Marketing Trends 2024 - No Panic!

1. The prophecy of digital marketing trends 2024
2. Marketing Trends 2024 - Expect the Unexpected
3. Point of no return - Looking in the rearview mirror
4. When the music on the Titanic slowly fades away
5. Conclusion

What awaits us in the coming year? We all suspect it: 2024 will be a wild roller coaster ride. Wars, crises, and conflicts quickly turn strategic marketing plans into scrap paper. However, the recommendation to drive by sight does not prevent the world from changing faster than you can read this OMR guest article. Which marketing trends can we likely count on in 2024? And where should we fundamentally rethink our actions? Guest author and business consultant Markus Lempa tries to answer these questions and more from his perspective.

The prophecy of digital marketing trends 2024

Just in time for late summer, marketing gurus from all over the world speak up to prophesy the digital marketing trends for the coming year. Apart from creative neologisms, the most current predictions of the experts surprisingly trigger more of a déjà vu: AI, blockchain, marketing automation, SEO, social selling, social gaming, influencer marketing, augmented reality and interactive content sound like ongoing construction sites and strongly resemble the Social media trends from 2022. Maybe trust in old and familiar things is also an expression of the great uncertainty that characterizes our spirit of the times. 

Only a few super forecasters predicted the systemic upheavals for this year that are now causing us chronic headaches. Putin's attack on Ukraine seemed as unlikely to them as hyperinflation for energy and food prices. Or 40 degree Celsius in "Good old Germany" and the drying up of the Rhine. While this article is being written, an epic stock market crash, blackouts of the energy networks, and even a European nuclear disaster are threatening. So what can we rely on if not what we already know? 

Marketing Trends 2024 - Expect the Unexpected

Driving by sight and holding on to old solutions in times of crisis is human. But is this strategy also without alternative? If marketeers have learned one thing in the past years, it's the uncontrollable and mostly irreversible changes of the markets. The aim of this guest article is to give OMR readers a compass with which they can independently identify and evaluate these trends even in uncertain times.

Point of no return - Looking in the rearview mirror

The starting point of our expedition to the marketing trends of 2024 are first and foremost a number of system-relevant transformations. They already have a lasting impact on our conventional way of life. The Corona crisis, for example, not only gave us remote work, but also showed us the vulnerability of global value chains.

In addition to the dependence on Russian natural gas, over the last few years we have learned what the effects of delayed deliveries of raw materials and preliminary products from China can be. Across industries, there will be a shortage of semiconductors, rare earths, aluminium, and even wood well into 2024. Water shortages due to ever new heat records or delayed wheat deliveries from the Ukrainian breadbasket create a permanent feeling of scarcity. A phenomenon that we have known hitherto only from times of socialist planned economy.

Insurances are increasingly reluctant to accompany innovative but risky ventures. Digital business models are increasingly threatened by cyber criminals. And now there is also a shortage of skilled workers and trainees. In the machine room of the economy, the wheels are not only turning slower. It creaks at all corners and ends. 

When the music on the Titanic slowly fades away

The positive thing first. Scarcity forces people to be more creative. And yet we feel that despite all efforts for technological progress, the narrative of endless economic growth as we knew it is over. In 2024, more and more experts expect a global recession. The economy is in the stranglehold of inflation and looming insolvencies. 

When even success-spoilt giants like Meta, Alphabet or HUAWEI attune their employees to a years-long winter, then we should all start thinking about course corrections early on, rather than blindly following alien trends: Where can we become trendsetters instead of simply shifting the marketing deck chairs from left to right on the sun deck of the Titanic? 

The starting point for our trend journey through the year 2024 is therefore a determination of location for ourselves and our customers.

Marketing Trend 1: Spatial-Loyalty-Marketing and spatial customer retention

Of course, we can continue to try to snatch customers from our competition with price dumping. However, the competition will definitely retaliate in real time for this zero-sum game. In times of falling growth rates, maintaining existing business relationships should be a top priority. This is especially suited for simple, surprising solutions or premium offers. And not to forget professional service! One-time discount and promo actions are counterproductive. Where exactly do we have to pull the lever for this?

