AI – Tonic Consultancy

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Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan, Technology

16th April 20240

What Are The Biggest Marketing Trends For 2024

Keeping up with the continually shifting landscape of marketing can be a full-time job in itself, and just as you think you’ve got a grasp of what’s going on, it can all change in the blink of an eye. Keeping abreast of the latest marketing trends is never easy, but it’s vital to know what’s what in the marketing world.

We’ve had a look at what all the industry experts have been saying and predicting, so you can succeed and ensure you’re keeping up with the competition, if not staying ahead!

The Marketing Trends of 2024

Short-Form Video Is King

We’ve all been guilty of spending way too much time scrolling through TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels, and you may have then gone and made a purchase after watching too many short-form videos instead of working! Was it some new clothes, pet supplies, or a fancy new gadget?

But you’re not alone in this, as according to a recent survey in the US, 56 per cent of consumers admitted to making a purchase based on an ad they had seen on TikTok, and a further 36 per cent said they would be willing to make a buying decision based on short-form video ads.

These videos make a deeper connection with your customer base, and it has become simple for brands to repurpose video content into podcasts and text-based content. It’s therefore little surprise that 53 per cent of marketers are leveraging short-form videos, and 38 per cent are continuing to invest in short-form video social platforms.

While longer videos have the potential to include more information about products, brands and services, short-form use less bandwidth and appeal more to the fast-paced attention spans of online audiences across a wide demographic.

Content Creation That Aligns With Your Brand Values

According to data published by Consumer Goods Technology, 82 per cent of consumers want a brand’s values to be in alignment with their own, and a significant 75 per cent of shoppers said they had cut ties with a brand when their values conflict.

To ensure you remain on the good side of target audiences, brands need to make sure they make a point of showcasing their values on topics that have meaning to consumers. Studies found that 45 per cent of marketers will boost investment into the creation of content that shows their brand’s values, while only 9 per cent said they would be decreasing that investment.

Native Advertising And Sponsored Content Still Has Value

When a brand pays to have featured content on a third-party website, such as in the form of editorial-type content, this is an investment in native advertising. Over a third of marketers have planned to increase investment in native advertising in 2024, and over half say they will continue to invest the same amount as in previous years.

This is not too surprising, given the value that native advertising can have to brands. Unlike traditional advertising, which is designed to be disruptive and stand out, native advertising blends in and can help promote your brand to new audiences who otherwise might not have come across you before.

Native advertising ‘feels’ different to traditional advertising, and consumers are much more likely to pay attention to it, and research has shown that consumers view native advertising 50 per cent more than banner adverts.

Influencer Marketing Is Still Relevant

Influencers had a huge year in 2023, and it was nearly impossible to scroll through social media without seeing influencers promoting a massive range of products and services.

It’s highly unlikely that this trend will slow down in 2024, and 84 per cent of marketers have said they will be increasing their investment in influencer marketing this year.

By combining thought leaders with influencers in the relevant niches, brands can expand their awareness and gain new audiences from the influencer’s followers. But you don’t have to blow the marketing budget on a famous influencer, as micro-influencers with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers can be a much more affordable solution, and typically yield more success.

Leveraging AI Will Continue To Increase

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made huge leaps in the past year and is set to continue to bring changes to marketing in 2024.

In 2023, 48 per cent of marketers said they had used AI for content creation – writing blogs and website and social media copy, landing page CTAs, and product descriptions. Amazon began using AI to summarise the key points from consumer reviews to help other consumers make a more considered purchasing decision.

AI has become popular with marketers, with its ability to streamline processes and give marketers more time to do other work and pursue new projects. While there are still concerns about the use of AI, to ensure your brand remains competitive, it will be vital to look at how leveraging AI tools can help your marketing efforts.

The Return Of VR And AR

Way back in 2021, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) were being used by 35 per cent of marketers in the strategies, half of whom planned to increase their investment into 2022.

However, by 2023, a quarter of marketers had stopped using VR and AR altogether, with bulky headsets and pricey equipment being slow to be adopted. But in 2024, there seems to be a comeback on the horizon, with 84 per cent of marketers planning on increasing VR and AR investment, as VR glasses and AR apps become more accessible.

Content Marketing Trends

According to statistics, nearly half of all buyers view between three and five pieces of content before they engage with a sales rep, and brands are expected to create even more content to grab the interest of consumers, which is why, globally, brands have increased investments into content marketing.

