Towards the end of every year, most marketers churn out blog posts predicting the upcoming digital trends.

Such posts either promise a marketer’s paradise or get overhyped towards new tech, say ‘AI in marketing is the ultimate future’. Maybe the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enhanced customer experience, rationalized marketing, and sales budget; but no one has really seen the future.

So, are we here to do the same?

Not exactly. It is certainly impossible to predict how the future of online business will play under the shadows of the current pandemic.

For example, there is still a large digital divide among the global population. At the same time, the current pandemic is forcing every business to have it online. Therefore, marketers cannot blindly run online campaigns. There are different levels of digital literacy, and marketers have to aim high.

Having said that, it will be a very interesting year for Solopreneurs, Startups, Small Businesses, Medium-size Enterprises to Large Businesses who are eyeing a better position in the online market.

Let’s observe the trends in online business for 2024.

How To Start Online Business in 2024?

Pillar#1: Think With Marketing First

1. Local SEO & Local Directory Listings Over Traditional SEO

While Marketers have focused on classic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies for organic growth, there has been a saturation at the top. However, what has changed over the years is that “near me” searches have increased more than 500% than before. Implementing Local SEO is the solution to take advantage of the rise in this online market.

Read on to our previous blog for determining your local SEO checklist.

One particular case of the local SEO technique is optimizing listings on local directories. These listings provide valuable information about business working hours (many of which are in constant flux due to COVID-19), services, and geographical location.

Refer to our in-depth coverage on Google My Business listings.

Also Read

Online Marketing Strategy & Trends

2. Focus on Voice Search Marketing

Technologies can be disruptive. The growing importance of smartphone devices with a voice-assistant feature is one in such direction.

Take a look at the below opinion poll conducted by HubSpot, 2019 on the use of a voice assistant

Just over 50% of respondents used voice assistance for online searches. Other experts in Digital Marketing including ColorWhistle see the need for marketing content also to be specifically optimized for voice search queries. This will help boost traffic by staying relevant and more visible to consumers.

Are you new to voice search marketing? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!

Here is one of our previous posts explaining the impact of voice search and how Marketers can implement it in their SEO strategies.

3. Shoppable Social Media Post

Source

Marketers can now make the best use of social media by selling directly on their platform through shoppable posts – introduced by Instagram, soon followed by YouTube. Engaging with creative designing agencies now becomes even more important to come up with visually-appealing social media posts for any business.

4. Depersonalizing Ads

Yes, we asked you to follow a customer-centric approach to Digital Marketing in 2024.

A study found that despite widespread concerns about consumer privacy, 72% of shoppers will only engage with personalized marketing. This goes on to say that shoppers are unsubscribing from mass email campaigns while choosing personable web pages.

Yet, targeted ads end up showing things that consumers once searched for. Marketers are only wasting money on pushing it.

Look at this experiment run by a Dutch newspaper, Much to the amazement, it turned out that profits from non-targeted advertising were higher than from targeted ones.

As a digital marketer, you can run an A/B test with and without targeted ads and look if our approach to de-personalize ads works.

5. ePrivacy Now Matters

Over the past two years, two major regulations have had a widespread impact on digital marketers – General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from 2018 and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) from 2020.

Marketers will now have to make the following preparations:

• Stay updated with industry-specific consumer privacy and consent issues
• Check with your automation platform vendors to discuss how potential privacy changes might impact your pipeline.
• You can convey the value proposition of data collected to customers. This is a good step to assure customers of their privacy concerns.

Pillar#2: Think With Branding

Branding will play a vital role in your business growth strategy for 2024 and beyond. It boosts your intangible assets such as Brand awareness, Loyalty & Advocacy; three assets that are priceless in this competitive age of marketing and advertising.

Here is how you should look at branding in 2024 & beyond:

1. Creative Content Marketing

“Brands are expected to focus on content over style in 2024:

Talkwalker report”

• The report stated that brands will start to reposition themselves, moving away from marketing methodologies to more cause-driven messaging

Read on our previous post to know everything about a successful rebranding.