At least 80 % of all human decisions have a spatial reference. So on the phone we often ask first: "Where are you?" And in times of crisis we long for a safe location.  An individual, local customer approach by means of Local SEO and geo-marketing can therefore help to distinguish oneself noticeably from the competition. So how do you want to position yourself as local, trusted neighbors or problem solvers? 

For international marketing, it is becoming increasingly important to demonstrate a spatial connection with the targeted market. This increasingly includes creating local jobs, supporting suppliers, and local social commitment. With this, brands can prepare for the long-term expected division of world markets into a western one and a system dominated by China, Russia, and India, without having to make a final decision for one side. Classic export models, on the other hand, will lose out. Here again, it is not about short-term trends, but the timely recognition of opportunities and the active design of systemic changes.

Tip: Your CRM tells you where your customers come from. If you form spatial clusters from this, what regional topic could then connect these customers? Where are there spatial patterns? And what would be your local role or that of your product?

After this first location determination, we can explore possible currents in marketing that we can use for our journey. 

Marketing Trend 2: Digital versus analog employer branding 

Companies and executives always have the employees they deserve. Whoever cannot offer appropriate real wage increases in times of rising cost of living will probably first try their luck in automation or in cooperation with freelancers. 

The HR trends 2023 and HR trend developments for 2024, also see E-Learning, People Analytics, and further digitization of HR processes. With all these technical changes, it is important that we do not forget the we-feeling of the staff. Only in this way can corporate influencers or brand ambassadors be found and motivated in the long term. 

Alternatively, companies might also consider creative, non-monetary incentives to retain existing talents and find new ones. This includes especially the creation of a fear-free, diverse working environment in 2024, in which everyone flexibly has the option of remote work, team events, paid trainings, and above all meaningful activity. 

Tip: Recruitment should not be left to AI alone. Those who are looking for talents across generations should also think about quiet labor market reserves of generations X and Y, who prefer a personal conversation with a human for a job change.

Marketing Trend 3: Investor Relations for non-listed SMEs

For our trend journey we also need to talk about money. Communication with the financial market will not only be a challenge for listed companies in the future. As limited liquidity can quickly lead to exit, even SMEs must increasingly explain why they are a worthwhile investment despite falling growth rates. 

Why does your company of all places deserve a financial injection? Can the founding team or management credibly assert a double-digit price premium in the market, thus operating profitably in the future? Any marketing that can only claim to offer a great or inexpensive product will find it difficult to get its own viability funded.

Tip: The aspects of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) will become increasingly important for your equity story in the future. In general, integrated marketing campaigns should pay more attention to the aspect of "solidarity". With this, we justify our own system relevance or "societal right to exist". This can be particularly crucial when applying for public funding.

Marketing Trend 4: Branded Search – "You must be a brand!"

Already in 2017, SEO expert Rand Fishkin warned that Google could increasingly answer the queries of searchers through its SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) on its own. So far, many have tried to come to terms with this systemic problem. And so, as SEO trends for the year 2024, mobile-first indexing, voice and visual search, and once again artificial intelligence are mentioned, among other things. Anyway, users in the coming year will have enough to do when Google finally replaces its Universal Analytics with Google Analytics 4 on July 1. The advantages and disadvantages of Universal Analytics and Google Analytics we have already listed for you. In contrast to doomsday news from previous years, SEO seems in 2024 to be anything but dead, but rather lively. 

And yet! In addition to the operational necessity of dealing with the successor model Google Analytics 4 and the resulting possibilities for cross-platform tracking, it is becoming increasingly important to look for an exit strategy or at least a Plan B for this unwinnable "SEO Rat Race".

SEO lives from finding unmistakable key elements with which we can burn ourselves into the long-term memory of our customer base. Sounds simple, but often fails in the general competitive suppression. Alternatively or additionally, it is worthwhile to invest intensively in one's own Brand Marketing and brand awareness in 2024. This way we can generate an original demand independent of Google & Co. But how do you manage to get users to search for your brand as well? 

Tip: Instead of only thinking in keywords, the brand core with all its values must first be precisely described. These values should not be based on short-term trends. The more individual your brand is, the greater the chance of differentiating yourself from the competition and finding real insights. Secondly, for a branded search, a critical mass of brand communication must be created, which leads us directly to the next trend. 

