPs.
Enhance your E-E-A-T this year by sharing author qualifications, incorporating expert reviews, adding testimonials and case studies, and keeping content refreshed with relevant information.
11. Share a unique angle or insights to stand out in SERPs
To set yourself apart and stand out from generic, AI-generated pieces, consider taking a unique angle with your content.
Expert insights from
Megan Phillips WebFX’s Lead Content Strategy & Content Marketing Consultant
We’re going to see an inevitable initial attraction to AI-generated content, but ultimately, we will still need human ingenuity behind the wheel to drive strategy and see the content through to production. Content provides tremendous value to your digital strategy by nurturing leads through the sales funnel at varying touchpoints — it meets them with helpful information for where they’re at in the sales process. We can expect this to continue in 2024 and beyond.
Companies that create content with unique insights will not only improve brand authority and engage readers — they’ll also see ranking growth in search results.
12. Scale up your strategy with diverse types of content
With AI making it easier than ever to scale content creation, we’ll likely see a substantial increase in written, graphic, and video content.
Use AI to enhance (not fully-power) your content research and strategy, and experiment with various types of content for your business.
Megan shared, “There will likely be large differences in performances across websites as we learn how AI-generated content performs in SERPs over time.”
Web design trends
Key Takeaways
Dial up UX design
Use design + content to enhance personalization
Showcase brand personality in site design
Use AI to free up time for creative thinking
*Insights from Jaci Reinbold — WebFX’s Design Team Coach
13. Dial up UX design
Seizing all opportunities to create a custom user experience (UX) — not just on your homepage — is key in 2024 and beyond.
It’s easy to forget about optimizing things like thank you pages and error messages, but this year, more than ever, your entire site needs to support and boost UX.
Especially since 98% of site users don’t convert on first visit — crafting your design strategy with UX in mind is essential for driving new and repeat visitors to take the next step on their journeys.
14. Use design + content to enhance personalization
You can also use design in conjunction with content to show users unique content based on their interests, needs, location, and more.
This allows you to get the right information to the right people more quickly to drive engagement and conversions.
15. Showcase brand personality in site design
Don’t shy away from spotlighting your brand personality in design this year.
Jaci shared, “We’re going to be seeing more personality shining through on websites — a pushback against the ‘blanding’ phenomenon where designs have started to look more and more similar over time.”
Adding your unique fingerprint to your site design will help you stand out, aid with recognition, and create a UX unique to your brand.
16. Use AI to free up time for creative thinking
Using AI as a tool to support your design process is a great way to boost efficiency and free up time for deep, creative thinking.
With AI design tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and more, you can:
Simplify user research
Support creative exploration
Create storyboards and streamline wireframes
Quickly implement design ideas and feedback
And more
Much like other strategies, we recommend using AI to enhance and support your human-powered design process.
Expert insights from
Jaci Reinbold WebFX’s Design Team Coach
At the heart of all these trends is the user’s desire for a customized, productive experience on your website. It’s not just about having a website anymore. It’s about providing a unique digital experience. And if you want your digital experience to win out over your competition’s, you’re going to need to seize every opportunity for creativity.
Email marketing trends
Key Takeaways
Use AI and subscriber data to create highly-personalized emails
Leverage automation to create strategic touchpoints
Make your emails interactive experiences
*Insights from Emily Sybert, WebFX’s Internet Marketing Consultant – Email Specialty
17. Use AI and subscriber data to create highly-personalized emails
Gone are the days of adding subscribers’ names to emails and calling them personalized.
To cut through the noise and stand out in inboxes, you need to create hyper-personalized emails — and using subscriber data in conjunction with AI can help.
First-party subscriber data can provide a host of valuable information — like previous purchases and interactions on your site — that you can use to segment your email list.
In addition to using AI to make sense of subscriber data, you can use tools like ChatGPT to craft personalized content for your campaigns.
18. Leverage automation to create strategic touchpoints
The best part — once you set up your automated campaigns, they’ll work in the background, driving engagement and conversions, even when you’re offline.
Some examples of automated email sequences to use this year include:
Welcome and onboarding emails
Cart abandonment emails
Birthday and anniversary emails
Purchase notifications and related product emails
Survey and feedback requests
Incorporating automated drips in your email strategy is an easy way to keep in touch with subscribers and encourage conversions.
19. Make your emails interactive experiences
With emails becoming more engaging and dynamic, Emily recommends turning your email campaigns into interactive experiences.
Leverage interactive emails by:
Adding multimedia like GIFs and videos
Sharing quizzes, polls, and surveys
Gamifying content with contests and rewards
Making your emails interactive is a great way to boost subscriber engagement, clicks, and conversions.
Expert insights from
Emily Sybert WebFX’s Internet Marketing Consultant – Email Specialty
In 2024, email will continue to evolve and endure as a linchpin of digital strategy. Its value lies in its ability to help foster genuine connections with your target audience by delivering tailored experiences and driving meaningful actions.
Ecommerce marketing trends
Key Takeaways
Customize shopping experiences with chatbots
Create an omnichannel paid strategy
Use technical SEO to prioritize indexing and ranking opportunities
*Insights from Krystal Hannick, WebFX’s Senior Account Executive
20. Customize shopping experiences with chatbots
Users love customized shopping experiences more than ever, and chatbots are a simple, effective way to create personalized experiences that drive purchases.
With custom chatbots, you can:
Simplify customer service
Provide key information about product specifications
Easily respond to FAQs
Aid with order tracking and returns
And more
Expert insights from
Krystal Hannick WebFX’s Senior Account Executive
Chatbots can help support customers stuck in the checkout process (and take the pressure off your customer service team), while on-site personalized content like coupons and flexible payment options (like Apple Pay, Buy Now/Pay Later, and Stripe) can help drive uses further down the funnel.
