Of the 5% of businesses that are ready to make a purchase, it is statistically unlikely that they are on the initial day-one list that B2B buyers have in mind when seeking out vendors. 90% of B2B purchases are made off that initial list, where companies land as a result of marketing, strategic influential partnerships, and a robust content marketing plan. 

Challenges for Small and Mid-Sized B2B Organizations

For larger B2B organisations, the cost of doing business, while exponentially higher, can be readily absorbed by ongoing business. Larger B2B organisations are in a better position to play the long game, providing more opportunity to take their time to reach marketing leads, and pivoting when planned returns do not materialise. Smaller B2B organisations, in their initial start-up phase, do not have the luxury of pivoting or big-spend marketing, so the client acquisition decisions are removed from operations until they reach a point where leads start to dwindle. 

The problems arise when those smaller businesses do grow into a mid-sized entity. To move from a mid-sized business to a larger one requires more business, and to escalate to more business, more clients are needed — however the statistics of new client acquisition are far from ideal. 

Smaller and mid-sized entities, with less of a marketing budget, and facing a marketing landscape that is outright difficult to break into, can thus decide that the cost of professional marketing is too high, and attempt to advertise the business themselves. While it’s an effort worth trying for smaller businesses that have some room to grow, mid-sized entities will not see the greatest benefits of marketing with DIY efforts. 

The Importance of Content Marketing and Brand

To quantify the value of marketing, it’s prudent to identify the value of a good brand and a good content marketing plan. 

• Companies that excel in personalisation generate 40% more revenue from those with little or no personalisation. 
• 89% of B2B buyers engage with content before talking to a sales rep. 
• 49% of B2B spending happens online. 
• There is a 55% increase of buyers relying on content to research and make purchasing decisions.  

Content marketing and brand are increasingly serving as differentiators in a crowded and noisy B2B marketing landscape. They function in similar ways to B2C marketing, primarily because the variations between B2C and B2B marketing are narrowing as a new cohort of B2B buyers – millennials and Gen Z – take over decision-making roles.

B2B buyers are online, overwhelmed, and looking for easier decisions to make. Marketing and a strong brand have become a non-negotiable aspect of B2B. 

DIY Marketing: a consideration of price

The reality is that, while B2B brand and content marketing is a non-negotiable aspect, smaller brands can be priced out of the conversation or have to rely on DIY marketing just to get by. This will work until the next growth stage is reached, at which point professional marketing becomes a necessity to continue meeting business demand and scale outside of existing clients. 

While DIY marketing can definitely have a short-term benefit of growth, there are some things that hamstring its efficacy in the long-run for larger businesses. 

1. Time spent on marketing. 

On average, B2B marketers at medium-and-large enterprises spend 82% of their work hours on creating content, including social media posts, newsletters, and blog posts. In addition, they send a significant amount of their time on content strategy creation, managing existing campaigns, and posting content. 

Social media and blogs alone take, on average, 3.4 and 4.7 hours respectively; ebooks, whitepapers, videos, and webinars all average nearly 5 hours. This is a significant amount of time to take out of a packed work day to create content. The hours also do not average out when taking into account that it takes upwards of seven interactions with a brand before purchasing. 

2. Lack of expertise across marketing disciplines.

Effective marketing requires expertise across disciplines, and an eye on current research, trends, and consumer shifts. For an untrained professional to specialise in one aspect of marketing, such as SEO or Google Ads, is possible, but the efficacy of those campaigns can be limited. As the discipline becomes more complex, the reality is that it will be harder for DIY marketing to reach the same level of benefit as professional marketing. 

3. Fundamental misalignment. 

A misalignment between sales and marketing can be difficult to overcome, primarily because it might be considerably harder for a non-professional to identify which of their marketing efforts is producing the misalignment. Regardless of understanding the root cause, a misalignment between sales and marketing can lead to a 10% revenue decline, as discovered by Hubspot. 

It is also one of the most common issues for B2B organisations, with 92% of companies admitting to weak alignment between sales and marketing to Forrester Research, and 52.2% of sales professionals citing lost sales and revenue as a direct cause of misalignment.

4. Inconsistency in marketing efforts 

The B2B buying cycle is fundamentally a personal one, and consistency is key to attracting high-quality leads and triggering the purchase process. Businesses that prioritise lead nurturing and engagement can generate up to 50% more sales-ready leads that they can continue to grow as a result.

Furthermore, brand consistency is another key metric that DIY marketing can struggle with, with consistent brands seeing 10-20% more revenue but more than 47% of brands admitting that they publish off-brand content a few times per year.   

5. Lack of strategic approach.

92% of B2B marketing budgets are spent on short-term, bottom funnel objectives such as lead generation, which has little effect on future buyers, and does not take into account future developments for your business. By targeting engagements that focus only on bringing short-term opportunities through the door, it is likely that the B2B marketing cycle will eventually stop producing leads and new clients, which can be difficult for a smaller business to overcome. A strategic approach ensures that clients trickle in at a steady, manageable pace that allows for the business to scale reasonably. 

6. Cost-effectiveness in the long run.

With an understanding of the right tools to use, the right metrics to monitor, and the time taken to ensure that campaigns are continuously maintained to deliver high results, professional marketing is cost-effective, a promise that is far harder to achieve with DIY marketing. On average, professional marketing will base any marketing on information generated through business operations, allowing them to tailor marketing tactics to generate the greatest possible opportunity for sales. DIY marketing may have access to the same information but without the necessary skills to adapt marketing tactics to serve that information, therefore leading to lost costs. 

Misconceptions about marketing for DIY marketers

While 67% of companies outsource their marketing needs as a matter of course, the ones that prefer to DIY their marketing have specific considerations for why they opt to keep control of their marketing. 

The top two reasons appear to be based on misconceptions. 

1. Lack of control over brand. 
2. Lack of discretionary budget to conform to agency fees. 

These matters are considerable worries, however they can be easily amended by finding the right agency to partner with. Effective marketing partnerships can allow a growing business control over the fundamental aspects of their identity, and merely strategise and build communication around what already exists. 

Budgetary concerns, on the other hand, are a little harder to overcome. For businesses that are still in the primary start-up it can be effective to retain all marketing efforts and keep them in-house – but as the business does start to grow, marketing in-house will lead to a lot of missed opportunities. 

The opportunity to outsource

Over half of B2B marketing teams outsource at least one aspect of content marketing. What this provides the company is the flexibility to prioritise their in-house operations while simultaneously benefitting from the expertise of a fractional agency. Outsourcing marketing activities allows for a better opportunity to generate content that drives leads, and leave the internal team free to continue with the work of running the business. It takes the pressure of the intensive, day-to-day monitoring and content creation away from upper management and puts it into the hands of experts who can focus solely on your content. 

For B2B organisations to thrive within shrinking market share, there needs to be an adjustment made for the state of the industry at the moment. The B2B buying cycle is long and complex, and communicating at the right time and with the right idea will make a significant difference to the business — but that path is time-consuming, and complex in itself. 

Outsourcing your marketing will at least enable you to both prioritise your business and your marketing, without one sacrificed for the other. It’s the most sustainable, economical way forward, particularly for businesses who want to pay for proven results. 

And all it takes to start with this path is the right partner. Get in touch to see how we can help you create lasting growth and success through strategic, results-driven marketing.

The post The Cost of DIY Marketing appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Get a designed PDF copy of Business Intelligence Trends 2024

If you don’t have the time to read this article now, you can download the PDF version of Business Intelligence Trends 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading.

Wait, why are we talking about Business Intelligence tech?

If you’ve been following our trend reports for the last few years, you’ll notice that we’ve never broached the subject of Business Intelligence. 

Because we’re not a tech or software company. 

Our speciality is the translation of technical expertise and experience into clear communication. So far, our trend reports have translated our own knowledge and foresight, but we understand that businesses need more than just guidance on brand and communication to excel. 

To extend the usefulness of these trend documents, we’ve collaborated with our tech partners at Cleverbit Software to deliver this report on a tool that can be the difference between surviving and flourishing for businesses of all sizes: BI. If you’re new to the field, we recommend taking a look at Cleverbit’s own content on the subject. They literally wrote the book on Business Intelligence.

But if you’re aware of the essentials, and are looking at what the next year has in store, keep reading.

Business Intelligence in 2024: Data Quality, Governance, and AI-Driven Trends

As we journey through 2024, the landscape of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing a transformation that is both profound and multi-dimensional. This transformation is not just about the adoption of advanced technologies; it’s an evolution in the very ethos of how businesses interact with data.

Businesses who have already invested in business intelligence software will have an edge above their other competitors, having been grandfathered into the functions of business intelligence before this point, however despite the significant expansion within the BI industry, 2024 makes it far more accessible to companies who haven’t yet taken the plunge – and a far greater need. Significantly more than in previous years, business intelligence software is no longer something that can be put aside because of the expense: the staggering quantity of data that is heading to business in 2024 is impossible to parse using humans. 

Main BI Predictions for 2024

1. Explainable AI to reinvigorate the way businesses consume and manage data. 
2. Natural language processing will increase the amount of data sets available. 
3. Collaborative BI technologies will be on the rise, leading to a greater proportion of cloud-based BI systems. 
4. Renewed importance for data quality and data governance.
5. The unavoidable implementation of democratic data.

Trend 1: AI will reinvigorate the way businesses consume and manage data

AI has already made an indelible mark on the business intelligence industry, however in 2024 this is going to go a step further. As organisations gear up to adapt to an exponentially larger amount of data, AI is going to provide the much-needed clarity and understanding that organisations need. Explainable AI is easy to understand –  flexible in how it is used and applicable to various use cases, allowing for any member of the organisation to understand the insights that the AI model provides and also how it came to those results. 

The integration of AI in BI tools is not just about automating tasks; it’s about uncovering insights that would be impossible for humans to find. AI algorithms are now capable of identifying patterns in vast datasets, offering predictions and recommendations that guide strategic decisions. This AI-driven approach is transforming industries, from retail where it’s used for personalised marketing, to finance where it’s revolutionising risk assessment.