Marketing Trend 5: Organic Marketing Mix

Those who want to make themselves more independent of Google or Apple have to become active themselves and set their own standards. Social networks and review platforms are becoming increasingly important. With their help, we can position ourselves as experts or market leaders and be successfully recommended by others. 

While XING is probably scoring a colossal own goal by shutting down its own groups from January 2024 onwards, LinkedIn is becoming vitally important for B2B marketing. But Meta, TikTok, and Instagram still offer chances to build your own keyword universe for your own brand and bring yourself into the conversation as a thought leader. What effect paid premium offers from social networks will have in the future remains to be seen for now.

What is crucial is that brands think about their independence in general in good time. In what kind of future that we ourselves have created do we want to spend the rest of our lives? The answer to this question of the future is a "both and": Without SEO, marketing would be operationally short-sighted; without organic instruments, however, marketing remains meaningless in the long term.

Tip: Many organic marketing instruments are already available in the companies, but are only used as a one-time action and not in the sense of strategic brand building. Virtual events and original trade fair formats, creative challenges, podcasts, corporate influencers, webinars, Google My Business or the use of established brand multipliers like OMR Reviews still offer unused freedoms. By the way, the next OMR Festival will take place from May 9 to 10, 2023. How can you position yourself as an original and not as a clone?

Marketing Trend 6: Fact Check and Crowd Task Force

There have always been critical stakeholders. Therefore, one of the original tasks of marketing and PR has always been to look for smart answers to possible objections. In the meantime, conspiracy theories, fake news, and hate messages up to death threats on the net have become increasingly independent. From their echo chamber, haters send toxic messages to their "targets". In the future, the warning times for an artificial shitstorm will probably get shorter and shorter. Misrepresentations by third parties must therefore be checked faster than before by an editorial task force and corrected if necessary; otherwise lasting reputation damage threatens. It is all the more important to invest in content management and crisis communication.

Since a new quality of public protests is to be expected on the street as well as on the net for 2024, brand companies should look for supporters early on. OMR Reviews recommends conversario as a tool, for example, to automatically filter out haters and spam in communities. However, if the fact checker team does find that your company has produced bullshit, someone should personally admit the mistake and take responsibility. Your own credibility is and remains the most effective countermeasure to take the wind out of critics' sails.

Tip: Similar to HateAid for the protection of individuals, companies can also gather a network of external supporters, employees, alumni, and professional troubleshooters. With this extended team in the sense of a crowd task force, a brand can boldly face any unjustified shitstorm or transform the hate into a collective candy storm. 

Marketing Trend 7: Honest sustainability instead of green washing

The heating of the minds is not only caused by haters. Marketing itself also has a noticeable influence on the global temperature increase, which ultimately leads to humans acting irrationally and damaging the climate. Example "Marketing Automation": Those who don't play along in collecting customer data themselves, leave an incontestable lead to the competition! This is the mantra of those experts for whom marketing automation is considered without alternative. But does AI really always have to be used for everyday processes in marketing, sales, and service? 

Already in a US study from 2019, it was shown that training an AI solution can produce up to five times as much carbon dioxide as a car. Anyone who acts so thoughtlessly in the future behaves just as if he or she would buy the Sunday rolls at the bakery around the corner with the SUV. 

Climate experts now report that we are increasingly likely to exceed the 1.5 degree target. And when even the "heute-show" takes a jab at the harmfulness of the internet, marketers at the latest should rethink well-intentioned but climate-harming marketing ideas and their own sustainability management . 

How big is e.g. the CO2 footprint of your CRM software or your marketing campaign? What ecological compensation measures like tree sponsorships have you taken? How can genuine, measurable sustainability be achieved instead of alibi projects or green washing? Anyone who considers these heretical thoughts utopian or just uncomfortable should not be surprised if other providers with a better marketing eco-balance will have their noses ahead in the competition in the future. 

Tip: The more urgent the topic of sustainability becomes, the more we should consider both professionally and privately what consequences our personal actions have. The purchase of an NFT as well as the convenient ordering via smart voice assistants or the creation of texts with the help of AI not only have monetary effects, but also affect our common climate. 

