We polled the hard-working Gemini team about what the biggest marketing trends and challenges will be in the coming year. Because we’re in the trenches every day experimenting, learning and innovating you can be certain that our predictions are based on a combination of data, research and hard-won experience. Here’s what our team forecasts and how they plan to respond:

General Marketing Trends for 2024

2023 saw plenty of shake up. Here are a few reasons our team thinks 2024 could be even more of a roller coaster:

Trend: Economic Uncertainty

  • We all know that when belts tighten one of the first expenses on the chopping block is the marketing budget. With 2024 being an election year, things continue to feel uncertain despite improved economic forecasts. Companies will likely be conservative with their marketing spend.
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will show our value and optimize for efficiency. We strive to exceed our clients’ expectations no matter the type of program they have. For our home services clients, this means expanding their reach to find the new customers that will fill their service calendars. Additionally, we’ll be tweaking strategies in real-time to increase market share while being responsible with the available budget.

Trend: AI Specialists Will Become Vital

  • To stay competitive, marketers need to leverage AI across all channels. To ensure success, agencies will need AI specialists to navigate the growing complexities and applications of AI.
  • Gemini’s Approach: Our in-house AI specialist identifies, tests and implements the latest AI tools. This gives us the ability to develop custom solutions for our clients’ specific business needs.

Trend: Short-Form Video

  • Video has proven to be the way users want digestible information. Social media apps like TikTok have capitalized on this trend to engage with users in new ways.
  • Gemini’s Approach: In 2024, our content programs will incorporate more videos. We will encourage our clients to review their branded image and video assets and consider investing in a refresh.

Trend: Greater Reliance on Reporting

  • In 2024, it will be more important than ever to review the reporting of each channel and base decisions on existing data. As marketing continues to become more data-driven, analytic skills will be more in-demand than ever.
  • Gemini’s Approach: This year, we will be launching our new, detailed reporting dashboards for our clients. This updated and improved reporting will showcase how each of their digital programs syncs in the marketing funnel to achieve their goals.  The dashboards will help us better educate clients on the strategies, tactics and KPIs utilized for each channel.

SEO Trends for 2024

With the increase in Google algorithm updates, keeping clients at the top of the SERPs has never been more involved. Here are some thoughts on how to stay visible in 2024:

Trend: Increased Competition from Google’s “Hidden Gems” Update

  • Hidden gems, as defined by Google, are posts where people share their first-hand knowledge and their own personal insights and experiences with others on the public web. Google wants to highlight such content in its search results and search interfaces.  (e.g. Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, etc.)
  • Gemini’s Approach: We’ve already seen Quora and Reddit threads inch nearer to the top of the SERPs. More than ever we’ll need to adjust our content, keyword and metadata strategies to be helpful, personable and user-friendly.

Trend: Rise of Search Generative Experience (SGE)

  • As Google, Bing and other search engines incorporate AI into their mechanisms, users can expect additional direct answers without the need to click on results pages.  We could see a decrease in organic traffic of up to 30% – similar to how featured snippets impact some search results. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will focus on unique content and custom images (infographics and branded photos) in hope that we’ll see our client’s content displayed in Google’s SGE results. We’ll also monitor our client’s focus keywords in SGE to keep content and metadata fresh and competitive.

Content Marketing Trends for 2024

With some six million blogs published daily, things are getting a bit crowded on the web. Here’s what the content team is seeing:

Trend: More AI-Generated Content

  • Robotic authors make it possible to come up with 1,200 words in your niche at the touch of a button. Now that people can create content faster and at higher volumes than ever before, the need to stand out is imperative. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: We’re embracing AI as a useful tool for persona development, topic ideation and outlining but we rely largely on human insights and expertise to create authoritative and authentic content. 

Trend: Decline in Rich Results

  • As online users look to ChatGPTfor quick answers, we may see a dip in certain rich results such as Featured Snippets and People Also Ask. This may result in decreased traffic for some informational blogs. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will provide users with strategically organized information they can’t get anywhere else. By using competitor analysis, niche keywords and subject matter experts, we’ll guide readers to the answers they seek. 

Trend: Emphasis on Quality Writing

  • With so many self-proclaimed “experts” online, people will increasingly return to trusted sites and resources for information.
  • Gemini’s Approach: Experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EEAT) has always been at the forefront of our content strategy. Let’s bring the art of good writing to the forefront!

Graphic Design Trends for 2024

Striking and informative graphics have always been the cornerstone of marketing. Let’s look at what will be turning heads this year:

Trend: Generative Images Will Become More Popular

Example of bold minimalism graphic design from a Spanish magazine.
  • As it becomes increasingly easier to be an armchair designer, we’ll see fewer stock images and more artificially generated ones. Additionally, as image editing tools, like Photoshop become more automated, we’ll see an increase in surreal imagery. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will continue to handcraft infographics, images and web pages so that each connects on a human level. We may use AI tools but the final vision will be all brain, sweat and heart.

Trend: Bold Minimalism and Kinetic Type

  • Negative space and lightweight motion graphics take center stage as designers create stark but playful compositions. The saying “less is more” will be on full display where moving images will carefully guide users to the important information. Bold lettering and kinetic type will be part of this attention-getting strategy. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: Stay on the cutting edge. We know we have fractions of a second to capture someone’s attention. By using clean, bold and branded imagery, we’ll keep our clients in the spotlight. 

