To kickstart the new year, we asked the team what their digital marketing predictions are for 2024. We’re keeping an eye on generative AI, omnichannel marketing and the results of game-changing industry cases like the New York Times suit against Microsoft and OpenAI. We also expect to see way more brands focus on social media, particularly leveraging UGC and video marketing to grow and engage their audience.
What’s in store for digital marketing in 2024?
Abi Crosbie, SEO Manager
“2024 is the year of AI finding its place in everyday life. We’ll start to see further roll out of Google’s generative AI, and those brands using AI to improve work processes will stay ahead of the game. We’ll also see big impacts on the future of AI with the results of the New York Times suit against Microsoft and OpenAI for copyright infringement. Whether this case signals the blow up of AI being able to access anything, or it hobbles AI’s ability to access content to learn from, the outcome is one to watch closely.
I think there’ll be advancements in omnichannel marketing too. There’s been talk for years that other platforms meet the criteria for being search engines and that SEO techniques are transferable to them (think Amazon, Ebay, YouTube and TikTok), but few SEOs have ventured beyond discussion. I think 2024 will see SEOs going beyond a website-only focus, branching out to push the benefit of content on multiple platforms.
The reason we’ll see this is the transformation of the SERPs. Google in particular is adding more SERP features from platforms like X and TikTok into prime SERP positions. This means SEOs pushing for optimised content on these platforms is a technique that will help organic performance, increasing visibility right where we care about it – in search engines.”
Yasmin Rowlands, Social Media Executive
“Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and even LinkedIn will continue to heavily invest in creator marketplaces and tools. This will make it even easier for creators to produce and distribute high-quality content, work with brands, and connect better with their audience. I also think we’ll see an increase in brands partnering with influencers and sharing UGC to build trust, credibility and ultimately, sales. Creators being the most authentic will thrive because people want to see real, relatable content that resonates”
Bryn Jones, Technical Director
“It seemed like 2023 was finally the year where the popularity and crucially, the capabilities, of AI and machine learning made a huge leap. In 2024, we’ll continue to see big developments and new ways of using these exciting technologies. You only have to look at the evolution of Midjourney, an image generation tool to see the staggering progress made in a short space of time. As a Web Developer, tools like Copilot and Chat GPT can be incredibly useful (when used in the right way) but they are far from perfect. They often give plausible yet inaccurate answers to prompts, so I definitely expect progress to be made here.”
Leanne Bates, Marketing Manager
“I think we’ll see way more brands putting the spotlight on their internal teams and sharing ‘real people’ stories to engage their audience. I think brands that have been reluctant to start turning to video marketing and while short-form styles will prevail, I do think we’ll see an increase in long-form video and live-streaming.”