A new report released this month by Intero Digital (Disclosure: I previously worked with Intero)'s Revolutionizing Reach: The 2024 Digital Marketing Landscape You Can't Ignore examines annual trends in digital spending and marketing efforts for SMB customer lists.
The report covers the broad digital landscape and includes customer research findings as well as insights and strategies to help marketers address the challenges and goals they will face this year. The main scopes include:
- Trends in digital marketing spending.
- Main goals of digital marketing in 2024.
- Content marketing trends.
- Emerging trends and data in Amazon marketing.
- A new trend in paid advertising.
- Transforming the SEO field.
- influencer marketing.
- Video marketing tactics and strategies.
Let's take a look at some of the report's highlights and key insights.
Key digital marketing priorities for small businesses in 2024
The first finding comes as no surprise to those active in digital marketing across a variety of industries, verticals, niches, and three-letter acronyms like “B2C” and “B2B.” Here are the most important things for digital marketers in 2024. increase in revenue, 79% of respondents listed it as their top goal.
“Growth” is a given for most marketers, but it’s still worth mentioning if you just get it out of the way and focus on the digital marketing strategies and activities that actually drive it. But for the digital marketers in this study, what really matters is the end result: the bottom line.
Marketers aren't backing down in their pursuit of growth this year, with 46.2% planning to increase spending, 0% planning to decrease spending, and 53.8% planning to stay the same.
Digital marketing’s biggest challenges in 2024
The path to increased revenue and lead generation is fraught with obstacles, and survey respondents also outlined many of the common challenges.
Apart from revenue, the biggest challenges were lead generation, budget constraints, competition and algorithm changes, and SEO best practices. Although these points are cited separately, they are often interrelated.
Competition is fierce wherever marketers seek profit across a variety of digital channels, and things don't seem to be calming down anytime soon.
When competition is high, whether it's paid media or earned media, more investment is often required to be competitive. This leads to problems in effectively measuring his ROI of digital marketing.
Budget constraints often result from inefficient measurement and tracking systems. What ultimately matters is a comprehensive and well-executed digital marketing strategy and tactical plan, whether focused on a single channel or across multiple channels.
Up to 7.7% of respondents had branding as a challenge. Building a brand in a crowded and competitive digital space can be difficult this year because it takes a lot of effort, budget, and time. There are several other issues at stake, and marketers have a lot of work ahead of them this year.
Digital marketing top goals for 2024
In the “Biggest Goal” section of the survey, “Increase revenue” topped the list at 79.5%, followed by a slight decline for each support goal. In second place were “Increasing web traffic” and “Improving SERP rankings” (38.5% each).
What's interesting is that lead generation ranked second as the biggest challenge (33.3%), but came in fifth for the biggest goal (30.8%). Have you given up on lead generators? no. Since the percentages are close, it seems that the priorities match.
It is also interesting to see that brand awareness and thought leadership figure prominently on this list of goals (33.3%). Especially when converting to revenue is often difficult and not a huge problem.
The biggest barrier to entry into thought leadership is actually having the best ideas and insights. For those who do, this will be one of his easiest goals to achieve in 2024.
Again, if done well, it can complement and drive goals like more traffic, higher positioning, more growth, and more qualified leads.
Content marketing insights
Another interesting aspect of this study is the over 100,00 content reviews. In its analysis, Intero found that the average number of words for the “most shared” content was 552 words, a significant decrease from 792 words in the previous year's analysis.
This means that, at least in a social context, getting the message across is more important than the wording. For marketers competing in his SEO field with a high word count, you need to balance your content strategy and emphasize both channels through your content.
Marketing publishers are also looking to diversify their content beyond the written word in 2024. The top asset types used by digital marketers this year include video (used by 41% of marketers), podcasts (41%), and the most diverse activity, newsletters (47%).
About the report
This article touches on only a few points from the report and provides strategic insights into this year's digital marketing tactics and approaches.
Will next year's survey bring big changes, or will the status quo remain the same? That's uncertain, but one thing is clear: the digital landscape is rapidly evolving, and despite competition, First, it offers opportunities for early adopters to succeed across a variety of channels.
All images in this report were provided by Intero Digital. The full report can be downloaded here.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