But what are the best content marketing strategies to be investing in? Let’s have a quick look.

Podcasts And Audio Content

Podcast popularity has massively increased, and 2023 was a golden year for the format. According to a 2023 US report by Edison Research, 42 per cent of people ages 12 and older listened to a podcast in the month previous, which was up 5 per cent from 2020 and 30 per cent from 2013.

Also, 75 per cent of Americans aged 12 and older listened to online audio in the previous month, and 70 per cent in the previous week, so it’s no surprise that marketers have been keeping an eye on this trend, with 82 per cent planning to increase investment in podcasts and audio content this year.

Blogging Is Here To Stay

According to studies, 92 per cent of marketers plan to either maintain or increase investment in blogging in 2024.

Blogging has been a core component of many marketing strategies since brands first started building websites, but the tactic is far from looking out of date. Blogging has been used by marketers for so long simply because it works, with one in three marketers leveraging blogs in their marketing strategies.

According to Hubspot, most consumers read between one and four blogs every month and have then gone on to make a purchase after reading a brand’s blog. Blogs can provide consumer engagement and potential conversion, but they can also provide crucial benefits to websites by way of search discoverability.

Websites with blogs have greater search potential and can implement SEO strategies far more easily than websites without blogs.

Case Studies To Continue To Drive Leads And Brand Credibility

Case studies can help establish transparency and trust between a brand and the target audience, offering a much deeper look into how a brand’s products or services can benefit the consumer, and over a quarter of marketers leverage case studies as part of their content strategies.

Some brands may publicly publish case studies on their websites to help persuade consumers, while others offer them as a free PDF that requires a lead conversion in order for it to be downloaded.

But regardless of how it is done, marketers are still seeing a great deal of value in case studies in 2024, with 87 per cent increasing or maintaining investment this year.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Marketing will continue to change, and it’s important to keep your thumb on the pulse of the latest trends, as well as always being open to change to ensure your business doesn’t fall behind.

But if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of trying to keep up with everything, don’t worry, Tonic will always be here to help, advise, and make sure your marketing efforts are always relevant and on-trend.

An image representing AI - there is a dome consisting of wire/neurone-like connections linking computer parts to look like a cityscape

Digital, Marketing Plan, Technology

9th April 20240

AI in Marketing

How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Boost Your Marketing?

Advances in technology mean that the world is changing at a dizzying pace, and it is set to have a tremendous impact on marketing. With tools such as ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is assuming a much larger role and helping to create a wealth of opportunities for marketers to be able to do even more with what they already do best.

By combining AI technologies with customer and brand data, marketers can gain access to highly precise insights into marketing trends and the customer experience. AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and others can help guide marketers’ decision-making, helping to stay ahead of the competition as well as helping to prepare for the challenges faced in a dynamic marketplace.

Let’s have a closer look at how AI can benefit marketers and how it can be leveraged successfully.

AI in marketing

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, AI-based marketing looks set to drive 45 per cent of the total economy by 2030. This will happen in a variety of ways, including data-driven product enhancements, personalised services, and influencing consumer demand. Let’s look at how this will be achieved.

Social media listening

With AI-powered social media, your efficiency will be significantly increased as social media listening is taken to a new level. AI tools will help to provide a range of suggested terms to include in your social media tracking to help marketers reveal essential audience insights far faster.

AI algorithms will help to identify and extract the relevant details from social media listing data that can span millions of data points in real-time. This will help marketers see the wood for the trees to gain a better understanding of the customer’s thoughts via social media sentiment analysis. Marketers can then anticipate their customers’ next move, and make strategic decisions and actions.

Content generation

AI social management tools can help analyse the voice of customer (VoC) data in social media posts to help inform marketers of the content that is of most interest to the target audience.

The same tools can also help to identify keywords and triggers so that marketers can devise and develop compelling posts, respond better to customer comments, and inspire better and more impactful product descriptions for websites and e-commerce. All of this will add marketing efforts towards brand engagement for an increase in market share and better earnings.

AI can also help generate ideas that can nurture and make campaigns more successful, as well as help create more compelling communications that will reinforce relationships with potential customers at all stages of the sales funnel.

AI prompts can help devise email subject lines that will achieve a better open rate, develop personalised content that can be adapted to buyer personas, and drive conversations based on intent, engaging with each customer/client on an individual basis, ultimately leading to stronger connections and loyalty that will stimulate sales.