AI features in BI tools are a game-changer for businesses. Features like predictive analytics, AI-generated reports, and natural language queries are making it easier for users to interact with data and derive valuable insights. These tools are becoming more adaptive, learning from user interactions to provide more relevant insights, which in turn streamlines the decision-making process.

• By 2025, more than 60% of industries will adopt easy-to-understand AI techniques in their business intelligence processes. 
• By 2027, the global AI market will grow at a CAGR of 40.5%.
• 84% of business leaders consider AI as fundamental to drive growth objectives. 

Why is this important? 

Data is always getting bigger, and as more AI models come into the fray, data is no longer just embedded in reports from integrated machines, but also in text, speech, images, and music. If it exists, an AI can analyse it – and at this the amount of data available is so significantly larger that humans will struggle to know where to start, much less to analyse it. 

Trend 2: Natural language processing widens the available data for most businesses

Natural language processing (NLP), a subfield of artificial intelligence, analyses natural language data such as texts, speech, and images; this then allows humans to ask questions of the system using natural language. Going hand in hand with the above trend, NLP in BI means that anyone across the organisation can take insights provided by BI software, and ask a few simple questions to get a few simple answers. It can understand user intent and interpret preferences according to the user, so any question can be answered within a few short seconds. 

Why is this important?

A key issue of adopting any kind of new technology is the widening skills gap in employees; while businesses have the capacity to adopt as many new technologies as their budget allows, finding people who know how to efficiently and accurately use that same technology is a much harder matter, leading to the same issues that made them adopt those technologies in the first place. Without someone to interpret and explain those results, they are no closer to understanding their insights. This effectively makes it a non-issue, as anyone with even basic technical skills can understand NLP-based insights. 

Trend 3: Collaborative BI technologies

Although it’s been a couple of years since COVID-19, the fallout is still very much impacting businesses. During the height of the pandemic, on-premises BI solutions couldn’t withstand the pivot to a largely remote workforce, necessitating the rapidfire adoption of cloud-based BI systems. At this nearly all BI and data analytical elements have been shifted to the cloud, allowing your employees to access the data they need wherever they are. 

• 40% of all workloads are already in the cloud. 
• 45% of consumers consider cloud business intelligence critical. 
• Cloud analytics solutions held 68% of revenue share, and this figure is slated to grow. 

Why is this important? 

The growing popularity of cloud-based systems opens up new opportunities for data analytics. As we move further and further away from the COVID-19 pandemic’s fallout, the changes to business will stay – especially the flexibility of cloud-based solutions. 

Beyond flexibility, cloud analytics are also overall cheaper to run, which means SMEs may find it a more accessible option for business intelligence solutions. Additionally, the cloud-based model can work out cheaper for smaller businesses, as it would allow them to access their data and analytics with a cloud-based service pricing model, rather than creating an internal IT infrastructure from scratch.  

Trend 4: Prioritising data quality governance and security

As data gains importance, so does the importance of its security and governance. Advanced encryption techniques, data masking, and access control mechanisms are being implemented to protect sensitive data. Additionally, with the advent of technologies like blockchain, data governance is becoming more transparent and secure, ensuring that data is not just safe but also ethically managed.

As a result, data quality management transcends basic accuracy. It’s about creating a framework where data is not only precise, but also fit for its intended use. With regulations like GDPR, the need for compliance adds another layer to data governance, making it a strategic priority for businesses. Advanced data governance tools are being leveraged to automate compliance, ensuring data is not only clean but also legally compliant.

Why is this important?

With every passing year, the amount and complexity of data that we have at our fingertips grows considerably, and so do the laws governing the use of that data. While legal ramifications take a longer time to catch up to the pace of technology, it always does eventually, and companies will need to comply with that data if they wish to remain in operation. Additionally, security issues can ruin a company – all it takes is one security breach, and a wealth of data will end up on the internet. As a result, companies need to prioritise both the quality of the data that they have, and maintain high security regulations to protect that data. 

Just how critical is data quality?

For a business to run efficiently, ensuring its data quality is of the highest standards is essential to mitigate operational and decision-making risks. If the data is fragmented, biased, or lacks integrity, it can have a profound impact on the overall business success. Duplicate entries, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies can lead to bias and misunderstanding of the situation for the company, and decisions made can steer the business in the wrong direction

For businesses that need that data for decision-making, this can be catastrophic. 

Trend 5: Democratic data

There are two ways in which data is democratised in 2024. 

The first is the establishment of a data-driven culture: this requires more than just access to data; it requires a mindset shift. Businesses are investing in training programs to imbue their workforce with data literacy, ensuring that every decision, from the C-suite to the operational level, is backed by data. 

The second are self-service analytics tools. Self-service analytical tools are breaking down barriers between data and decision-makers. These tools are becoming more intuitive, with user-friendly interfaces and natural language processing capabilities, enabling users to ask questions and receive insights in plain language. 

Why is this important?

This is fostering a more agile decision-making process, where insights are not bottle-necked in the IT department but are accessible to all who need them. As a result, businesses heading into 2024 and beyond have a much greater portion of their employees involved and aware of the daily decision-making processes, which leads to better operations overall. 

Conclusion 

The BI landscape in 2024 is a blend of technological advancements and cultural shifts. It’s not just about adopting new technologies – it’s about embracing a new way of thinking about, and interacting with, data. By integrating AI, prioritising data governance, and democratising data access, businesses can unlock the full potential of their data, driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving digital world.

If you are looking for a tech partner to help you navigate the world of BI and data, get in touch with our partners at Cleverbit Software. Their team specialises in guiding businesses through their data analytics and visualisation journey, bringing tangible business insights to the forefront. Find out what a BI solution could do for your business with a no-strings-attached consultation and workshop with their team.

The post Business Intelligence Trends 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you don’t have the time to read this article now, you can download the PDF version of Marketing Trends 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading.

For the past three years running, brands have been living on borrowed goodwill. They have been happily jumping onto every bandwagon without thinking more deeply than showcasing their innovative thinking. 

Consumers don’t want just innovation. Consumers want action. Consumers want the brands they follow to speak up for them. Consumers – especially the younger generation, the ones that have yet to settle their loyalties with one brand – know that their purchasing power has a way of changing the status quo, and aren’t afraid to wield it. 

In 2024, businesses are practically the only trusted institution remaining. Governments, NGOs, and media entities are all lagging behind. Their ability to influence their audiences, their equity, and the power of their voice is all eroding underneath the faster-paced, louder business presence. 

But this doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. 

And marketing in 2024 will mean very little unless this is understood very clearly by the brands doing the marketing. 

This is not a year where you can please both sides. This is a year where brands have to make a decision on which consumers they want to speak to – and to consistently speak to them thereafter. 

And they can do that by speaking where consumers will hear them. 

A snapshot of 2023: 

Marketing grows more complicated every year that passes. 

There’s new technology to use. There are new audiences to speak to. There are new voices added to an already crowded fray.  Every campaign has to be better than the ones of the year before. Every campaign has to cut through the noise of what’s happening outside the little slices of the world that brands live in. 

And 2023 had a lot of noise. The world is in crisis, and has been for a while – wars, recessions, climate crisis, growing dissatisfaction, protests on protests. 2024 will not see things get better immediately (and could possibly see things getting worse) – but as we said in our Consumer Macro Trends blog, there is light at the end of the tunnel for marketers. 

Brands just need to put in a little more work to make sure they’re on the right side of the conversation. 

Marketing trends in 2024: innovation, escalation, personalisation

Barriers between consumers are shrinking – and something that happens halfway around the world will be heard everywhere in a matter of seconds. 

But it isn’t just for bad news. Brands that do good – or at least their best to do good – will find that their accolades are shouted about in markets that they might not have previously considered – and the old method of communicating with their consumers based on their basic demographics is proving itself to be lacking when it comes to this generation of consumers. 

In 2024, brands aren’t speaking to audiences that are bound by causes, by opinions, by the way that they see things in the world, by the technology that they use, by a deep and understated need to find themselves in marketing. 

It means better conversations, deeper analysis of those audiences, and best of all, the room to let creativity go wild. 

It means innovation, escalation, and personalisation.

Trend 1: Innovation 

• Short-form video has the highest ROI of all marketing ventures. 
• 79% of consumers want to use AR before buying a product. 
• 65% of all internet traffic is conducted via mobile 

We live in an age of unmatched connection. Everything, from customer service to entertainment, is available immediately and in its full scope. 

Consumers no longer like to wait. As new technology is dreamed of, finding consumers who are willing to wait for your brand to keep up with current events is harder and harder – so, as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. 

But it’s not just a case of having a website. 

There are technologies available today that make your brand experience an experience. Whether it’s using AR to showcase your products in real time, or hopping onto the latest social media trend in video, you can’t avoid beating technology, so you might as well join it. 

In 2023, the metaverse was all the rage. This isn’t the case in 2024, but we’re seeing fringe technologies like AR and VR command attention.

It isn’t really about the tech. 

For consumers, it’s about the brand; it’s about knowing what product or service they’re buying is actually what they want. Globally, the real value of wages is down. Globally, there is a sense of being out of control, and being unable to fix the big, glaring issues that affect most of society. Something that takes them out of that state of thinking – even if it’s only a little thing – will make waves. 

Case study 

Hand in hand with ten leading ASD associations and over 100 patients, Samsung released a free app called ‘Unfear’ that pairs with their Galaxy earbuds to help people with auditory sensitivities live their lives freely. The app, which is AI-enabled, blocks distressing noises and plays sounds to cover the noises that distress that user in particular – and suppresses what it can’t block. 

 Trend 2: Escalation – deeper communication fostered

• 40% of marketers see controversy as inevitable. 
• The increase of over 2.3 million US citizens as cross-border buyers precipitates greater cross-border and no-border purchases in 2024. 
• 76% of consumers are using social media as a search engine. 

If you’re marketing in 2024, you’re marketing to the entire world – both the good and the bad. 

Brands have been slowly, inexorably going global since the creation of the internet, but it was after COVID-19 that globalisation really peaked. On the one hand, it’s an excellent opportunity to court the kind of audience that might be difficult to find locally; on the other, it means that your conversations are subject to a lot more scrutiny than they might have been initially. 

