Top Priorities and Opportunities for Your 2024 Marketing Strategy (And the Challenges You’ll Need to Overcome)

The last thing that marketers want to hear going into the new year is a list of possible challenges they’ll face or new marketing mediums they’ll have to adopt. If anything, we only just got the hang of using AI in marketing — how much more can we add?

There’s one overarching 2024 marketing trend prediction that is sure to bring some relief: brands are becoming more fastidious, particular, and strategic about where they devote their efforts. This is because consumer expectations have changed. Consumers want better, deeper, richer brand experiences and they crave authenticity. 

Succeeding at marketing in 2024 will be less about doing it all — using every platform, testing out every new technology, or jumping on every trend — and more about doing the most important, valuable things well.

Here are five key marketing opportunities that you should prioritize in your 2024 strategy.

Choose the Best Channels for Your Brand

Media fragmentation is one of the greatest challenges that marketers face today. With so many channels, it can be difficult to identify which are worthy of attention. Execution requires prioritization, and marketers want to make sure that they are selecting the right channels to reach their goals.

Here’s the truth that marketers are realizing as we head into 2024: Your brand’s target audience likely spends their time on a few primary platforms, not all of them.

With the right data points, analytics, confidence, and support from leadership, you can identify the right channels and craft cross-platform strategies to reach your target audience. This might require going through lists of products and services, identifying which should be promoted on certain platforms, considering whether there are some things worth promoting in print, and overall being comfortable with a dynamic strategy that embraces the best parts of a few key channels.

Double Down on Data Privacy

Marketing has always been about engaging with the consumer and building trust in that relationship. Now, though, consumers are more wary of brands — especially when it comes to handling personal information. According to a 2023 report, more than half (55%) of consumers do not trust brands with their personal information.

Good stewardship of consumer data is table stakes: You simply cannot afford to be careless with consumer data. You know this, but it bears repeating. Data privacy and security is one of those key opportunities — low-hanging fruit, if you will — for marketers in 2024. It’s essential and it’s expected.  

It’s an incredible value proposition too, one that brands can highlight in 2024. Take Apple’s data privacy ads which make the case for the product by setting consumers at ease when it comes to common data-privacy concerns and stressors. Consumers want to know that you can be trusted, so make it clear.

Let Creativity Reign Supreme

One of the key brand marketing opportunities in 2024 is to embrace creativity to capture consumer interest. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon, haphazardly following trends, and trying a shotgun approach, marketers need to establish meaningful connections that build brand loyalty and proactively prevent competition from poaching customers. 

The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce phenomenon is an excellent example. The National Football League embraced the media storm of that relationship by incorporating funny, surprising elements into its marketing and brand collateral. 

B2B marketing is an increasingly competitive landscape but one that has, for many years, been written off as the less creative and less exciting step-sibling of B2C marketing. There’s a massive opportunity for B2B brands to change this narrative by implementing creative, unique marketing strategies in 2024 (like influencer marketing, partnerships, VR and AR, or events).

Embrace Technology to Create Incredible Customer Experience

A key part of that creative marketing equation is creating real, enjoyable, unique experiences for customers. AI technology can help brands realize this. For example, brands can convey incredible, out-of-this-world experiences through AI that would otherwise be unattainable. These experiences are unique, interesting, and different — and they capture consumer interest in the process. 

AI offers more than personalization, data analysis, and campaign optimization. It also offers the opportunity to create incredible points of connection between brands and consumers. London-based agency Velvet Badger employs artificial intelligence to streamline the creative process, fine-tune messaging, and free up time for creative ideation. But even beyond that, the agency uses CGI, VFX, and other creative technologies to create truly immersive experiences for leading brands. 

Combat Ad Fatigue by Building a Relationship

The avalanche of advertisements that customers receive today is immense. To combat buyers’ fatigue in being constantly bombarded with messages, cultivate a strong relationship with them that feels personal, solicited, and consistent. Brands that build communities — whether through social channels, on their owned websites, or through innovative, exciting campaigns that generate interest — will stay at the top of consumers’ minds without getting lost in a sea of advertisements.

In 2024, brands that build from a stable foundation — a strong brand identity, proper data privacy practices, and authentic relationships with their customers — will be able to capture consumer interest and stand out from the competition. 2024 won’t be about capitalizing on every trend to keep up with the Joneses; it will be about seizing the appropriate marketing opportunities to build relationships with existing customers and reach new audiences at the same time.