Blog

Trends Impacting Your Marketing into 2024

The financial doom-and-gloom we’re constantly hearing about cost of living and housing pressures seems to be the hero media story. Right now, however, the behind-the-scenes marketing data is showing much broader consumer behaviour, and it’s having an impact on our marketing practices.

Here are some key trends to know about that are impacting marketing as we head into 2024.

Economic Trends

You’re hearing about the financial pressures of 2023, probably even feeling them. But it isn’t a time to stop marketing – we have clients who are making money hand over fist. If you go back to any financial crunch through history – take the 2008 GFC, for example – there are countless brands and companies who made money, hand over fist.

Back in 2008, we thought our clients were going to be heavily impacted and, in turn, that we would too. It turned out to be the opposite – it doesn’t matter if it’s a bull market or a bear market, someone’s making money. A lot of the cost-of-living screams you’re hearing are on behalf of lower income earners – particularly those who bought into real estate in the last few years. Whilst they’re making loud noises – and we hear them – don’t forget there’s a huge group of potential customers who are barely noticing a thing.

What does it mean? It means you need to know your customer. Who are they, what do they want, and when do they want it. If you’re able to aim for marketing a solution that fixes a problem – time, utility, convenience, cost – then you have an extra big shot at some strong purchasing patterns.

Digital Marketing Mix: Is TikTok here to stay?

There’s a whole school of people who are still worried about TikTok as rising social media platform. Right now, there are over 350,000 business on TikTok and over 8.5 million Australians are actively using the platform every month. If you’re wearing a marketing hat, these aren’t figures you can afford to ignore.

So, is it going to stay? It is for now. The Australian Government has banned it from their – but it’s still on a strong upward trend for usage. Plus, Meta and Google have been listening to conversations and data-collecting for marketing purposes all along – including your geographic movements – the only difference is that Chinese ownership has raised a few eyebrows.

What are our thoughts? It’s really simple – get on board. It’s a digital marketing platform that is extremely undersaturated for content and digital ad targeting, and it’s currently one of the most cost-effective social media tools available to you. It has completely transformed how we plan, create and execute digital content and it’s thrown other social media platforms into a frenzy to keep up.

If there’s a ban, abandon ship. But it’s far too much of an opportunity not to take advantage.

Artificial Intelligence: Can I speak to a human, please?

If you’re working towards adopting AI in your business and marketing models, don’t cheap out on quality. People are tired of auto-bots and poor-form chat bots. Now that they’re seeing better AI, they’re also getting sick of how limiting the responses are from Alexa, ‘Hey Google’, Siri, and alternatives.

There’s a mad rush to integrate AI into businesses, but the thing that B2B markets need to keep in mind is what it all means in the B2C markets.

And what is the lesson here? Despite how much progress we’ve seen in artificial intelligence, consumers see it as a hinderance unless it’s useful. Have you tried chatting with your bank lately? They need to get with the program…

Lifestyle vs Work

There are a lot of workers who had the joy of working from home a lot, recently. However, two pressures have sunk right in. The first one is employers who are enforcing a heavier emphasis on workplace attendance. The second is a lot of people have been jumping ship to alternative employment solutions to try and keep ahead of raising costs. In both of these situations, consumerism patterns have bounced around dramatically and every business should be keeping a finger on the pulse of their core consumer movements.

But the lifestyle shift is still a bit thing: people working from home and working remotely is permanent, and the other thing that looks permanent is the focus people have on side-hustles for additional income. Whilst you’re sitting there looking at data regarding household income, the ATO are telling us that a lot of people haven’t been so transparent about the full picture of their income. In some households, there’s more money than you’re being led on to believe.

Now what?

Get on with it. You’re in marketing, you’re in business. You can’t afford to sit on your hands to ‘wait and see’ what happens – you need to build connections to new and existing customers, so now is the time to innovate.

We mentioned earlier that there are always winners and losers in any kind of market… which kind are you going to be?