21. Create an omnichannel paid strategy
Long gone are the days of running paid ads on a single platform.
Creating an omnichannel paid strategy is essential for reaching online shoppers across the many channels they engage with daily.
Performance max campaigns can help you find more customers on Google and Bing. And social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok provide seamless shopping experiences, so users don’t even have to leave the apps to purchase.
Creating an omnichannel paid strategy with ads across platforms like the Google Shopping Network, Microsoft Shopping Network, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok can allow your brand to reach users on any channel they engage with online.
22. Use technical SEO to prioritize indexing and ranking opportunities
According to Krystal, the difference between a good and great ecommerce strategy is a strong adherence to technical SEO.
Some questions to consider:
Are you optimizing UX when products are out of stock by redirecting old pages or using it as an opportunity to build your email list?
Do you prioritize brand reputation by asking for reviews and integrating them into your website with schema markup?
Do you provide FAQ content on your products and your exchange/return policies?
Each of these tactics has an important home in your ecommerce marketing strategy and should be prioritized for strong indexing and ranking opportunities.
Automation and reporting trends
Key Takeaways
Integrate sales and marketing data
Use reporting tools to unify data across platforms
Understand cookie consent banners
*Insights from Nolan Barger, WebFX’s DataTech Solutions Technical Lead
23. Integrate sales and marketing data
Syncing sales and marketing data helps you drive better leads, close leads at higher rates, and determine which channels are best for your omnichannel marketing efforts.
Platforms like Facebook and Google Ads have recently introduced the ability to feed them offline conversion data (typically sales data logged in your CRM). And with Google’s third-party phase out, first-party data from your CRM and other marketing tracking tools is extremely important.
More than ever, your business is going to need to rely on your owned, first-party data to drive your marketing strategies, reporting needs, and campaign targeting. This is why marketing technology investments have skyrocketed in recent years. The data you collect is going to have a direct impact on the results you see from your marketing investment, more in 2024 than ever before.
By integrating sales and marketing data, you can:
Train ad platforms on the best leads for your business
Remarket to users currently in your pipeline with programmatic ads
Generate clear-cut reports on the ROI and profitability of your marketing
And more
Expert insights from
Nolan Barger WebFX’s DataTech Solutions Technical Lead
To date, syncing this data to your ad platforms is one of the highest-impact wins I’ve seen across our client base, and I anticipate the value to grow as more and more browsers crack down on data privacy and the use of third-party cookies.
24. Use reporting tools to unify data across platforms
Attribution models, methods of data collection, cookie settings, and more can impact data tracking and attribution. That’s why it’s important to examine your data through different lenses.
For example, someone may see your ad on Facebook several times. Then, they do a Google search, click your Google ad, and fill out a form on your website.
In this scenario, your Google Ads account will count the form submission as a conversion from Google. Google’s tracking has no idea that user ever saw your Facebook ad.
Does it mean your Facebook ad isn’t effective? No!
That’s why it’s important to leverage reporting tools across platforms — like Google, Facebook’s conversion API, and our very own MarketingCloudFX suite, which can help unify your data across tools.
Expert insights from
Nolan Barger WebFX’s DataTech Solutions Technical Lead
At WebFX, we not only use our MarketingCloudFX tool as a source of truth, but we leverage conversion APIs and pixel tracking for platforms like Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and more to ensure we have an extremely robust dataset, with many attribution models to make decisions from.
25. Understand cookie consent banners
A trend that has already started, but will continue this year — the use of cookie consent banners and popups.
Nolan recommends first talking with an attorney to determine what level of risk your business is at for your industry and locations you serve. Then, you need to a game plan for what type of consent banner to offer.
Consent banners directly impact the data you can track from your marketing efforts, so it’s extremely important to consult the right people and do your research ahead of time to avoid “breaking” your tracking and reports.
Tech and tool trends
Key Takeaways
Explore emerging adtech opportunities
Lean into personalized ABM campaigns
Invest in a mature tech stack
*Insights from Dan Shaffer, WebFX’s Director of Marketing Operations
CTV ads open the door to advertising on some of the biggest streaming services, like NBC Today and A&E, while giving you advanced targeting options to reach the right user at the right time.
You’ll also get access to key data points like impressions, viewing percentages, and more.
“Amazon will soon have ad spots on Prime too,” Dan says — making it a valuable strategy to lean into this year.
27. Lean into personalized ABM campaigns
In 2024, account-based marketing (ABM) is more accessible than ever. However, that also means inbox flooding is on the rise.
Personalization is no longer a nicety. It’s essential for businesses that want to stand out and attract attention.
Dan notes, “Personalization to the nth degree will be required in order to stand out and get your targets to convert.”
28. Invest in a mature tech stack
All of the above trends and strategies sound great, but you need a well-thought-out infrastructure to make them effective.
That’s why we’re seeing the need for more mature tech stacks in 2024.
Dan shared, “I’m seeing a lot of previously one-feature products adopting more features to accommodate new capabilities across the techy marketer’s toolbox.”
Expert insights from
Dan Shaffer WebFX’s Director of Marketing Operations
Tech advancements like AI and increased reach through new ad capabilities are only achievable if you have the processes, the tech, and the people behind the scenes making it work. If you aren’t ready for these advancements, now is the time to start building that infrastructure to support 2024’s latest changes in reaching your target customers. Overall, I think it emphasizes the need for marketing systems to be in place in order to compete.
Need help with your 2024 digital marketing strategy?
With so many digital marketing trends to keep up with, it can be challenging to steer your strategies toward the best results.
If you need help managing your business marketing in 2024, we’d love to chat! Just use our free proposal form, or give us a call at 888-601-5359 to connect with our team!
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