With the beginning of the new year, savvy marketers and managers start looking for insights into consumer trends that are on the rise.
The last few years have been especially turbulent for the industry and brought so many changes regarding consumer behavior that it’s no wonder that brands and agencies choose to search for every bit of information that they can find as early as possible.
Predicting marketing trends is not an easy task, as there is a margin of uncertainty when it comes to consumer behavior. However, by analyzing current tendencies and pairing them with what we already know about customer preferences, experts can come up with a (sometimes surprisingly accurate) forecast.
Why is it so crucial to start familiarizing oneself with these predictions as soon as possible?
In the advertising industry, following trends isn’t enough. It’s staying on top of them that makes the difference. You want to answer the needs of your customer base rather than chase them. And this is where specialist consumer trend reports come in handy.
AI is Becoming The New Norm
Artificial Intelligence was the topic of a heated debate throughout the entire year. Welcomed with great enthusiasm, it lost some favor when some problematic questions about copyright, privacy, and built-in bias arose.
However, as companies learn to adapt to this new technological trend, AI seems to be more than a passing fascination.
We can already see that modern consumers embrace the convenience of AI-powered shopping experiences.
AI-enhanced contextual targeting or automatically generated personalized recommendations can become the new baseline in 2024, which means that brands that are still hesitant about Artificial Intelligence risk getting left behind.
Online Reviews are Losing Credibility
For the longest time, online reviews were considered the most believable source of information regarding the true quality of products and services. Consumers used to perceive them as genuine, regarding them as the closest version of a “word of mouth” recommendation one can get online.
However, over the last few years, there has been a notable shift in this perspective. According to The Complete Guide to Ratings & Reviews by PowerReviews, as much as 90% of consumers believe that they’ve read a fake review in the past. Their credibility decreased visibly, with customers getting more and more conscious about dishonest practices – and deceitful brands getting more and more bold with their fraudulent practices.
Who do customers trust, then? Being unsure about online reviews, customers turn to influencers they follow and perceive as honest. This means that brands have to truly look into going omnichannel, adjusting their strategy to this interesting tendency, and reserve a budget for things like endorsements and sponsorships.
6 Statista
Editor’s note: At Mobidea Academy, we understand this concern, which is why we strive to provide comprehensive and unbiased information on the platforms we review. We meticulously examine each platform’s features, performance, and value to give you a clear picture of what you can expect. Our goal is to help you, so you can trust that the reviews we create are as transparent and objective as can be.
B2B Following B2C Marketing Patterns
One of the most interesting trends experts see emerging is the difference in approach when it comes to B2B and B2C advertising.
Until now, there was a significant difference in how businesses advertise to other businesses, juxtaposed with how they promote their products and services to consumers. But the line may begin to blur in 2024, as businesses expect experiences and narratives similar to those regular customers are targeted with.
This means that we will likely see B2C practices nurturing B2B decision-makers this year. And it’s not only personalized, emotion-based storytelling we are talking about, but also where they target their B2B audiences.
We can see that it’s not only the B2C consumer journey that got messy. The B2B sales funnel currently consists of way too many intertwined touchpoints and the B2B customer journey has become more fragmented than ever.
This means that B2B businesses may want to follow their B2C counterparts, developing advertising strategies that harness the benefits of commerce media – this way they cover the entire funnel, reaching the precise target audience with just the right messaging.
Any innovation in the advertising space must be validated by thorough research on modern consumer behaviors and preferences towards the market.
The next months and years need to be spent on the analysis of advertising tendencies. Zeropark Commerce Media, by cruising the global industry events, was able to create an extensive summary of what is likely to happen in the 2024 commerce media space.
If you are interested in learning more insights on trends in consumer behavior that will dominate this year, you can download your free copy of Zeropark’s ebook on nurturing customer journeys right here:
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