The new year is finally here, meaning the time has come for a refreshed look into new opportunities and trends to revamp your marketing efforts. While some things don’t seem to change day-to-day, the new year is the perfect time to identify your business goals and analyze how they align with the current marketing landscape, adapting to optimize success, engagement, and growth.
It’s very important to note that digital trends are always changing, and as a business owner, it is critical to stay on top of all the latest developments. Whether you experienced fantastic marketing results last year or not, it’s always good to strive to be better. Here are some of our top trends and tips for improving your digital marketing in 2024.
The Ever-Evolving Marketing Landscape
You’re probably well aware of the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for marketing success. However, you will be interested to hear that Google has once again shifted quality rating guidelines that directly impact your content's ranking of search results. There’s no need to panic, but these changes are essentially adding weight to the “experience” of a writer on the relevant topic they are writing about.
We recommend reading up a bit on what exactly the new(ish) E-E-A-T acronym means and why it’s important for ranking on Google so that you can ensure your marketing content is optimized for good rankings, but one thing you want to keep in mind is that Google is emphasizing high-quality content more than ever.
What Makes Content High-Quality?
Using targeted keywords was the ingredient for maximizing ranking and engagement on Google for a long time. A golden number of SEOs tried to hit about 0.5 to 1 of these keywords per 100 words in an article so that Google would identify them and rate the article higher. More keywords in an article must mean it is more helpful for readers, right?
At the time, this surely helped an article’s ranking, but we knew this didn’t equate to something more useful or enjoyable to read. Turns out, Google agreed. The tides have turned, and now Google is starting to rank articles based on more organic factors such as their quality - expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Keywords are still important and shouldn’t be removed completely, but using them more intentionally and effectively, even if only 1-3 times, is the new sweet spot.
Making high-quality content matters more than ever before, and this, fortunately, benefits the consumer, customer, or reader. The best way to do this is to ensure you hit the E-E-A-T algorithm by creating organic and useful articles and writing them just as a human would ask questions and a professional would answer.
This is the exact opposite of robotic and clickbait-type content, so it’s better to shift to natural and interesting reads if clickbait was your thing before. Avoid overtargetting keywords, and get consumers the answers they’re looking for without relying on them knowing exactly what to look up in the search engine.
This even extends to the title of your piece! So instead of going for a clickbait heading of “Top 10 Best Ways to Live A Long Life”, perhaps go with: “Healthy Habits for Longevity and Happiness”.
Tips to Improve Your Strategy
Improving your SEO practices is just one way to revamp your marketing efforts in 2024 - this will ensure your content continues to appear high on Google’s results. But the transition into the new year comes with several other ways to improve your strategy.
1. Test Different Types of Content
It can be easy to fall into the trap of posting the same types of content, but this is unlikely to keep your audience engaged. One form of content that has experienced a huge increase in popularity is video.
The great thing about video content is that it doesn’t need hours of footage; even 30 seconds or a few minutes can be a great addition to your content strategy. Think about implementing professional photography and videos into your marketing strategy, and utilize the new platforms that are exploding in popularity along with your traditional content streams.
2. Experiment with AI Tools
Artificial Intelligence can be a helpful tool to implement into your business operations, but only when done morally, ethically, and correctly. It is growing in popularity daily, but we urge individuals to be cautious as it is still new and developing in practical use and legal domains.
3. Invest in CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) strategy and software are helping businesses connect with their customer base like never before. Create authentic relationships, reduce lead generation costs, increase engagement, and grow profits with fully integrated customer support and relations platforms.
4. Invest in Growth Hacker Marketing
Just as the digital landscape is constantly evolving, so is practice in marketing. Growth hacker marketing fundamentally changes how companies can find high growth and engagement with little to no spending on traditional marketing paths. Invest in creativity and explosive growth when you implement growth hacker marketing into your strategy this year.
Ready. Set. Go!
As you’re reading this, 2024 is already off and running. Marketing teams must remain mobile and not stagnate, especially with so much change this year. Between optimizing your SEO practices and investing in developing technology, there’s never been a better time to revamp your marketing efforts.
If you’re curious to learn more or simply seeking extra help from digital marketing experts, don’t hesitate to contact the Beyond Blue Media team today!