• The report said that 2022 is expected to be the year brands and social media channels focus on highlighting the truth and silencing fake new
• The report showed how memetic messaging or memes marketing is now the way to communicate
• The report predicts that the positive emotions connected with the “good old days” help boost current emotions and this can be exploited for successful branding

Anonymous Source

Get started by building your own brand with Branding/Rebranding Visualization & UseCases.

2. Build Your Online Reputation

Social Media platforms remain to dominate the landscape in building an online reputation for any brand. With features like shoppable posts (as discussed earlier), constant improvement in ad algorithms, social media will remain a vital element of every marketing/branding strategy, especially earned and paid marketing.

If we are talking about building an online reputation, it goes without saying that search engines play a vital role in generating potential leads. Learn more on how to improve branding and lead generation with Local SEO.

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3. Choose Micro-influencers

Influencer marketing has gained traction with the rise in social media usage. However, since the online audience has matured enough, in the coming year 2024 and beyond, people will stop distinguishing influencer’s content from normally paid posts and will eventually turn away.

Marketers need to re-jig their strategy and instead get in touch with micro-influencers who have small still relevant reach. They can maintain closer relationships with their followers and maybe a better option than big influencers.

Additionally, brands need to project themselves as more responsible and informative. For this, they can take a leaf out from their old marketing handbook and rope-in specific not-so-popular, small-time online critics/reviewers to recommend their products/services. It still works the best!

Get inspired by 40+ Branding Ideas & Inspirations.

Pillar#3: Think With Sales

1. Sales Team Enablement – Digital Ready

As HubSpot explains, Sales enablement is the iterative process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers.

64% of sales leaders who made the transition this year met or exceeded revenue targets, compared to 50% of leaders who had not. Moreover, 68% of sales leaders say they plan to keep or implement a hybrid or fully remote sales model.

If you are looking for sales enablement services, become our partner.

2. Education Sales To Listen To Customers Through CRMs

Today, prospects spend time interacting with your website and content long before they ever speak to your salesperson. The embedded technology captures everything these prospects do – giving sales representatives an idea of their interests, profile, and challenges beforehand. ( How many times has a sales rep sold you an investment plan that you were looking at the day before? )

Small businesses mostly rely on spreadsheets and outdated data collection. If businesses aren’t embracing the use of Customer Relation Management (CRM) softwares, they are missing out on a lot.

3. Sales Automation

Chatbots can answer simple questions, trigger follow-up emails, evaluate responses, and make simple decisions. Your sales team won’t need to engage with prospects until they are qualified. The lead qualification process will also become more accurate, guaranteeing your sales team only receives the most promising leads. All these are possible only by embracing automation in sales.

Pillar#4: Think With Mobile-First Websites & Automation

More people than ever are online today. Not just online, but desktop computers are not the primary device for internet access. There is a jump of over 222% in mobile traffic over the last 7 years.

Therefore, any online business in 2024 and beyond must do “Mobile-first thinking with websites”, i.e., build/optimize their website for mobile devices.

We would encourage you to go through this blog post about the top mobile app trends – Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR) with mobile apps, Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML).

67% of marketing leaders already leverage marketing automation tools.

Technology is starting to catch up with the conversational marketing potential, with more AI-powered solutions, omnichannel conversations with hyper-realistic chatbots are now possible.

Way Forward – Digital Agency Partnerships

So far, we have taken a stock of how an online business in 2024 & beyond should position themselves. They ought to think with marketing first, move on to responsible branding, explore more remote sales options, build more mobile-friendly web applications.

If you need professional help, send a message or call +1 (210) 787-3600 our ColorWhistle team. We are a full-service digital agency also providing White-Label outsourcing services.

If you have any more questions, feel free to share it in the comments section below.