Coupled with an audience that has become increasingly stratified and a worldwide obsession with black-and-white thinking, brands have to dig deeper to make the kind of conversational connections that they used to – and that’s not taking into account the moments when those conversations go wrong. 

This isn’t bad for brand. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Consumers like this care deeply about a company – so deeply that they see brands as extensions of themselves, extensions of how they think about the world, extensions that they can proudly champion. 

While it means that brands need to be more careful about what they say, and craft their narrative to fall on the side of the conversation they want to be on, audiences today are smart and dedicated to the companies that they want to see thrive. For brands, it’s an easy win, and a hard road to get there. 

This doesn’t mean that brands will always be in the right. Controversy is part of the brand experience for 2024, and no amount of hedging your bets is going to help you avoid that.

If you find a position you’re willing to stand by, stand by it. If you find an argument you want to make, make it. If you think that an issue has no place for you to communicate in, stay quiet, and communicate about an issue you can talk about. 

Brands cannot afford to stay silent.  

What does this mean for you and your business?

You have to pick a side, and you have to talk. Controversy is unavoidable – that isn’t a bad thing. There will always be an audience that will see the side of things that you see, so if you’re happy to continue to communicate with that audience, then do so. If you’re not, you need to communicate with the audience that you are happy to talk to. 

Staying silent, pleasing both sides, and simply walking back any controversial statement has diminishing returns. It’s time for your brand personality to take the centre  

Case study 

Ahead of the release of Scream VI, QYOU created a series of interactive content campaigns that played out across social media in order to draw the interest of both new and existing fans of the franchise. They employed over 16 creators in four different campaigns that culminated in 17.5M views, 1.9M engagement, and an overall click-thru rate nearly 3x the platform’s benchmark. 

Trend 3: Personalisation – the individual, not the audience

• 56% of consumers state they will become repeat buyers after a highly personalised experience. 
• 92% of businesses will be investing in AI to create better personalised experiences.
• 62% of consumers will move away from a brand if it does not provide personalised recommendations.

The amount of data brands have at their disposal is staggering – so it isn’t surprising that consumers expect more from their experiences with brands than what they currently get. Add in the lingering effects of the post-pandemic chaos, and the fact that there is simply too much choice for consumers to make, and you have a perfect storm of consumers that both expect a personalised experience from brands, while maintaining a modicum of privacy and rigidly aware of the minor factors that can make or break a successful brand interaction. 

Think of cookies. 

Cookies offer that very personalisation by knowing you: knowing what you browse, knowing what you buy, knowing where you go when you want to read something or spend some time on the internet. However, as a result of the changing legal requirements around consumer data privacy – pushed into law by the same consumers who thrive on personalised shopping approaches – third party cookies are on their way out. 

Consumers have an overabundance of choice available to them, and there are few brands who will be able to withstand an audience deciding to switch. As consumers more heavily consider brands as an extension of their own selves, they expect to see a reflection of what they find interesting in the brand selection process to start with, and for brands to know them as well as all that collected data suggests. 

Case study 

Dove teamed up with Open Source Afro Hair Library and Edelman to launch the ‘Code My Crown’ campaign, a free to use guide that teaches young gamers and developers how to code natural and protective hairstyles in video games. The guide follows on from Dove’s previous efforts to end race-based hair discrimination in workplaces and schools and champion a real change in the world for the individual. 

What does this mean for you and your business?

You probably already have data on your consumers. Now it’s time to dig deeper into it, and find the aspects of that data that you can use to show your business knows its audience as well as they know themselves. 

This means occasionally leaning into efforts that might not result in immediate return, but can build your brand’s efforts to stand out, to speak for its consumers, and to create a real, lasting change. 

Trend 4: Fandometrics

• 83% of consumers admit that tie-ins influence purchase decisions. 
• 61% of fans enjoy seeing brands create content that relates to their fandom, provided that they make an effort to understand it. 
• 95% of 2023 content was part of a franchise. 

Fandom has come a long way from being a movement on the fringe edges of awareness; it’s now something that dictates a significant portion of the entertainment industry, and spills over into several others. Brands that partner up with fandoms tend to see a surge of interest in their products, and as 2024 rolls on, the power of the fandom is even more pronounced. 

Tie-ins, brand deals, limited edition offerings: these are all excellent ways to build a conversation with a powerful segment of modern audiences, however it comes with its own pitfalls. Fandom is particularly finicky about how brands communicate to them, and it is likely that any attempt to speak to a fandom by prioritising the brand over the fandom will not be met well. 

Figure out a happy in-between, though, and it’s an excellent way to start an organic conversation with your audience that has a lot of opportunity to keep growing. What it does mean is investing some time into understanding these audience segments – and making sure that they feel listened to.

Case study 

LEGO has recently unveiled their kid-friendly metaverse, a multiplayer crafting-based spin-off of Fortnite, one of the most popular games for the segment they are targeting with over 400 million registered users and around 80 million active players per month. This continues on from Lego’s increasing attempts to digitise their offerings, following their online loyalty program launch, Lego Insiders, this past August. 

What does this mean for you and your business?

Fandom is powerful, and fandom can make you money – but if you’re going to wade into this facet of marketing, you need to know the fandom you’re speaking with will almost certainly be split into factions, and that pleasing all of them is going to be difficult. However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid it: not at all. Study the way other brands interact with fandoms. At the end of the day, this is another conversation, another tie you can build with your consumers, another form of data that you can use – and done well, it has immense potential for lasting brand relationships. 

And in the end…

Business has come a long way since 2020. What started as an upheaval due to COVID-19 has become a completely new way of doing business – and, as a result, a new way of marketing. 

This would be the part where we say there’s no wrong way to market. 

It would be a lie. 

It has become increasingly obvious that the way marketing works has changed, and both marketers and brands have to walk a fine line. Partially due to brands’ easy access to a near never-ending audience, partially due to the fact that that same audience is tired of being marketed to, marketing is no longer as effective as it used to be, and more thought has to go into the messages being relayed to consumers. 

This means understanding those consumers, and also understanding that there is a limit to the amount of marketing messages that those consumers will absorb, much less listen to. 

But this isn’t new. This is the continuation of something that started before now, with a deepening pattern of globalisation and audiences that are inundated with a barrage of information at all times. 

It isn’t hopeless. Most brands can easily pivot into communicating in ways that matter. 

But it takes time, and it takes understanding your audience – and how it changes from one year to the next. 

If you struggle with that, and you need some extra advice, we can help you.

The post Marketing Trends 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you don’t have the time to read this article now, you can download the PDF version of Brand Storytelling Trends in 2024: Back to Basics for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading.

Narrative is the most human trait. 

It defines us as a species – we are able to tell stories to each other with the intent of changing someone else’s mind. Without the ability to convey a narrative, we are just free-range monkeys.

Since it is that old, one may argue that narrative doesn’t change much – in essence it either tells us a story to motivate us (you will look great in this outfit) or to scare us (protect your business from cyberattack).

But the stories that surround us, the ones that get us to pay attention and eventually change our behaviours or beliefs, are the ones that are in tune with what’s going on around us.

The word on the street, the zeitgeist, the meme du jour, the trending tweets (fuck X), this hour’s TikTok dance… while these might all fit within the structure of a core narrative, they speak to us about what’s going on right now. 

And we live right now.

As 2023 comes to a close, here’s a look at the narrative trends that could shape 2024. 

After all, a year is just a collection of the stories that it leaves behind.

As always, strong narratives will win the game. 

When the ‘noise’ gets louder, as audiences are bombarded by even more messages from even more sources, it is the strong stories that will stand out.

Think of it as signal-to-noise ratio. Our stories need to be a strong signal if they are to stand out from the noise.

And it isn’t just about the narrative. It’s about how that narrative gets to where it needs to be. It’s about how that story lives in whatever medium it is told in.

Audience-driven insights

There are three underpinning insights that will most likely dominate narrative trends in 2024.

The general frustration in a post-truth era. 

Not knowing what narrative is true, having stories that reach us devoid of crucial context, and faced by an overwhelming stream of contradictory information, audiences will respond positively to anything that appears unequivocal. This is further complicated by the era of generative AI. As audiences are exposed to more content that’s generated by minds made of silicon, their ability to discern what’s real, what’s human, and what’s been made up by machines continues to sow doubt.

Lack of time, lack of interest

Consumers oscillate between being very busy or being bored – both states welcoming brevity over depth. While this has plenty to do with the behavioural shift towards doomscrolling, it still favours concise storytelling that grabs attention.

Data privacy determinism

Finally, there is the reluctance of audiences to go on trading large amounts of information about themselves in exchange for products such as social networks. This trend is, for now, on the fringe compared to the other two but it will have consequences on the way we tell our stories.

Market-driven insights

Particularly in B2B marketing, more marketers are citing a lack of resources as their major stumbling block. With an ever-expanding set of tools at our disposal, the spectre of a recession, and narrower margins almost across the board, this comes as no surprise. 

There has also been a steady rise in the use of paid media. While smart content marketing and first-party data strategies reduce the dependency on paid media, a surprising number of marketers admit to operating without at least a 12-month plan, let alone a strategy for sustainable communication.

On the other side is the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, giving small marketing teams the tools they need to punch well above their weight, saving money on content writing, planning, and even the need for additional human resources. This is a big thing – AI has become part of the marketing tech stack within a shorter timeframe than any technology has.

This time last year we weren’t speaking about AI unless it was in very specific and very tech-oriented spaces. This year, 3 out of 4 of those working in B2B marketing say that they use at least one AI tool at work.

As resources appear to shrink and new tools emerge to help the industry do more with less, we should be seeing briefer, more punchy pieces of content that, happily, suit the ever-shrinking amount of time audiences are willing to give up.

On top of this is the sheer volume of data that is available to anyone who wants to communicate. Narratives that are driven by data will be the ones that reach their target with the highest degree of precision, winning on cost-effectiveness and efficacy.