Automation

By leveraging AI-driven smart automation, social media managers and customer service teams are empowered to improve operational efficiency via lexical and statistical-based triggers that can help drive intelligent workflows.

This can help marketers achieve their business goals better by removing the guesswork out of tasks such as scheduling posts at the optimal times for improved impact and better engagement, or by categorising incoming messages.

It can also help unify the brand voice in customer communications and reduce response times by half.

Audience segmentation and personalisation

Omnichannel business strategies based on market segmentation can be driven by AI marketing, helping to align campaigns with customers are are more likely to be interested and buy your product or services.

Programmatic advertising can be leveraged to help streamline the process of selecting and setting up digital advertising for the best return on investment (ROI), enabling more personalised marketing strategies and tactics to grow brand loyalty and develop powerful brand awareness campaigns.

Data analysis for customer insights

AI and machine learning can provide critical customer insights on a variety of aspects to help marketers make better informed strategic marketing decisions, with deeper insights into audience sentiments concerning your brand, full audits of customer care team performance, and social media engagement metrics.

This means marketers can quickly adapt to changing marketing trends, prioritise budgets based on what aspects require the most investment, and improve customer relationships.

Reputation management

When considering brand reputation, there will always be certain elements within the control, of marketers, while there will be some aspects that are not. Brands are subject to more scrutiny than ever in the social media age but with AI-based brand reputation management, potential threats can be averted before that can become a much larger issue.

With real-time monitoring of customer sentiments, using the right influencers and brand ambassadors, and providing proactive customer care, this can all be achieved easily.

Competitive intelligence

AI can help marketers identify opportunities that can help improve products and services and help fill in gaps in the market. It can help discern competitors’ share of voice and help find intelligent ways to become more agile in the competitive market. AI can also compare your social media performance to that of competitors via competitive benchmarking, enabling marketers to adjust strategies accordingly.

Multilingual advantage

A global marketplace means marketers need to take into account any cross-cultural aspects, as well as provide prompt and efficient customer care. With AI marketing tools, marketers can extract essential customer insights from multilingual data with ease, providing data that can inform strategies for particular regions.

It can also help ensure that target audiences are easily able to find social media posts, responses, and advertisements that they find relatable and adhere to their cultural standards.

Which AI technologies enable marketing?

Intelligent social media platforms will combine powerful AI technologies to provide marketers with the insights they need to succeed. With capabilities such as semantic classification, named entity recognition and aspect-based sentiment analysis, marketers can gain specific insights into their niche, while social media content can be optimised and customer engagement can be improved with the help of natural language processing, which all leads to a greater competitive edge.

Build impactful business strategies with AI

Marketing insights provided by AI are helping to empower brands to build a stronger foundation for growth and success by exploring new marketing, product and customer engagement opportunities.

AI tech such as sentiment analysis, NLP, virtual agents, chatbots and more are helping to determine how efficiently business goals can be achieved, in everything from revenue optimisation to navigating unpredictable market scenarios.

With access to targeted AI-driven insights, marketers can develop more proactive social media marketing tactics to help drive customer engagement, loyalty and retention, and ultimately market growth.

If you’re looking for help with AI marketing, brand growth, and social media marketing, come and talk to us at Tonic today.

Blogs, Digital, Technology

11th April 20230

Rise Of The Machines! Will AI Replace Human Marketers?

There has been a lot of buzz around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing recently and in many other industries. There’s talk about how AI bots such as ChatGPT will revolutionise marketing and sales, and even how AI could replace digital marketers.

But while the use of AI in marketing has been increasing, there is not a lot of information or data about how it could impact digital marketing in the coming years, as well as tech industry leaders calling for a slowing down in the development of AI.

So Why Is AI Looking Attractive To The Marketing Industry?

Marketing can involve collecting and analysing massive amounts of data, and AI can mine this data and better apply it to advertising and marketing. As many organisations gather more specialists in data science, the concept of using AI for marketing automation becomes increasingly appealing.

But will AI replace human marketers? Before any marketers begin throwing their virtual clogs into the machinery of AI like the 15th-century Dutch textile workers fearing automated looms would cost them their jobs, let’s take a closer look.

What Is Marketing Automation?

One of the immediate benefits of using AI is its ability to automate certain tasks, thus streamlining certain processes and more effectively measuring the outcomes faster and with less effort.

