Marketing trends are an ever-evolving source of inspiration for marketers and with the emergence of AI we are all wondering what comes next… In 2022 we made some predictions on where the trends were going to go, in this episode Marketing Manager, Jason Morton, looks back at the predictions we made and provides more information on how these trends have evolved in the past year.
Jason
Hello and welcome to another episode of On the Same Landing Page. In this episode, we’re going to go back a little bit to predictions we made about marketing back in 2022 and also look at maybe what’s going to happen for Marketers real life examples going into 2024. So what happens when you ask artificial intelligence to predict the future of marketing?
Well, every time you refresh Twitter, there seems to be a new artificial intelligence model. And whether thats Chat GPT, Auto GPT. or Google’s BARD’s there’s so many out there all fighting for that position as the next Google. So perhaps we should start about how marketers now begin a piece of research or content by asking A.I., and I asked BARD and Chat GPT what the future of marketing looks like.
And the following answers were consistent results on both. So firstly, personalization of messaging and targeting utilizing new technologies was consistent on both answers. They also both believed that augmented reality and virtual reality would be used increasingly as part of a customer experience. And finally, they both agreed that continued reliance on content marketing would be a part of the marketers arsenal in the future.
But other notable mentions that BARD missed were there is an increased use of video happening amongst us. We’ve been talking about it for years it seems now and it’s really coming to fruition. Chat GPT also picked up where BARD didn’t that there would be stricter regulations over these controls which is something I think all marketers can attest to.
And finally, even more sustainability and ethical marketing. It feels like you can’t buy something without it telling you it’s ecological or sustainable, even though the whole thing’s made out of plastic and shipped from China most of the time. So most of the artificial intelligence that we’re using at the moment is just language learning. So how much we take from this, I don’t know.
I think it’s better to go back to January 2022, where we spoke to an expert of marketing, Sarah, from Eleven Marketing, about her perspective on future trends and see where we’re at now. So Sarah shared real examples of the emergence of new technologies like virtual reality.
Sarah
But we work, for example, with loads of universities, and they have been quite interested like steadily interested in things like virtual open days and how they can kind of like capture their campus and the life of their campus like online. So we’ve done lots of things like 360 online tools and things like that, so people can try and get like a quite like a realistic experience of what the campus is like without actually having to travel there, which is really convenient for a lot of people, especially if you’re international, which is pretty cool.
Then another one of our clients, kind of different kind of ilk for public sector, this is network Rail. Every year they need to attract like a load of like graduates and apprentices. It’s kind of like an ongoing, like needing more people for certain skill areas sort of thing. And we work with them all the time to do this kind of like graduate recruitment activity. And one of our like last suggestions for them was using like an actual VR experience, like at their exhibition stand so people could like test out. It was really cool. They like, test out what like they might do in different careers at Network Rail. So it might be like operating a very busy signal box and stuff like that. It sounds quite simple, but they were like massive queues at the exhibitions. Like it was really, really popular, so it worked really well. They’re still using it now, which is awesome.
Jason
Now the metaverse and other similar alternative realities became a bit of a buzzword in 2021. This popularity seems to have slowed down recently in terms of common virtual reality examples being used by business. We’ve seen emerging technologies follow this popularity pattern similar to how waves crash, rise and recede. So maybe it won’t be many years before we have more real life examples of VR and augmented reality in business. But in addition to virtual reality video was noted as being a crucial part of the everyday marketer’s focus.
Astra
Well, I think that’s one of the trends that definitely in my sector we’re going to see as well as virtual reality. Not that sophisticated in terms of ads yet, but video is definitely on the up. More and more clients are coming to us asking to integrate video and already Google this year has rolled out new advertising campaign styles which are focused on video.
You can’t run certain campaign types without a video now. And I think that’s going to be an enormous thing this year because this is massive push for multimedia at the moment. I don’t know if you guys have experienced that as well or just seen a pickup in that, but even two weeks back into the working year, I think I’ve had three clients who’ve been pushing for video already.
Sarah
So yeah, that’s massive for us. Like huge. We’ve got an in-house animator and I think we’ve kind of noticed like progressively that that time is just so kind of in demand. Like he’s like, got to be like the busiest person, like so many requests coming in with them with that because that’s what all of our clients want. And I think, you know, it’s obviously what audiences are looking for. So people are just naturally responding to that, aren’t they really and giving them what they want to see.