Narrative Trends in 2024

Trend 1: Inter-ACT

• Interactive content saw 52.6% more engagement than static content
• 52% of marketers find interactive emails as the most effective form of marketing.
• 88% of marketers see interactive content as a way to differentiate themselves

The data is clear on this and it isn’t surprising. In an era where most of our distribution platforms are interactive, there is little reason to produce static content, particularly when interactive content sees over 50% more engagement than static content. 

The same applies to interactive emails, with over half of marketers experiencing more engagement from interactive emails than static ones.

What is surprising about this trend is that it sounds obvious and yet marketers seem reluctant to go the extra mile and think in terms of interactivity. Broadcast media like TV and radio had a good run that lasted decades but their time as dominant players is over. Thinking like broadcast is the only method of reaching an audience is to remain stuck in a time when today’s tools aren’t available.

You’ve seen influencers try their hand at interactivity: “What’s your favourite ice-cream flavour?” As simple as this sounds, it is an invitation to interaction with the lowest barrier to engagement possible.

Let’s learn from this practice (but implement it better) by thinking of friction. If we produce interactive content, we must give audiences the pathway to reach out that has the least friction possible. Let us make it easy and interesting for our audiences to interact and be sure to offer a good reason (read ‘reward’) for them to reach out.

In a sea of one-way comms, interactive content is a chief differentiating factor. It tells your audiences that you’re up for conversation and, done well, it tells them what kind of chat you’d be happy to have. It turns your brand into that person we’d meet for a coffee, knowing a good conversation is to be had. 

And that’s the start of a friendship right there.

Trend 2: Authentically Human

• 51% of marketers consider differentiating their content the biggest challenge with the rise of AI tools.
• 54% find the amount of content available overwhelming, but find the quality lacking
• 31% of marketers find AI-generated content quality to be lacking

During the time when fast-food restaurants were on the rise, traditional restaurants tried to differentiate themselves by writing ‘home-made lasagna’ on their menu boards. 

We knew it wasn’t true but we willingly bought into the distinction.

As AI-generated content improves in its coherence and quality, it is becoming harder to tell what’s been made by a person and what’s been generated by an AI. Meta has launched a series of AI influencers, each able to interact with millions of humans at the same time without missing a beat.

The chances are that a third of the content you’ve read today has been, at least in part, created by an inanimate device. And this is set to increase as more and more of the workforce climbs over the perception hurdles and adopts this tech in some form or another.

The result is that there will be more efforts to distinguish AI-made content from human-made content. 

And content that can be verifiably created by a human will score points for authenticity.

This is not to say there is anything wrong with machine-made content. It is simply an echo of the way humanity reacts to new technologies. When every leather handbag was stitched by a human hand, there was little to distinguish one from the other. Now that machines stitch most bags, the handmade becomes more valuable.

This blog was written entirely by a pair of human hands and a kitten’s paws      sfl,,,,,.                                 Bv jik eeeerrrrttt

Trend 3: Brevity is the soul

• 94% of marketers agree that short articles is the most popular form of content
• 95% of all content distribution happens on social media
• 47% of marketers put all their content in images

We are all competing for attention all the time. We are also afflicted by an epidemic of ever-decreasing attention spans.

This ushers the era of short headline-style content that conveys as much information as possible in as short a consumption moment as possible. By ‘headline-style’ we mean any form of content that one can consume in a very short time. Memes, gifs, zero-click content, images, and short videos all qualify. 

What about long-form content? Longer reads, in-depth podcasts, long-form video, and other forms of narrative that are involving or longer to consume still have their place in telling a complete story. 

We just need to lead to them with a much shorter hook.

This should not be an issue for content creators. It is good practice to find the shortest possible way to convey a message while retaining clarity and all necessary information. As the trend towards brevity gains more traction, cunning storytellers will find new ways of telling short-form narratives.

Ultra-short form, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it form of content, is something of a novelty in mainstream comms but it has been quite standard in niche and closed-group circles, especially those composed exclusively of Gen Z and younger individuals. The move from niche to mainstream is inevitable and we will see more content that’s ultra-brief, usually depending on a link to an established narrative that we, the audience, are already aware of. Think of this kind of content as a mass-appeal in-joke.

Another useful angle to this trend is the creation of micro-moments within longer narratives. These serve as little breaks, giving our audiences a short reprieve from longer form content in the shape of a snack-sized piece of content that’s there to distract for a moment. Micro-moments can be informative, entertaining, or even a simple change in content delivery method (like a 5 second video within a blog post) and that help keep our audiences engaged for a little longer as they skip down the path of your defined user journey.

In essence, however, brevity is an ever-appreciating commodity:

1. Scrap useless words (or scrap words completely)
2. Lead with a benefit
3. Consider the appropriate platform
4. Link to a wider story
5. Grab attention in 5 seconds or less

Trend 4: Data destiny

• Data storytelling has increased by 233%.
• 93% agree that data storytelling boosts revenue.
• Consumers are 63% more likely to remember data if it’s presented as a story.

We’ve had accurate and real-time consumer data available to us for decades now. We’re used to data feeding into accurate targeting, consumer insights, and campaign optimisation, to mention just a few ways in which data carves the messaging we create. But having much more data available to us is not enough to form an emerging trend.

The trend is being shaped by data storytelling itself. Presenting data alone isn’t enough. There is no story to a statement that says “62% of consumers prefer this drink to its competitor”. A story alone is interesting but it is much more captivating when backed up by real numbers. And this is the basis of data storytelling – the way we can use data as a component of an engaging narrative.

Over the past 5 years, data storytelling has grown by 233%. Which forms the shape of a gentle trend but this is set to grow significantly next year as the technology that’s available to us boosts this trend from multiple angles.

The intelligence that was needed to properly harness data for storytelling purposes was reserved for companies with deep enough pockets to afford powerful Business Intelligence and market research capabilities. As AI services become affordable to all, the ability to spot behavioural patterns in huge datasets reaches the masses.

Tugging this trend from a completely different angle, but pulling it in the same direction, is the ever-increasing epistemological crisis – we simply don’t know what the truth is any more. Data-driven storytelling is one way to let the market know that what you’re saying is rooted in an unquestionable truth.

Another way of looking at this trend is a shift of narrative from the ‘what’ to the ‘why’, particularly in the case of B2B narratives. It takes us from “this is what people do with this product” to “this is why people change their minds and here is the data to prove it”.

Finally, there is much to do with the way our brains are wired. While we tend to understand the numbers, we don’t remember them. We are 22 times more likely to recall a story than numbers alone. The linking of story and data is a combination that bends credibility with memorability and it is this confluence that will create powerful narratives going into 2024.

There’s more

The trends that have been shaping up over the past few years are digging in deeper and turning from trends into mainstays of commercial narrative.

The desire for authenticity and transparency isn’t going anywhere. If anything, it is being reinforced by the difficulty our audiences experience with being certain about what is real. Deep fakes, AI personalities, the distorted narratives around politicised events, and all other forces that distort the stories that describe our world raise more questions than they answer. Demonstrable authenticity, aided by data-driven storytelling, will form the mainstays of the stories that matter.

This demand for authenticity will favour human-led narratives and put even more value on the local and the hyperlocal. The closer to home a story appears to be, the more likely we believe it to be authentic and relatable.

In the same vein, the humanity of our narratives, the ability of our content to be consistent with who the organisation is, what it stands for, and how it is different from all others, will be the currency by which the greatest stories are measured.

Finally, we remain ever hopeful that this will be the year of A/V/XR, the year when the market finally sees excellent VR hardware at mass-market pricing, paving the way for truly immersive content. Apple’s launch of their high end device is little more than a proof of concept and was aimed at studios and content developers but a launch of this nature usually portends a shift towards a more widely accessible product. When it happens, a third dimension will really be added to the content we produce and consume.

2024 the year of human lore

The art of storytelling won’t suddenly become more important in 2024. It has always been the way we stood out from the rest of the animals on earth and will continue to do so.

But there are trends that will define the year and they will be greatly influenced by the tools we have at our disposal and the general behavioural patterns of the market.

More than ever before, stories backed by facts and figures in a post-truth world will win on authenticity. We do have more data available to us. Let’s use it wisely to reach the right people with the right message.

The right message is never noise – it feels personal and stands out from the rest of what’s being said by appealing to us in a way that’s respectful of our time (brevity), of our intellect (clearly useful to us), and of our identity (a match in fundamental values).

The right message is also one that honestly promotes diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DE&I). While this was a brand trend a few years ago, it has gone from the fringe to the boardroom and that will strongly influence the narrative of 2024.

And while this is nothing new, we must endeavour to differentiate by telling a unique story. It seems like one out of every two pieces of content is a repost from another channel. And half of that again is a poor rehash of a trending topic. In a sea of sameness, the original will stand out.

Keep it short. Keep it relevant. Keep it human. Keep it unique.

The post Brand Storytelling Trends in 2024: Back to Basics appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

We’ve been working on trendwatching for the past five or six years. We look at trends consistently in our day to day work, but once a year we compile the top trends in major industries and verticals into a series of documents and eventually into a large book of trends for the year.

In all our years of working on them, we’ve never had such a major shift from one year to the next. Generative AI has taken the world by storm.

What seemed like a soft launch of a new tool by OpenAI at the end of 2022 served as the catalyst for a whole new world, affecting every industry in some way or another.

There seems to be a gold-rush by businesses to accelerate the process of automation, using machines to save on wage costs and the complexities of managing teams. This is, in my opinion, a very short-sighted way of looking at things. If you’re only seeing the rise of AI as a way to save on salaries, then you’re probably looking at it in the wrong way. You might save in the short term, but you’ll be bitten in the backside before too long.

Human behaviour is changing at a much more moderate speed, so we still see overlaps from one year to another around what people expect from businesses, however the dawn of generative AI has brought AI (in all of its forms) to the forefront – making it front and centre on people’s minds as they plan for 2024.

The biggest issue with AI is that it’s moving at such a rapid speed that most people tend to be scared of it. On the one hand you feel like you’re missing out if you don’t keep abreast with everything that’s going on in the industry, on the other you’re overwhelmed by the constant changes, and it makes it kind of tempting to just bury your head in the sand and wait for it all to settle down.