AI can identify patterns faster, leading to more accurate predictions to help with marketing strategy planning, better use of marketing staff, and saving time and resources.

But as to whether AI will replace real human marketers? The short answer is no. Certainly not yet, and it maybe never will.

AI certainly will prove to be useful, but marketing will always rely on creativeness, inventiveness, and originality when it comes to finding ways to better connect with audiences and customers.

Digital marketing will always need that human touch. Marketing requires storytelling and emotion, which AI will never be able to master or emulate. But despite a reliance on the human element, it may be a fact that we will all have to accept that roles in digital marketing will change over time, just as marketing roles changed with the digital revolution.

AI will lead to an evolution in marketing roles as we begin to understand it better and how to better utilise it to provide better digital experiences.

What Can AI Currently Do?

AI can be used to enhance and simplify aspects of marketing campaigns, as well as help reduce mistakes and promote productivity. Some of the tasks that AI can currently do include:

Automate routine and repetitive tasks – AI can be used to partially replace humans in some everyday repetitive tasks and processes, such as content curation (not creation), PPC as management, and replying to certain emails.

Compilation and analysis of large data sets – AI can be programmed to learn from experience and then more easily tackle large data sets which is typically a laborious task for humans. AI can recognise patterns quickly across data sets, provide predictions based on detected patterns, provide valuable insights about your customer base, and even predict future customer behaviour.

Create digital assistants – Many websites now use digital assistants, such as chatbots which can help give 24/7 customer service, albeit with limited capabilities.

Save time and increase productivity – The implementation of AI can save marketing departments valuable time and resources, which then leads to higher productivity, as marketers have more time to spend on creative tasks and more difficult tasks that need a human touch.

Allow for experimental pilot schemes – some marketing companies have been experimenting with AI by letting it write advertisement copy, banner ads, and email subject lines, conduct digital ad buying, and create buyer personas.

It shows that there is a lot of potential for AI in digital marketing, as long as it is seen as a beneficial tool and not the T-800 Terminator sent back from the future by Skynet to take your job.

What Can’t AI Currently Do?

However, it will be a relief to know that there is still so much that AI cannot do, particularly when it comes to marketing and the human touch. Let’s have a look at what AI is incapable of doing:

Operate individually – AI is a machine, and it requires programming by humans, as well as needing to be continuously updated, and just like the everyday tech in your office, AI systems will need to be replaced when they become obsolete or the needs of the industry change and evolve.

Be creative – No technology can replace the human capacity for creativity or creative problem-solving. AI will always be limited to the data with which it is provided, and only able to draw conclusions from that data. It can’t properly edit photos, write original music, invent anything, or come up with fresh ideas.

Have emotions – AI cannot perform, show, or transmit emotions, meaning it can’t turn emotions into meaningful content that your customers can relate to along their buyer’s journey.

Make human connections – without emotions, AI cannot form genuine human connections. AI cannot be programmed to show empathy or be able to understand cultural and moral concerns.

Critical thinking – AI can excel in gathering and analysing data, but when it comes to developing strategies, it lacks the critical thinking that all humans possess.

How Can Marketers Evolve With The Introduction Of AI?

There is much that marketers can do to grow and evolve alongside the introduction of AI and make sure they keep one step ahead of the impending robot threat know how to utilise AI to their advantage.

Keep up-to-date with AI news and trends – keeping abreast of the latest development in AI in digital marketing will mean you will best know how to leverage it to your advantage. Knowledge is power, and power is knowledge.

Recognise the replaceable skill sets – Identify the skill sets that could be replaced in the future by AI, such as those routine and repetitive tasks and processes that are inevitably time-consuming and boring.

Determine which skill sets will never be replaced – Recognise which skill sets AI will not take over, such as non-repetitive, creative, and critical thinking skills. If you have experience in these, then turn your focus towards them.

Be prepared to adapt – You won’t be able to stop the impending wave of changes due to AI, but you can determine how they may affect you and how to adapt.

Be versatile – Ensure you keep your skill set up to date, and train on new technology and the latest strategies as they become available to remain versatile.

In Conclusion

AI isn’t coming for your job, but even without AI, industries and jobs evolve and change, and it’s important to remain aware and involved. Ensure you create value in yourself and your marketing skills.

At Tonic, we know the importance of the human element in marketing, so if you’re looking for the personal touch, outstanding client services, and a passion for results, talk to us today.

Tag: AI