Paid Search Trends for 2024

Paid search tools and strategies are continually evolving. These are the trends our practitioners are tracking:

Trend: Leveraging Google’s New Campaign Types and Value-Based Bidding

  • With Google offering multiple types of ad campaigns including Demand Gen and Performance Max. Knowing which will bring in the most customers becomes part art and part science. Additionally, value-based bidding will become increasingly relevant as companies invest more in the customers that they believe will spend more.
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will continue to refine our process for each client using all the tools mentioned above. In the coming year, this means doubling down on the AI initiatives we have in place and using them to innovate new solutions for targeting and ad spend. 

Trend: Offline Conversions Gain Importance

  • Tracking online and offline conversions gives companies a more holistic view of their marketing efforts. By carefully curating their offline sales data, Google can optimize campaigns towards a purchase value, not just whether or not a person will make a phone call.
  • Gemini’s Approach: By using AI and automation, we have developed proprietary methods for achieving offline conversions without the need for a CRM or sales data as historically required by Google. We will focus less on the number of phone calls and instead deliver detailed reporting of the exact ROIs from a campaign. With these new innovations, we can provide services for smaller clients that were previously only available to larger companies. 

Trend: Cookie Depreciation

  • Less a trend and more a reality, cookies are going away in 2024. This means advertisers will no longer be able to track user behavior and history through their footprint. Instead, they will need to rely on accumulated first-party data and personal analytical skills.
  • Gemini’s Approach: Setting up accurate and reliable tracking is key. Using applications like Google’s Tag Manager gives us the data we need to make critical decisions about targeting and spend without relying on cookies.

Google Business Profile (GBP) Trends for 2024

That little information box in the corner of your search results does more than people realize. Here’s how that will continue:

Trend: Increased Importance of GBP for Businesses

  • An attractive and informative Google Business Profile is crucial. Optimizing your profile helps people find you, builds your reputation and allows people to make contact more easily.
  • Gemini’s Approach: Creating a fruitful GBP isn’t a list it and leave it task. It requires constant review and maintenance to ensure best performance. This means updating images and information, targeting keywords, responding to reviews and monitoring results. 

Social Media Marketing Trends for 2024

Getting noticed across a variety of platforms continues to be an important tactic for finding customers and keeping them engaged. These social media trends are the ones we think will matter most:

Trend: Automated AI Based Social Media Marketing

  • As users continue to look for more personalized ways to interact with brands, companies are implementing chatbots and automated messaging to move conversations to their DMs. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will be testing out various AI tools to support our clients social media efforts.

Trend: More Long-Form Content

  • Users want deeper and richer written and video content from the brands that matter to them. In the last half of 2023 we saw content creators and brands using longer captions, like mini blogs, to encourage users to connect and engage in the comments on their posts. 
  • Gemini’s Approach: In 2024, we will experiment with the text in posts and videos to keep it shorter and on-point. This will encourage the user to read the caption for the “meat” of the information. 

Trend: Targeting Without Cookies

  • As platforms remove detailed user targeting options from tracking, marketers will seek other means of finding their audience. The landscape will shift away from elaborate targeting strategies and move towards using automated, broader targeting. Marketers will have to rely on social platform algorithms and social listening tools to inform audience targeting.
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will depend more on first-party data that is collected directly from users who willingly share their information through interactions with a website, app, or other owned platforms. This means obtaining consent and being transparent about data usage to build trust and foster a positive relationship between businesses and their customers. It also requires compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA which prioritize the protection of user data.

AI Marketing Trends for 2024

2023 will forever be known as the year AI changed the marketing world. We can never look back but we can look forward with these predictions:

Trend: AI Advancements will Come Rapidly

  • Artificial intelligence hit hard last year. While a Foundation poll found that 85% of marketers are already using AI in the workplace, keeping up with changes and implementing it effectively will be the next big challenge.
  • Gemini’s Approach: We will embrace AI as a resource for writing strategy, analyzing reporting data, enhancing campaign performance, reaching the right target audience, topic research and more. Fortunately, we have a dedicated AI manager who keeps tabs on changes and advancements. For practitioners, the key will be staying on top of AI changes in the applications they use every day. 

Trend: Every Marketing Platform Will Incorporate AI in Some Capacity

  • Marketing tools like CallRail, Zoom, HotJar and Canva have begun introducing elements of AI. To stay productive and competitive, marketers must know how these might impact or (hopefully) improve their existing programs.
  • Gemini’s Approach: Staying competitive means remaining up-to-date on tools and processes. We continually test and report on how to best utilize new tools or upgrades on tried and true applications. Most importantly, our teams will do their diligence to understand where their information comes from so that they can report it accurately. 

We Stay Ahead So Our Clients are Never Behind

At Gemini, we research, analyze and discuss marketing trends every day. To best serve our clients, we know that we have to lead the way when it comes to new innovations. Curious what Gemini can do for your business? Let’s schedule a short chat to look at your business goals and the marketing strategies to best serve them.