I’m not holding my breath. I don’t think it will settle down any time soon, so my advice to businesses is to really keep on top of things in every way you possibly can.

The revolution is coming and you don’t want to be on the guillotine when the blade drops.

Today we’ll look at what becomes ever more important as we head into a world of constant change.

As every business around you gets access and knowledge of the AI tools around them, you have to work even harder to figure out what makes you special. What makes you stand out, either in a crowded market or in a market that’s being taken over by AI tools.

Humanity

It might seem bleedingly obvious, but as we move into a world of extreme automation, our humanity comes at a premium. There are tools out there that make it easy to personalise messaging at scale. Tools that help us create the mythical “audience of one”, but these are tools. 

Within areas of your business that you can easily automate, using technology makes perfect sense. But in parallel ensure to use the time you’re saving there to create better interactions with your customers and clients. Don’t see the time savings from automation as an opportunity to save money, see them as a great opportunity to give your people more time to build and maintain authentic relationships with your customers.

This will help you stand out from a crowd that is increasingly looking for efficiencies and ways to save money. They’re pushing themselves into extreme commoditisation, effectively creating the perfect environment to be replaced entirely by machines.

Brand

We have been preaching the importance of brand from the inception of the agency, but the need for a great brand and a deliberate brand narrative has never been as acute.

And as you work on your brand, look for the aspects that make you stand out, the elements that add that touch of authenticity that people out there are so desperately looking for.

Don’t hide behind broad strokes statements. Don’t try to be everything for everyone. That time has gone, people can build individual chatbots to do exactly what they want, they expect specialisation, and it will only become more important as time goes on.

People

As we forge ahead with including AI and automation in every aspect of our business, there’s one aspect that we should never neglect or automate parts of, and that’s the relationships that we have with the people around us. 

Your team is, and should remain, one of the aspects that deserves most of your real attention. The people who work with you should always feel as if they’re being treated with decency and authenticity. They are at the core of what makes you unique and, if you neglect them, they’ll quickly find that they can move on.

It might seem tempting to let them do so as you automate more and more, however you have to remember that your clients want to interact with humans, and even if machines can do so much, there’s always an element of bringing everything together that only humans can do (for now, I know).

While it might seem to be extra work to keep them motivated and excited about your brand, they’re the ones who will drive it forward because they can feel an affinity to it (and to you, hopefully) that can’t be felt by machines that are built to automate.

Handmade/humanmade

If we look at the industrial revolution we can quickly see that there will be a great percentage of tasks that will be automated, and this will happen at a much faster pace given the technologies we’re seeing on the market today.

But over the past decade, we’ve seen a resurgence of importance being placed on human-made products and services. This will become more acute as services become increasingly automated. Tasks that can be automated will invariably be automated, but that puts even more value on things that have been made, designed, written, or shot by humans.

Take a long hard look at the aspects of your business that benefit from being made by people, and concentrate on becoming better at them, and in the process becoming better-known for them.

And in the end…

Look at the aspects of your business (and life) that can be automated. Work hard on getting the advantages that AI will give you, but keep one thing in mind: focus on the stuff that you’re good at. Don’t let the AI revolution blind you. Remember what makes you you, what gives your business the edge, and focus on making that better, no matter whether it can be automated or not.

The post AI & The Big Reset appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Fair warning, this is a relatively long read. If you don’t have the time to take it all in now, you can download the PDF version of Business Trends for 2024 for free by clicking below. Otherwise, just keep reading!

Businesses have a lot to combat in 2024. 

The U.S. election cycle. Ongoing unrest in the world. Stricter climate measures shepherded by world governments. Shrinking talent pools and competition for limited resources. A heap of new technologies and subscription services that will provide ever growing amounts of data. 

We’ve already spoken a little about consumer trends, the backbone of trendwatching itself. 

Businesses are no different from consumers here. They are equally impacted by current affairs, and they  should adapt to the changes that are coming their way. Consumers are a ruling class. 

Businesses are what they rule. One feeds into the other. 

2024 business trends can carry on from where we left off. Consumers want personality, immersion, and quality in their services. 

Businesses need simpler data, upskilled employees, and go-to-ground strategies to deliver those promises.

A snapshot of 2023

The pandemic might be over, but the fallout across industries is still a key concern. Manufacturing, shipping logistics, and the price of goods have remained higher than pre-pandemic levels, and it is likely that we won’t see a downturn as limited resources continue to make production difficult.

But beyond the issue of deliveries, there is an issue of capacities. Burnout is on the rise, with 42% of businesses reporting burnout in their workforces. A shrinking talent pool has made it difficult to fulfill some of the legacy roles that have built modern business, such as lead IT and development. The creation of new automated technologies and business intelligence software has also led to the creation of increasingly niche jobs, many of which have limited experts available, and where training may take years to produce employees of that same calibre.

And while AI has definitely increased the productivity of companies, it is also significantly increasing the operational costs of businesses who are opting into the strategic advantage of AI as they pay for access to those AI models. 

2024: the year of simple data, employee prioritisation, and strategy

The biggest driver for 2024 is AI. 

How AI can increase productivity. How AI can help you brainstorm ideas. How AI can pull your human employees away from tasks that are time-consuming and repetitive, better left to a computer. How AI can help enhance the creative you put out. 

AI is a tool that consumers can have diverging opinions on. AI is a tool that consumers can opt out of.

For businesses, it is a necessary asset. There is no future for businesses that opt out of using AI: every industry has been redefined in the last handful of years to require it. 

But AI used for AI’s sake is not going to help. 

In 2024, AI in business means simplifying the data you work with. It means prioritising the roles your human employees play in your organisation. It means developing a strategy that balances resilience, sustainability, and innovation.  

Here’s what that looks like.

A note on trendwatching

Trends exist because consumers exist. Your business exists because you have consumers who make purchases – and those consumers will change their minds as the circumstances surrounding their lives change. 

To understand where trends are coming from means you understand your audience, and that means your business always has its finger right on the pulse of what will work. 

Do businesses need trendwatching?

Every business benefits from trendwatching. Consumers are influenced by the environments in which they live and survive in, and with the way the world is changing, brands have become a way for these customers to showcase what side of history they are on. They use brands as an extension of their value, their personality, their beliefs; they use brands to communicate with other, like-minded people who also use those brands. 

And every business around the world is potentially tied to one of these expressions. Trendwatching means that you are always on the right side of what your audience wants to see. 

Trend 1: Data downscale

• From 2023 to 2025, data will balloon from 120 zettabytes to 181 zettabytes of information. 
• 30% of businesses are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data. 
• 90% of generated data is unstructured. 

Businesses need data to function. 

But simply having that data isn’t enough. Most businesses have more data than they actually need, and no idea what to do with it. Every day, we add more data to the pile, so businesses need to parse through their numbers much faster than they used to. 

Turning that data from numbers and statistics into usable information about their audiences is a job for that self-same AI. 

They need to know which of their products is exceeding their expectations, which of their services has started to dip in efficacy, and what their customers are spending the most time on. 

When social media was still a major change to the business landscape, that data came in dribbles. 

This is no longer the case. 

Businesses in 2024 have too much data to keep track of – and most of the data that is generated and given to businesses today doesn’t fall into neat categories that businesses can look over at their leisure. The rate and speed at which businesses obtain data has become unmanageable and an area that is actively losing businesses profit that they could be making. 

For 2024, AI-led data summaries will become crucial for businesses to start cutting through to the heart of the data that matters to them. AI trained to summarise and produce insights off given BI datasets is going to be a wise investment for organisations in 2024, and will become an essential tool for organisations by the end of the year. 

How does this trend benefit bigger businesses?

Businesses generate data from an enormous number of collection points: transaction rates, digital touchpoints, physical retail, socials, campaigns… – and bigger businesses may have more data to contend with than those that are still in the start-up phase. If it hasn’t happened already, these organisations are already inundated with too much data for them to make meaningful, impactful decisions, and it’s far past the time when an investment in data management should be made. 

How does this trend benefit smaller businesses?

Setting up your smaller business with the capacity to both handle big quantities of data and generate decisive summaries of that data means the path going forward is much smoother in the long run. As these businesses continue to grow and generate more data than they need, AI-powered analysis can help set them up to only draw the relevant information out of a sea of content. 

Trend 2: Employee initiative extensions

• 44% of employee skills will see disruption in the next 5 years. 
• 73% of businesses consider most employees to require reskilling due to AI. 
• 1 in 16 employees may have to switch jobs as a result of changing work habits.

Employees determine the success of your business. 

They are also vastly underprepared for the years that are to come. 

Employees in 2024 are facing an unmitigated change in their working environment, one that will force them to change the way they work the same way Gmail and Google Drive and Slack did. With every business diving feet-first into AI to try and streamline processes, employees face a reckoning to  develop a skillset for a tool that is in its infancy, and won’t see the end of its early development cycle without drastic change. 

And beyond the necessary need to upskill, there is the additional concern that many employees are facing: Where will they fit into work if AI is coming for their careers? 

For 2024, businesses need to invest in their employees: in upskilling them to prepare them for the year to come, in making sure that there is continuous development to address concerns, and in giving their employees a reason to remain with the business.

How does this trend benefit bigger businesses? 

Your biggest asset is always going to be your employees. For larger businesses, investing in your employees now means that the risks of them leaving to find jobs in other sectors is minimised. Retaining employees and upskilling them rather than hiring for new positions is fundamentally better: both from an economical perspective as well as a company culture one. 

How does this trend benefit smaller businesses?

Hiring new employees is expensive. Smaller businesses who are operating on smaller profit margins than larger organisations will struggle to maintain profits if they’re continuously looking outwards to fulfill new roles – and with the shift into new operations affecting every organisation regardless of size, upskilling employees becomes a necessary lifeline for smaller businesses. 

Trend 3: Strategising for sustainability

• 75% of CxOs have increased their sustainability investments.
• 82% of consumers will only buy from companies who match their values.
• 60% of consumer purchasing behaviour is tied to the ethical and environmental aspects of a business, and this increases by 10% YOY.

