The Top 7 Marketing & Content Trends SMEs Should Watch in 2024

What a whirlwind of a year it has been for brand, content and marketing.

AI has completely changed the conversation, Twitter – sorry “X” – went completely nuts, interest rate rises in Australia have put pressure on businesses, and I don’t know about you, but everyone I’ve spoken to is pretty exhausted from the increasingly rapid changes we have to keep pace with when marketing our SME.

One thing I do know though, is that when you can be prepared for what might come next, you’ll definitely feel better.

And that’s why it’s that time of year to share what trends I think we’re going to see in brand and marketing for small and medium businesses in 2024. So you can start thinking about where you should put your time and energy in the new year, to get the best return on your marketing investment and steer clear of the tempting, but not always great, bright shiny objects.

Trend #1
Thanks to A.I. Your Brand Will Be More Important Than Ever

To begin, I’d like to point out that I’m not against you using A.I. as an assistant to your intelligence in your business. You should definitely be using it strategically to streamline the way you do things and speed up content creation processes.

While everyone has been talking about how awesome A.I. is going to be for businesses in helping them with their marketing though, one thing that’s being talked about much less, is the issues A.I. creates with TRUST.

If we trust a brand, we’re much more likely to do business with them.

But with the rise of A.I., fake voices, fake images, and content that could be churned out to more than one user, how can we trust that everything a brand says is from the brand? How can we trust content? How can we know what we’re seeing, reading or hearing is true?

When everyone can have A.I. write them a blog article in less than 30 seconds, how will you make sure your business stands out? How will you keep building trust with your audience?

The answer is having a powerful, consistent brand.

If you aren’t clear on your brand vision, brand mission, brand values, points of difference, target market and brand personality, then it will be easy for your brand to get lost in the crowd, seem untrustworthy, and lose customers.

The stronger you can make your brand in 2024, the better equipped you’ll be to harness the good parts of A.I. and protect your brand from the not so good.

Trend #2
Changes to Email Will Change Email Marketing

Google is upping the ante when it comes to reducing the spam that hits our inboxes. And you can be sure that if Gmail is rolling out these changes, then the other mail providers will definitely be following suit.

This is really a trend against spam. But it’s a trend you simply cannot ignore if you use email marketing to in your business.

The three major changes coming are that –

• You won’t be able to send bulk emails from a Gmail account

• Domain Authentication will be essential – not just best practice – if you want your emails to reach their destination and not be flagged as spam

• The quality of your email list (rather than the quantity) will become more important than ever before and you will need to track your deliverability to maintain a healthy list.

This is NOT a drill. You need to get your email marketing bucket in order or you will lose access to one of the best marketing channels your business has access to – your email list.

You can find out more about these changes in my article here.

Trend #3
Audiences Will Crave Original Content

As AI makes it easier than ever to create simple lists and content that copies other content, delivering original content to your audience is going to be more important than ever.

To do this, you're going to need to leverage your thought leadership, product innovation and brand differentiators.

What is it that makes your brand what it is? And how can you leverage this to create original content?

I’ve already said that your brand is going to be the most important thing to build in the age of A.I. If you spend time focusing on this, you’ll find that creating original content will become easier.

Trend #4
A.I. Will Change the Way You Do SEO

There’s plenty of research that shows the way search engines display results using featured snippets and “people also ask” boxes, has reduced the number of click-throughs to websites.

A.I. integration into website search engines is likely to impact this again, with the impact on website traffic estimated to be a drop of up to 60%.

Back in May, Google demonstrated how it’s A.I. solution Bard, generated an answer to a user question by compiling content from several different websites into a single answer.

Now, back then, the quality of the answer wasn’t great. But what it does show, is that the way we do SEO is going to need to change, if we’re going to keep getting those clicks.

The best way to do this? Nobody knows for sure right now. But it will definitely involve focusing your SEO efforts on big questions with big answers, driven by thought leadership, rather than focusing on short, information led responses that a search engine can deliver a summary of without the user having to click through.

Trend #5
The Rise of the B2B Influencer

You’ve probably heard about influencers. But what about B2B influencers?

Storytelling legend Joe Lazauskas believes that this will be a huge trend in 2024. And I agree.

A.I. and the associated trust issues that come with it, mean that audiences are flocking to follow personalities and personal brands, more than corporations and big brands.

In the same way we’ve got influencers representing consumer products, we’re going to see B2B influencers representing business products and services. I’ve already mentioned thought leadership, and this is where it will come heavily into play.

If you don’t have a person in your business who is happy to be the face of it, then you’ll need to start thinking about how you can find one.

Trend #6
Short-form Content Likely to Dominate

With AI being able to create so much long form content, we're likely to see an influx of long form articles that are all the same - and nobody will read them.

This lends itself to a trend towards more short-form content being a way to increase audience engagement.

As is the case in marketing, the definition of what short-form content actually is varies. But it should be easy to watch, read or listen too, and give your audience great value in a short amount of time.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t keep creating long-form, original, thought leadership driven content. In fact, doing that is a great way to create short-form content using the foundational content repurposing method. It just means that short-form content is going to be popular content.

What’s most important is that you understand your audience, and create content for them.

Trend #7
Social Media Will Continue to Decline

If you’ve had a feeling that there have been drop offs in social media across the board, then you aren’t alone. And you’d be right.

While short form content might dominate next year, there has definitely been a decline in social media use over the past 12 months. And I think we’re likely to see that continue throughout 2024.

There’s been a decrease in engagement on all social platforms, not just because of what’s happened at Twitter.

Why is this?

I don’t think there’s one clear reason.

User fatigue is definitely an element. Lack of original or interesting content is another.

What I do know that you can’t have all your eggs in the social media basket and you will need to make sure you’re building your owned assets across the next 12 months in a focused and strategic way. (You should already be doing this, but you need to make it a massive priority for 2024).

There’s never been a better time to invest in your owned content assets – which makes protecting your email list more important than ever before (see Trend #2).

A.I. is here to stay. And we need to understand it.

Artificial Intelligence features in most of my trends for next year.

However you feel about it, one thing is for certain – you can’t ignore it.

Whichever trends you embrace in your business, make sure you’re focusing your efforts on the thing that will move the needle the most for you. It’s not about being everywhere all at once, it’s about being where your customers are, and giving them what they need.

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