Marketing Trend 8: Internal communication in permanent crisis mode

Travels make you hungry and thirsty. The more urgently we look at the compliance with KPIs and sales targets, the less we pay attention to the care of our own team. The team that is supposed to shoulder all these changes. Not only because of Corona, teams have been working in a permanent crisis mode for years. And now possibly a downsizing threatens. Editorial teams and service employees complain that they are being left alone with a multitude of new problems and dealing with toxic complaints. 

Tip: If you want to avoid a meltdown of your own corporate culture, you should start with a change of mind before 2024. Services of one's own team are not a matter of course just because someone was paid for it. Otherwise, a personal exodus threatens like in the restaurant industry and the air traffic control personnel. Coaching, virtual staff meetings, circulars, feedback meetings, or neurofeedback. There are many instruments for internal communication, but you have to consistently apply them and live the said.

Marketing Trend 9: Nostalgia

After the last mentioned developments of crisis we can breathe a little for our trend tour 2024. "The good old things still exist." That's the motto of retailer Manufactum, for example. High-quality, durable and traditionally produced household, garden and office goods are advertised with lovingly texted stories. For digital professionals, retro-revolution as a marketing trend from 2022 may appear as an anachronistic business model. Yet it fulfills our desire for consistency in our short-lived world. Especially in times of crisis, we long for this timelessness and safe anchor points. For these reasons, other companies are also likely to have success with nostalgic marketing approaches in 2024. 

On a note of caution, our desire for the past can also have a dark side. In economically strained situations, as we also expect for 2024, counter trends like conformity, conservatism, standardization, centralization, and streamlining set the tone. Customers increasingly fall back on known brands and classic target groups; non-competitive providers disappear from the market. Attempts to break new ground also regularly decrease in crisis situations. And if nine out of ten start-ups or innovative products flop, the risk for new things is assessed even more sharply in crisis times. This aspect should not be forgotten.

Tip: Treasures for nostalgic marketing are company histories of the founding team or anecdotes from experienced colleagues: What ideas have been slumbering in your drawer for a while? And why could now be the right moment for a revival? On May 29, the world celebrates the first ascent of Mount Everest 70 years ago. How could you link this well-known event with your brand?

Marketing Trend 10: Hybrid marketing solutions

The discussion about remote workstations and attendance obligations will continue in 2024. The solution can - spoiler alert! - only be a hybrid work mode. The advantages for companies and employees alike from the combination of both worlds are too strong. 

The driver of this development is hybrid selling with its mix of digital contact options and the personal sales talk. The "BOPIS Principle" (Buy Online Pickup In Store) has proven itself during the Corona time. And after agonizingly long months of Corona, in 2024 we are longing for live events with real people. This desire for a "real liberation" will be felt even more strongly as a guiding theme in the coming year.

Tip: But also for marketing or newsletter campaigns, the interplay of analog and digital worlds can lead to happy customer experiences in 2024. Instead of a classic email marketing campaign just surprise your clientele with a tactile postcard, e.g. from Echtpost, which you previously wrote and designed on the computer. If you still need best practice tips for successful email marketing you can also find them with us.

Conclusion

Usually, trend articles offer a short list of innovative tools in which AI can't be missing as the most important ingredient. 2024 will be a demanding year for marketing. Therefore, when thinking about marketing trends, one should first understand the zeitgeist better and listen to the background noise of ongoing changes. The ten marketing trends mentioned for the year 2024 can provide useful orientation points. Built on this, we can then much easier recognize the trends relevant for us and develop our own script for the future. And don't forget: where others complain, new opportunities arise for you.

One forecast for 2024 is for sure. Continuing as before or waiting for an Elon Musk to save the world for us are dangerous thought mistakes. Maybe one day we will even remember the words of actor Sir Peter Ustinov: "Now are the good old days that we will look back on in ten years." 

In order for us to have a good time in 2024, we must now do our homework. So where are the points of no return in your own business model and how can you steer clear of the cliffs for your marketing in good time? I wish all those much success who want to design the future themselves, instead of chasing trends. Don't panic! Make 2024 your year!