If sustainability wasn’t a business concern up until now, it’s going to become one in 2024. Consumers are increasingly driven by their values, and paying far greater attention to what a company does – or does not – do. Boycotts, which have historically proven to be one of the less effective methods, have started to gain efficacy as consumers refuse to populate businesses which no longer share their values or act in a way they don’t like. We’ve seen threads of this in previous years, but it is becoming a matter that businesses can no longer put off. 

And it involves a lot more than just green initiatives.

Businesses will get no more second chances from here on out. They are communicating with a population that is disaffected by its experiences, and has determined that there must be a line drawn somewhere. For most businesses, that line exists in black and white, and they will fall on one side or the other depending on consumers’ personal preferences. 

Sustainability in 2024 is resilience. It’s staying afloat in the face of both the internal – remote working, employee talent shrinkage – and the external factors. It’s realising that businesses, now more than ever, have become a language to the people they service – and it’s realising that, to remain on the right side of that language, they have to pivot, over and over again. 

Data. Skills. Sustainability. 

Businesses who want to move forward in 2024 will not find these trends surprising – but the speed at which these factors have developed is leaving very little room for error. 

But there’s hope, still. Businesses can find their way back to what they set out to achieve, find a purpose that fits them, find values that they want to champion. Where all the other work is external, 2024 will have businesses focusing internally, on what they can do with resources they already own or resources they should have in play. 

And if they’re not quite sure what those resources are, there’s companies that can help them figure it out. 

We’ve published these trend reports for years. And we’re always willing to help – just drop us a line!

The post Business Trends for 2024 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Trends and emerging behaviours can affect an entire industry. This applies to your brand or company if you’re in the industry that’s seeing this shift. New opportunities, drastic shifts, or even a stable, long-term change to the industry situation can be the result. Here are some insights we have gained from a retrospective look at industry trends:

• Be strategic in Content Marketing and document it
• Have a dedicated Content Marketing Team
• Measure the effectiveness of Content Marketing through ROI accurately
• Prioritise the audience’s needs over yours when it comes to Content Marketing
• Instagram was the platform with the highest ROI

It’s all about communities (and valuable content)

• 54% of surveyed technology companies are confident in investing more in creating communities.

Companies should try more than ever to build a community that has an interest beyond just products/services. Values, vision, mission, and goals are a powerful mechanism to keep people engaged and interested.

Consumers want to know more about your company. Today more than ever, buying a product is often a personal statement. Therefore, companies should do all they can to build a community that has an interest beyond just products/services.

What do I do about this?

To build a community, it’s important to figure out what your specific audience finds interesting. More specifically, ask yourself who the company wants to target and why. Community building is not about imposing your will on potential customers. Rather, it is a two-way game of positioning yourself (in terms of values) and recognising what is important to your target audience. People out there build the community, not the employees, the CEO, or the company itself. Content should be created to match the current customer journey. Content should add value to the community.

Class, not mass

• Experts predict that a mass of (low quality) content will be produced with AI and flood the market.

Generative AI is now accessible to everyone and can be used for content creation. Therefore, many will not check or adjust the content in detail, which can lead to an immense wave of unqualified and undifferentiated (or even factually incorrect) content.

What do I do about this?

Generate high value content. What does high value mean? Tailor it to your target audience and their needs. You could do good and talk about it, show your workflows, and engage in discussions with your audience. Help readers reach their goal and understand the reason for their search and pain points. Ask yourself what is the benefit of your content for each of your audiences regarding their goals. Use AI as a tool not as the solution. HubSpot mentioned that Generative AI can be very good for idea generation, text improvement or information retrieval. At the same time, be critical, check the content, and give it a personal touch.

The new use of Social Media

Social Selling

• McKinsey predicts that in 2025 5.2% of all e-commerce will be  made by Social Commerce.
• Hubspot anticipate that in 2023 more sales will be generated via social media platforms than via the company’s own website.

Social media is increasingly being used for sales transactions. Social Selling is a major selling point in China and even in America it is too big to ignore. Someone scrolls on Instagram and sees a great piece of clothing or is reminded of their recently broken cable and has the opportunity to buy the products directly on the platform.

What do I do about this?

To sell on social media, brands need to establish trust on these platforms. Users ask questions about security, legitimacy and quality. This raises questions such as: Can I return it? Is it really genuine? Is it of the same quality as on the brand website? At this early companies can develop structures to exploit this new sales source.

Customer Service

• About 20% of GenZ, Millennials or Gen X have sent a message on social media to contact customer service.

Social Media is an easily accessible source for consumers to contact a company. Therefore, it’s no wonder that customers are increasingly contacting companies via social media.

What do I do about this?

Companies should train their customer service department on this and work closely with the social media team. As part of the emerging trend of “social selling,” these inquiries may become more frequent. See it as a chance to gain trust and to build a long term relationship with a customer, if you are able to solve their problems fast and with patience.

Social SEO: Social media as search engines

• Social media are supplementing search engines. This is a prediction from Hubspot.

The reason lies in the change in search behaviour. Consumers use various sources of information, including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

What do I do about this?

Evolve your information points to take advantage of this as a company and stand out. The integration of keywords/hashtags is essential and an easy and consistent username is convenient for consumers to remember. Make it as easy as possible to find your company throughout the whole internet. You can use these sources for research as well to be up to date.

Your opportunity

Trends can change drastically from year to year, but they will still affect the way your business will grow and change in the coming year, and so it’s vital that you pay attention to what’s happening around you. Whether you’re a small enterprise or a large corporation, trends can still bite into, or create profits.

If you’re struggling to make sense of how to use these trends, we’re always happy to help, so drop us a line and let’s do this!

The post Navigating industry shifts with trends in content marketing appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you haven’t opened Twitter for a couple of days, we invite you to do so now: just log onto the webpage, and look in the upper left corner. If you’re seeing the new logo for the first time, sit with it for a moment. 

This is the new phase of Twitter, one that’s moving forward without its eponymous blue bird. 

For twelve years, Twitter has been the place where people went to talk. Then Jack Dorsey left, Elon Musk took over, and the new vision for Twitter has been in play since then. A little over one year into his tenure as Twitter CEO, the first of some massive, divisive changes have rolled out – and it started before the blue bird’s departure. 

Here’s what it means for your business, and what we’re looking at for the future. 

Twitter: A Timeline

Let’s go back to the beginning. 

2006: Twitter launches and CEO Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet. 

2007: The South by Southwest conference sees a ballooning of Tweets from 20,000 per day to 60,000 per day, starting a period of cascading growth. 

2008: Hashtags are officially supported. 

2010: Twitter launches ‘promoted tweets’, kicking off its potential as an advertising platform, though it never quite catches on. 

2011: Twitter overhauls its design. 

2012: Twitter purchases Vine, a shortform video platform, bumping its rating up to 17+ in Apple’s app store. 

2013: Twitter launches Twitter Music, an app for the iPhone. 

2014: Twitter announces the release of new anti-harassment tools to combat one of its main growing issues – rampant abuse on the platform.

2015: Twitter showcases its new marketing platform partners, opening up the opportunity for marketers to target ads to specific audiences. Tweets are now seen in Google’s search results. 

2016: Vine discontinued and the Twitter Dashboard, its business app, is shut down. 

2017: Twitter launches the Explore tab, combining their trends, live video streams, search, and Moments, a way for people to get an overview of important tweets or threads. 

2018: Jack Dorsey testifies before the Senate about election meddling for the 2016 elections alongside current Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. 

2019: Twitter reveals that it has suspended 4,800 accounts linked to the Iran government. 

2022: Elon Musk takes over Twitter. 

That brings us to 2023. Here’s an overview of all the platform’s changes from the beginning of the year to now. 

January: 

• Third-party API access is revoked. This means apps and websites that relied on third-party APIs to share content to and from Twitter, such as WordPress, no longer function. (For WordPress, this was later fixed, but other third-party APIs are still inoperable). 

February: 

• Twitter aims to change its ad targeting to function like Google’s search ads. 
• Further layoffs were executed, continuing the trend from November 2022. 
• The Twitter algorithm is changed to boost Elon Musk’s personal tweets by a factor of 1000. 

March: 

• The Twitter press team stops responding to enquiries. Elon Musk announces that all press communications will be auto-responded with ?.
• Twitter releases its algorithm to the public on Github. 

April: 

• New labels are launched for state-affiliated media, which are applied to broadcasting companies such as NPR, BBC, and PBS – notably not state-affiliated. 
• Verification is now a paid service under Twitter Blue. 
• Cessation of the policy to label state-affiliated media, including for Chinese and Russian state media. 

June:

• Measures were implemented to limit the amount of tweets that could be seen per day. 

July: 

• Twitter is rebranded and renamed ‘X’.  

Is the Twitter rebrand that bad?

It’s too early to tell if it’ll be bad or good for Twitter. 

What we can say is this: 

In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary expanded its definition of ‘tweet’ – a word in use since the 1800s – to specifically refer to posting on Twitter. When a brand has become so entrenched in daily life that it becomes part of daily conversation to the point where it introduces a new word into the lexicon, it’s powerful. Only a few brands have managed it successfully – we Google things, we retweet someone’s opinion, we check out someone’s Insta. 

We can also say this: Twitter’s recognisability as a brand is a poisoned chalice. Yes, it has the reputation of being the public town square – a place where you go to learn. A lot of historical events played out on Twitter, and people around the world had a front row seat to them via updates from verified sources. 

Think of the Ukrainian war. Think of the Black Lives Matters protests. Think of the January 6th riots on the Capitol. 

But here’s the other side of it: Twitter also has a notable reputation for being a place where content moderation is fast and loose, and harassment is particularly bad and something they’ve been struggling to control since 2015, to limited efficacy.

Rebranding to X will not necessarily remove that negative reputation – but if you’re playing the long game, it’s possible it could help. 

Now that the Twitter brand is dead, is it the end of the platform for good?

It’s possible, but it’s also unlikely. 

Social media platforms that have grown and grown to Twitter’s size and userbase have a unique selling point that other social media platforms just don’t have. The reason they’ve managed to grow so much is because of that unique selling point – and it’s what Twitter still has going for it, even with the rebrand, even with all the API changes, even with the declining interest by advertisers. 