Jason
Now, as we’ve seen in the last year, video has not just been a huge differentiating factor for paid advertising campaigns. It has become a huge part of the newest and cheapest channel to advertise on TikTok. Here’s what we said about TikTok a year ago.
Sarah
Yeah, we definitely are on TikTok. That’s now like TikTok influencers with absolutely no prior experience of video creation videography, nothing at all. And they’re now being paid like six figures for like these crazy collaborations because their stuff is obviously so funny or so engaging that people tune in like day after day to see it. It’s kind of like the whole thing’s like really shifted, which is really interesting.
Jason
You serve a target who’s like your target audience in terms of different organizations, and do you think that they’ll ever, you’ll ever need to create content for them in terms of TikTok videos, Do you think that’s going to happen? Have you had that conversation internally?
Sarah
We had this conversation a lot. Like a lot of people ask us like, should we be on TikTok or We’d like to do a campaign, Can we use TikTok? And I think when something becomes big and when it becomes really talked about and really popular, everyone wants like a piece of the cake, they’re like, Oh, that’s really exciting. Like we should be on TikTok. That’s really fun. Whereas I think, Nine times out of ten, you really, really well, I mean, ten times out of ten you need to really consider the channels that you’re using. But TikTok is so specific. You know, for a lot of our clients, we’ve got like public sector clients, sort of local government, things like that, where TikTok is so unlikely to be like a relevant space for them.
It’s probably not where they need to be to talk to people, you know, even if they did like hop on a trend and do like a viral video of them, doing like a little dance routine. It’d be great. It’d be really funny, but it wouldn’t have the desired effect like no one would, you know, think remember them for the right reasons. So a lot of conversations we have with clients is to be like, Yes, we love TikTok. It’s great. It can be really, really fun, but we don’t want to be using channels just because they’re popular and just because everyone’s on them and talking about them. It has to be relevant for what you’re looking at. I think that’s always challenging.
Jason
Yeah, you cover quite serious a lot of your clients come on quite serious issues as well, right? So it’s quite hard to turn. Yeah. Yeah. Into something that’s fitting for TikTok as well.
Paul
So that’s such a good point. You make them because for the kind of business owners or managers or whoever, whoever it is that’s asking these questions, we get the same thing saying everyone’s on Tik Tok, should we be on TikTok with that? At that point of is your specific audience on TikTok and can we reach out and can we make that little Venn diagram just around your audience?
That’s probably the question you should ask immediately afterwards if you’re considering it.
Jason
So how has this changed? Here’s some statistics on TikTok is not just a platform for teens anymore. Gen-z only makes up 42% of the audience, which still leaves over half of the audience to be made up by people ages 25 and above. TikTok recently surpassed 1 billion users and 35% of TikTok users use TikTok to follow and research brand accounts.
Approximately 225,000 recognizable brands use TikTok for their influencer marketing campaigns. And finally, TikTok offers an opportunity for smaller business and individual users to go viral and get their message across. In a domain usually dominated by influencers with a large following it’s similar to how Facebook and Instagram started. You could put organic social posts up and you didn’t have to do too much for it to get some attention. That’s no longer the case. And if you get any kind of impressions as a business, you need to pay them. Well, with TikTok you can still get impressions. You can still make good posts entertaining posts that will be pushed and you won’t get held back just because you’re a brand.
So to test the effectiveness of TikTok as an emerging channel at Web presence. We experimented with a simple talking head video. It explained how we can help charities apply for and manage Google ads grants. So far, it has outperformed Google ads and Bing to generate 45 new leads. After two weeks of a campaign cost per click of £2 and a cost per lead of £31. So what can you be utilizing as a marketer to get the most out of your budget in 2024? One, bringing your content to life with video and experiment on TikTok.
Many companies are experimenting even just by using image and video ads on TikTok first, and then posting them on the more expensive channels like Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube when they know what fit. It’s a test bed. And as long as you’re safe and professional, you can’t really go wrong and the number of impressions you get might surprise you.
Second, utilize AI like Chat GPT and BARD’s for the beginning of your work, but be aware it’s a language tool, not a thinking tool yet. It’s great for ten content ideas and stopping in that blank page syndrome, but it’s risky in terms of your search engine results to ask it to write content. Even if you have a handy AI copywriter tool, it’s going to hurt your search engine results.
If you include content on there. Third and final, content is still king and should remain your focus. It feels like everyone is an influencer these days. It’s because of how much potential you have to generate interest in your service. If your content is interesting and helpful for your audience. Thank you for joining this short on the same landing page episode. We’ll see you next time.
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