As the end of 2023 gets closer, a season of planning and setting goals for 2024 rapidly approaches. This year, there have been a lot of successes and pitfalls as a result of overcoming a small recession for businesses in every industry. One achievement that has come out of 2023, is the buzz around Artificial Intelligence, better known as AI. It has quickly been adopted by the general public at large, followed by many businesses looking to keep pace with the early adopters. In this blog, we’re going to cover some of the marketing strategies that have worked well as these new technologies have arrived, and then we’ll get to the overall topic of Artificial Intelligence at the end.
2023 Key Takeaways and What to Expect for 2024
Multi-Platform Marketing Strategy
NBC Universal finds that campaigns across more than one platform are increasingly effective. Advertising campaigns have been shown to provide a lift in these four categories: brand familiarity (+7%), brand favorability (+4%), purchase intent (+18%), and brand recommendation (+26%) with a multi-platform strategy. The lifts in metrics are a reason why ad spending is estimated to increase year-over-year beyond 2024. Currently, it’s estimated that we’ll see $756 billion in ad spend for 2024. While marketing efforts lift these listed metrics, it’s important to also maintain retention and keep your customers coming back.
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs increase customer lifetime value. The year 2023 has been a very uncertain time. It’s found that consumers are attracted to loyalty and subscription offerings through times of economic uncertainty to further rationalize their spending habits. This is especially true in fashion brands that have revamped their reward programs. One case study that has seen major growth with this strategy is Levi Strauss & Co. which has seen its loyalty program reach an astonishing 26 million members, an increase of 40% compared to the prior year mentioned in their Q2 earnings. In addition, Levi Strauss & Co. is currently seeing loyalty member’s average transaction values grow across all of their segments.
Social Media Content and Brand Voice
When building the connection between your business and customers through a rewards program, your content should reflect an emotional connection through your brand voice. Video content has been a big driver for this year, more specifically short-form video content. TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts have continued to increase in popularity resulting in a slight shift away from YouTube’s time spent on the platform with a noticeable increase on TikTok retention.
Social media is being used more than ever and it’s important to connect with your audience through organic and paid marketing. The content you produce organically and through ads should be engaging and eye-catching. It’s recommended to stay away from stock photos, as they tend to feel more ubiquitous, resulting in less engagement. You want to stand out from the crowd and the best way to do that is with your content made in-house or professionally shot by a production team. Bonus points if you add emotional appeal to your content such as humor, a sense of adventure, or happiness.
Psychologically, a target audience is most likely to trust you if you can appeal to their emotions because it makes your brand more relatable & builds a connection. Maya Angelou said this well in one of her most famous quotes: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Don’t Get Left Behind in 2024.
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room: artificial intelligence. We have three tools that we recommend. Our first notable tool for designers is Adobe Firefly, which has a variety of jam-packed features to help you in your creative process.
One of my favorite features Adobe Firefly provides that has never been done before is the ability to expand a photo’s size by extending the background with the click of a button.
While there’s AI for graphic design, there’s also Jasper AI, which is catered towards content writing. What makes JasperAI different is that it aligns with your brand and doesn’t sound generic while also being built for marketing performance. You can use templates, write in your brand voice, and even add it as an extension for your browser.
Our last recommendation is by far the most popular AI tool used: ChatGPT. On average, when you leverage the use of artificial intelligence, it has been shown to give 12.5 hours back per week, which equates to an additional 25-26 days in a year. This is a groundbreaking amount of time being saved internally and gives you time to focus on other important areas of your business. It is important to note that the use of AI still needs to be double-checked and read over, as it isn’t always perfect and can be incorrect at times. It’s likely that you will also need to make changes to the generated text as 39% of generated content typically needs major edits. It’s a great tool for gathering ideas and inspiration for marketing initiatives and learning how to do things within your professional and personal life.
Our Final Piece of Advice
Plan for SEO strategy. It’s the cheapest way to amplify your organic reach and conversions. While it can be time-consuming when you pair SEO with AI, it’s really powerful to help you align your content with search intent, improve user experience, and increase your SERP ranking. A high SERP ranking means that you will increase your organic search visibility and allow new customers to find your business more easily.
As we move closer to the end of the year, we hope we’ve given you a solid foundation of what your 2024 marketing plan should include to drive your business forward and increase the growth of your company. Thank you for reading and as always if you have any questions or are interested in our services, connect with us. We’re happy to help.