Twitter is losing money. Twitter has always been losing money. It’s never managed to achieve the same advertising revenue as Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or Youtube – but it’s far from being the only social media platform that haemorrhages money. Tumblr and Reddit, two of the most popular platforms, also lose significant cash.  

Elon Musk’s divisive practices have hastened the dropping user numbers, but Twitter is still functioning, Twitter still has people using it as their primary platform, and Twitter is unlikely to go away overnight. 

And that unique selling point is why: no other site does microblogging quite as well. The new ones that have cropped up – Mastodon, Bluesky, Misskey – are still too new to see whether or not they’ll be any good. 

Twitter was a very good platform for artists to advertise their products. It was a platform where journalists crowdsourced information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. We watched elections play out on Twitter, coordinated information from countries where obtaining information was difficult. 

Twitter’s reputation was never great, but it was never any worse than other social media platforms. 

And what it had in spades was brand equity. 

With the rebrand, that recognition is gone. 

But the general consensus on the platform itself is this: whatever it’s going to be called, it’s still Twitter in their minds. 

Facebook went through something similar – although officially it’s now called Meta, people still use Facebook to refer to the company at large, and the scandals that plagued Facebook to begin with followed them through. If it is an attempt to wipe the slate clean of Twitter’s previous issues and start anew, it’s not a gambit that works well when the issues are big enough. 

What about the idea of an everything app?

Allegedly, part of the rebrand is because Twitter wants to move into becoming the Western equivalent of an everything app – similar to WeChat, in China. 

The theory is sound. Several apps do more than one thing: Tiktok, for example, allows you to show their products within the app. 

Where it might falter is in practice. 

Forget the difficulties of creating a secure payment service that will work with X. Forget the server impacts of turning Twitter into an app where you can do everything – hosting images, videos, longform content, mini apps. 

Regulators don’t want Western tech companies to know so much of your information. European privacy laws alone would slice Twitter’s everything app to ribbons. WeChat in China is a case study that might not be possible to repeat outside of China, and it’s all because of the legal ramifications of data privacy and breaking up tech monopolies. 

Beyond that, Twitter’s reputation comes back into play for this – consumers just don’t trust the app itself in its current state. To launch an everything app that can do, well, everything, there needs to be a baseline belief in the app to perform those functions well, and for Twitter, that doesn’t seem to exist. 

Twitter was the place where academics could talk about their research, journalists could speak freely, and internet users could go somewhere that wasn’t bloated down with ads and sponsors the way Meta apps were.

It has also been the place you go to to vent about small things, things that were on your mind but didn’t merit the effort of a Facebook post, things that you could complain about in peace to the global public.

That opinion hasn’t shifted, even under the Musk leadership. 

What else could happen with the rebrand?

Here’s the thing: it’s so early to tell what could happen with the rebrand that opinions vary greatly.

Let’s see what the team has to say: 

Ed

It is too early. One thing we have learned in the world of tech is to never say never. Of course, the regulatory hurdles in the way of achieving the new vision for X are significant, driven by a slumbering bureaucratic giant that the EU keeps ballooning into. Do I agree with wiping out billions in brand equity by killing the Twitter name? I find that a hard one to swallow in these early days. Will the brand X ever rebuild that equity? It really depends on how users take to the platform if they steadily increase the time spent in-app. That’s up to the unpredictable misfiring of Musk’s brain and the team he appoints to steward the brand and the product as it boldly goes where other apps have gone before. And knowing who is behind it, the outcome will either be a catastrophic failure we’d enjoy watching from a distance or a success we couldn’t possibly have predicted. As always, it’s up to us to keep an open mind and a watchful eye. This way we retain the agility to make the best of either situation.

Lisa

This really doesn’t affect me, I’ve never really paid attention to Twitter. But, looking at both logos side by side, the new one looks much less welcoming. I’m wondering if that’s a reflection of a new policy. As a completely unbiased outsider I’m interested to see how this is going to pan out, changing the brand at this stage after you’ve built so much equity could go either way, and it’s probably going to be wildly entertaining whichever way it goes.

Kim

I think we need diversity online as much as we need it in the real world. With Elon Musk taking over so many organisations that we use frequently and practically live on, I feel like that has the effect of flattening out the overall feel of these brands and our online experience. I think Twitter as a brand, with its cute blue bird, represented something that still had some form of diversity in it. With the ‘X’ rebrand and its echoing of so many other tech-obsessed brand imagery and ethos, I feel like it’s taken what Twitter might stand for for a lot of people, and chucked it out the window. With any kind of monopoly, we run the risk of homogenising the type of messaging and voices we’re exposed to, and instead of providing a platform for diversity it becomes one where only those opinions that fit within the brand’s idea will be favoured. Think of Disney and its hold on the media we consume; it has shaped a lot of our thinking in a way that’s probably more vanilla, conservative, and binary than it is (or should be) in real life.

Luke

This is definitely not how I pictured the Twitter brand meeting its downfall. Even though it had its struggles, it was an incredibly valuable resource and entertainment hub, especially with the improvements that were being made in recent years to the way misinformation was being handled. It formed part of a very select group of brands that had their name turned into a verb – I Xeroxed, Googled, Hoovered, Tweeted. I see this as the definitive end of this social media platform as we know it, and X is going to be a different beast altogether. But the beauty of the internet is that the real-estate is endless. The communities that inhabit it remain basically the same, and will flock from place to place like a cat fitting into different cardboard boxes. The question for businesses is, where will they flock to next if they don’t like the further inevitable changes that Musk is going to implement in the coming years?

Cam

Underneath the rebrand is a new direction for the social platform. Twitter has been a great resource for people needing to share info in situations where sharing information is throttled (like in the 2023 Turkish elections) – I’m afraid that the direction Musk is taking the platform in is diametrically opposite to this freedom of speech. 

Ernesta

The recent rebrand feels very hasty to me for a few reasons. One, it literally happened overnight without much warning. Nothing wrong with that, if it’s done well, though. Secondly, it doesn’t seem that the whole platform and processes were ready for it – the rollout of the brand seems to be lagging across platforms and devices. Three, the new logo. Using a single character from an existing font on a flat black background feels totally rushed, low-budget and quite disappointing, considering how much time, thought and effort it takes to develop a strong visual brand identity. And I have to agree with Lisa, it does not feel inviting at all. It gives that ‘taken over by the dark side’ vibe.

Andrea

I’ve followed very little at this point, and I can’t say i used twitter regularly. But, I think, we’re still looking at a logo and have not seen the overall impact of the changes that are coming to the platform. Personally, I think the biggest shock is coming from the shift from an approachable blue bird to a very ‘masculine’ X plastered on black. Can such a large platform make many drastic changes at one go? Probably not – so I think, or hope, that we are not seeing the full picture yet. For the sake of my homescreen, I hope that there’s more work to be done on the X though. 

Sam

I have never really been a Twitter user, so I don’t feel too strongly about this. I did notice that the new logo looks a lot more bland, cold, and doesn’t stand out compared to the old logo. The old logo was very distinguishable and easy to tell that it belonged to Twitter. If someone saw the new logo without knowing about the change, I don’t think they would know what brand it belongs to. I do think that rebranding is giving them a presence in the press and gets people’s attention because it will be talked about. Even though it might not be positive awareness, it is awareness, nonetheless. However, once the talk about this shift blows over, their equity might continue to decline, especially with the recent introduction of Threads. Ultimately, I think it might be too soon to forecast the direction of Twitter’s future. 

Thomas

I find it hard to believe Musk’s goal of making X the WeChat of the West will come to fruition. WeChat is notoriously used as a tool for spying on the Chinese by the government, something that will encounter a lot of resistance on our side of the world, especially with the EU’s stringent personal protection laws. Besides that, the conglomeration of all aspects of services offered by WeChat could never fly in the West with competition and anti-market-dominance laws.

Ranson

Look, Twitter has always been kind of THE place for a bit of craziness (Degeneracy is a strong word, although I wanted to use it), however, it has always been the place for news, whistleblowers, leakers and entertainment. I used to use it to get information about things before Youtube, Instagram and the news could report about it. I figure that that specific use will still not stop. 

Like Ed said, the change is ultimately unpredictable. The same person who made this decision made Paypal and Tesla into the giants they are today. So it could kind of make sense to wipe Twitter as a whole. But as Luke said, it became a verb, it’s a very exclusive and strong brand equity that’s hard to compete with. To say that they’re venturing into the deep is an understatement. My opinion is that the whole decision will be beneficial for reputation, however, it will bear fruit in the far future, which may be too late because of Tiktok and their increasing influence.

What does this mean for businesses?

At this not much. Could Twitter become the next hot thing in business advertising? Eh. Its purpose as an everything app sort of precludes the idea that you can use it for advertising, and while it’s trying to package something of LinkedIn in its new direction, Twitter is probably going to remain fundamentally Twitter. 

That doesn’t mean it’s bad for business. It just means you might need a different way of approaching how you use Twitter – and that’s fine. 

Twitter’s not going anywhere yet. We think it’s not going to go anywhere for a long time, rebrand notwithstanding. After that – who knows? The story’s changing quickly. 

But we’ll be keeping up with it. This kind of shift doesn’t happen often – and if Twitter really does succeed in changing to an everything app, it could definitely open up avenues for a new kind of marketing. 

For now, it’s time to watch and wait. 

The post RIP, Twitter, or the future of X appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Last year we swung into 2022 with a wave of optimism. This year we’re hanging onto some of that optimism but we’re a little more cautious about what’s next. 

Trends are, well, trends – they are a flutter of behavioural activities that can be clustered by the number of people who are adopting them but there is no certainty about whether they will hang around.

They also exist in context. The world is entering a period of economic uncertainty. It is also entering a very exciting time as AI joins the fray in a way that’s finally meaningful. Both of these bring with them opportunity and concern. And that’s just two parameters that will have a significant impact on the way we think, the way we speak, the way we behave, the way we convene, and the way we spend our time…

We’ve looked at the landscape from the point of view that we inhabit. We examine design, marketing, brand, consumer behaviour, B2B, social media and plenty more, as we take a peek into what we think is in store for us.

