Since January can be a busy time for business, here’s a quick guide 4 automation-based marketing strategy trends in 2024 we think will continue to grow.
The New Year always looks like a good starting point for implementing a fresh, well rounded marketing strategy.
While a change can sometimes be as good as (or better than) a rest, it’s also important to keep on top of changing market conditions and customer behaviours rather than closing the stable door after the horse has bolted!
If you’re not 100% sure what marketing automation is, you might want to give our guide ‘WTF is Automation?’ a read first.
Hyper-Personalisation
A survey conducted by BusinessWire found that 6 out of 10 Millennials (born between 1981 – 1996) feel a personalised service is more important than keeping their anonymity when browsing online.
Furthermore, over 70% of Millennials are happy to provide access to their mobile data in exchange for a more personalised experience.
By now most businesses are already sending personalised content and communications to their customers, but how do you stand out from the crowd?
Learning your customers behaviours through audience segmentation is the main tried and tested method to help achieve this.
Unfortunately adding in a “Hello *FIRSTNAME*” at the start of an email doesn’t quite cut it anymore. (Although you should be doing this too).
Consumers are actively seeking a positive buying experience from businesses and the ones who lean into their customer’s requests are often the most successful ones.
Omnichannel Marketing
So, you’ve got various ‘owned’ channels for your business: a website, social media accounts, streaming video, paid media, and on and on…
How do you make them all work together while still being able to produce unique content across each channel?
And how do you ensure customers and prospects can buy from you easily, regardless of which device they happen to be using at any given moment?
Through omnichannel marketing.
As the name suggests, omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of a business’ various channels through branding, messaging and online and offline touchpoints to help consumers move through the sales funnel.
There are some key benefits to adopting an omnichannel strategy.
The obvious one is the cohesion between your business channels in terms of the brand strategy and identity.
On top of this businesses can also see better attribution data collected across all channels which will be beneficial for future segmentation and optimising their media spending.
But the real take home point is that these benefits can lead to higher revenue, which is why you got into business, right?
According to research, customers that engage with businesses across multiple platforms can be up to 30% more valuable than those who don’t.
Mobile-First Automation
Did you know that 25% of internet users surf the web exclusively on their mobile devices?
The migration to online mobile usage doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon either.
According to PewResearch, 91% of consumers who buy online do so on their mobile devices.
With all this in mind it seems fairly obvious that mobile-friendly and mobile-first strategies will be high up on the marketing agenda.
Making sure your website is mobile and tablet accessible is just the first step.
Businesses wanting to take full advantage of these kinds of marketing trends will need to utilise in-app advertisements, push notifications, SMS messages and accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to name but a few.
With the perceived willingness of consumers to give access to their mobile data in exchange for further personalisation you’d be foolish not to oblige, right?
Conversational Marketing
According to Forbes, “conversational marketing is the new direct marketing.”
Businesses have come to the realisation that one-way communication with their customers may not be the best approach and have begun changing their ways, in keeping with recent marketing trends.
How do we utilise conversational marketing in our strategy?
What do we do when consumers message us outside of working hours?
This might seem obvious coming from a marketing automation agency, but with automation…that’s how!
More specifically, a lot of businesses are turning to chatbots to handle customer questions ranging from simple inquiries to more complex issues.
The beauty of chatbots is that they don’t have to be completely automatic and exclude the human touch people often feel they’ll lose delving into automation.
For more frequent requests with simpler answers, automated responses can be set to appear almost immediately following a customer question.
If the request is more complex and the chatbot cannot satisfy the customer with an answer, then the issue can be forwarded to a staff member to offer that human touch.
And, perhaps needless to say, the boom in AI technologies is having a big impact on the provision of online chat and conversational marketing, rightly or wrongly.
Conclusion
So there you have it, 4 automation-based marketing trends we think will be a hit this year!
This isn’t to say a dark horse won’t come flying out the pack to steal the crown, but based on the way things are moving it does seem like these will be highly important to most marketing teams.
If you’re curious about the services we offer at Airbase, why not visit our services page to find out more.
Or book a call and let’s get you started.