As always, we’ve had a blast putting all of this together and putting it out there into the world for it to be a useful resource for our colleagues – marketing practitioners around the world. May it serve you well.

PS. This was not written with the help of an AI. Or maybe it was. Can you tell?

The post The Big Book of Marketing Trends 2023 [Free eBook] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

SEO Trends 2023

If you’ve kept up with the latest changes in SEO/search engine optimisation, 2023 is not going to bring you much that’s different. That is, if you consider SEO to just be the process of optimising websites to rank well on Google search only. 

On that front, in 2022 there was a turn towards the increasingly human. Google is cleverer and more adaptable than it’s ever been, and the way you can tell is through the ever-more complicated laundry list of how you rank there. 

In 2023, not much has changed. This article will address all those evolutions, but we’ll be taking a step further – or rather, a step back.

What is a search engine, really?

Search engines have shifted from essentially being a website directory to being a place where you get your answers directly without having to go beyond the results page. With this redefinition, we need to expand our criteria for what a search engine actually is. 

Is Amazon a search engine? TikTok? Instagram? Twitter?

In short, yes they are.

Here’s what Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan had to say recently: 

“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”

If a significant enough portion of users on that platform are searching, then it is a search engine – albeit for a more limited range of results in either content or format than something like Google, which endeavours to provide everything. And this is likely why Google is likely losing market share to these platforms. The internet is so vast that it’s nearly impossible to understand a searcher’s intent completely, even if Google gets extremely close to that.

The result is a number of platforms upgrading their search functionality to provide what their users want more easily, and keep them engaged. This means that if brands want attention, they can’t just run a few Google Search campaigns or invest in SEO. They need to expand their strategies to account for new patterns in user behaviour.

With all of this in mind, here are the main trends and advice you should keep in mind when thinking of SEO in broad terms during 2023. 

Trend 1: Great content is still King

Fine, this one isn’t really a trend. It’s more a reminder that no matter what trends come and go, there is no replacement for great content. A strong SEO strategy still requires diligent and in-depth research, excellent planning, and detailed execution. This is true no matter the platform – be it Google, YouTube, TikTok, or any other search engine, the cream always rises to the top (of search result pages).

If there’s any trend from a content point of view that should be especially highlighted here, it’s video.

This should come as a surprise to no-one. The internet is increasingly turning towards video: YouTube’s (and now TikTok’s) astronomical rise to one of the most used social media platforms has also kicked off a chain of prioritising video over static imagery and posts – and SEO is no different. Look up anything on any given search engine, and very often the first few results will be clips or videos. In 2023, this is going to only grow more prevalent as Tiktok continues to legitimise itself as the brand platform of choice for brands looking to build communities, and as other social media platforms follow suit. 

That being said, it’s worth keeping an eye on TikTok following its ban from India and ongoing troubles in relation to its data gathering practices that could see it banned in more major markets such as the US. It will definitely be interesting to see which platforms will step in to fill the void, should this happen.

Statistics:

• The number of comments, views, shares, and “likes” have a strong correlation with higher YouTube rankings. (Backlinko)
• Video was the primary form of content being created in 2022, followed by blogs (used by more than half of marketing teams), and images (HubSpot).
• Although 32% of people say they are overwhelmed by the amount of content available, a majority (44%) say they typically consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor (DemandGen).

As a brand, how can I use this trend?

Create great content. Sounds simple, and it is. Mostly.

Understand the needs and wants of your target audience and what they search for, and create content that answers those needs better than the competition. And we’re not just talking about video – this applies across the board, from written content, to video, to podcasts. With search trends indicating that Google is no longer the only search game in town, it only makes sense to diversify and expand your online presence as a brand to keep up with this change in user behaviour.

A note about AI and content generation

By the way, if you saw ChatGPT and saw a tool that can write SEO-ready content for you within minutes, don’t get your hopes up. Google is already on top of this thanks to its August 2022 helpful content update that will “ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results”. Basically, Google will consider content taken wholesale from an AI writing tool as spam. Your content needs a human touch, and probably always will. AI models like ChatGPT provide a starting point for content, but never an end product – at least not for SEO. Not yet, at least.

A note about AI language models and search

Speaking of ChatGPT, Google isn’t taking the news of an AI language model that can easily and clearly answer queries without users needing to click on any links very well. While ChatGPT has some limitations at the moment, many have come to the conclusion that as it grows and develops, it will definitely become a major competitor to Google Search. A fact that Google is now keenly aware of. 

In fact, Google founders and parent company shareholders Larry Page & Sergej Brin are taking a more hands on approach to providing their advice to solve this particular issue – something they do not do very often, so you know the company is really concerned. We should definitely expect some major announcements from Google about AI search tools in their next Google I/O event, happening in May. 

The impact of a ChatGPT-esque tool making its way to Google Search is still relatively unknown, but it could mark the largest shakeup in the SEO world in a long time. If less and less people are clicking on links, what’s the point?

Trend 2: Mobile First

Websites in 2023 are going to rank based primarily on the mobile version of their content rather than the desktop version; this heralds a change in the way that people are using search to answer their queries. As more and more people use mobile phones, especially out and on the go, it’s become far more relevant to rank web-pages based on the way they showcase and load on mobile devices. 

This doesn’t mean that desktop ranking is going anywhere. It just means that having a strong mobile experience will bump you higher up on the list of where you are. You don’t need to fully-replicate your site on mobile, but you do need your site to load quickly and with a good UI on mobile – and given that your consumers almost absolutely use their phones or tablets as their primary device, you need to take advantage of the shift now.

Statistics: 

• 96.41% of all Google searches happen on mobile devices. 
• 91% of the global population has smartphones.
• 62.06% of all website traffic comes from people using mobile devices.

As a brand, how do I use this trend?

Pay attention to your mobile site. Creating a web page for your brand and making it look beautiful, and work great on desktop, is critical if you want to attract the kind of attention that will lead to lasting returns – however, just having a good web page that you rarely update to reflect the changes doesn’t help anyone. To truly capitalise on the way that Google’s changing, you need to keep up with the way that it’s changing – and that means adapting your web page to reflect best practices. 

In this case: faster web pages, and taking the time to implement AMP, Google’s faster mobile experience, into your web pages. 

Trend 3: Zero-click Content and Featured Snippets

A good search engine experience is a short one. At least, that’s what Google thinks. That means that over the past few years, Google has done everything they can to provide answers to search queries as quickly as humanly (machine-ly?) possible. This has manifested itself in ‘featured snippets’. The bit of text that rises above all search results and provides the most direct answer to the search query. It’s also represented in the data and information displayed on the right hand side of results.

This means that in order to rise to the top of search results, a website doesn’t necessarily need to rank at no. 1. They just need to answer a search query as simply and easily as possible.

Statistics

• Less than half of Google searches result in a click
• 50% of a mobile screen is covered with a featured snippet.
• 19% of SERPs have featured snippets.

As a brand, how can I use this trend?

When creating searchable content, make sure to answer as many commonly searched questions as possible – in the form of an FAQs section, for example. The answer itself shouldn’t be longer than a couple of sentences, too. Also, always make sure your content is dated – studies have shown that most featured snippets come from content not older than a couple of years.

Google SEO Trends from 2022 that are here to stay:

Most of what we wrote in 2022 still has a lot of room left to grow. Here’s what’s sticking around.

Core Web Vitals 

This isn’t really a trend so much as the natural progression of technology making changes that businesses will need to keep up with. Core Web Vitals is the answer to the way the web is changing: it charts the way your website loads, how your website reacts to input from a user, and how stable your web visuals are. Essentially, it’s how your website ranks in Google’s algorithm from a technical perspective – and it’s as important as content for ranking well. Given that the internet has become increasingly competitive, with a much greater emphasis placed on ranking well, Core Web Vitals are only going to become even more important as time goes by. 

EAT

Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness. Content that heavily features all three is content that is going to rank well, and it stands to reason that in the internet era of fake news and misinformation, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are two of the most fundamental facets of any content going forward, and consumers will actively seek out an opinion to their queries that is rooted in fact. The wide scale deranking of misinformation is also playing a part to retain this trend well beyond 2023. 

What changes are coming to Google?

Future AI projects aside, Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to maintain its position as the number one search engine in the world, which means new features come to Google often. Here are a few of Google’s features that should get more attention in the coming months. 

RankBrain

RankBrain, a core component of Google’s algorithm, uses machine learning to find the best results for whatever queries are plugged into it. It follows on from other AI advancements in the field, where Google first supplies RankBrain with data from several sources and then moves into teaching it over time how to replicate the way humans think when it comes to producing search results to a query. 

In other words, a big part of RankBrain is figuring out the searcher’s true intent, and thus giving more accurate results to whoever is searching. Google’s algorithm is becoming sophisticated in its own right, but finding results on the internet for what you’re looking for can sometimes be a bit hit and miss if you’re not very obvious with your search intent. Adding artificial intelligence is a way of combating those occasional missed results.

BERT

The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model, or BERT, is a method of training artificial intelligence software to respond to queries in a far more human way. BERT and AI Platform training are two of Google’s greatest investments into the future, and with Google setting the terms for search, we’re likely to see a greater shift towards artificial intelligence training as a result. BERT is initially trained on large pieces of text, then training results are applied to tasks that require natural language processing, such as answering questions. 

Google has been interested in leveraging AI in order to improve the way its search engine functions, and so we’ll likely see more developments on AI in the near future. This is not so much a trend as another natural progression: with search engine algorithms hitting the peak of what they can achieve, now the onus is to exceed what’s capable through AI. This has now been supercharged by the arrival of other AI language models that could be taking share of mind within the search space away from standard search engines.

Conclusion

The position of SEO today has changed drastically from what it was at the beginning, and we’re only going to see it change further before the year is out. What started as a way of ranking on a search engine was further complicated by the introduction of an algorithm, changing rules, new platforms, and the increasing importance of searcher intent – and it’s not going to go away. 

The only thing you can do is keep up. 

And if you’re struggling to do that, we’re here to help you.

The post SEO Trends for Brands in 2023: Beyond Google appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.