Seven marketing predictions for 2024

MADE Edition 89

Futurist, I (Nick Richtsmeier) am not. I don't care do join the ranks of people who were Web 3 experts for a minute, AI prompt gurus for most of 2023, and those who would rather pontificate about the future than make it.

But we all do need to plan. To do that planning, it helps to have your eyes on some key trends. Here are my big seven going into 2024. Some of them hopeful, some of them a little panicky, all of them worthy of your damns to give.

1. Goodbye, "Social." The collision of GenAI and consumers' increasing distrust of social platforms will continue to degrade "social" as a marketing category. Platform media like Instagram, former Twitter, and TikTok haven't been "social" for quite some time, but the chaos engine of Generative AI will continue to flood the platforms with generic content, misinformation, and boredom. Gartner says 50% of users in the U.S. will decrease usage in 2024. I think that number might be low. Prepare for disreputable platform spokespeople (Hello, Linda!) to continue to use skewed global engagement numbers to mask this reality.
2. SEO won't die. But it will waste your money. Google will continue to transfer billions of wealth from the middle market to its over-bloated pockets by convincing leaders that their page rank still matters. The new "AI-powered search page" that Google has previewed takes up to 60% of the prime real estate with content Google has scraped for your website so people won't go to your website. Always follow the incentives. Google's—like all platforms—primary incentive is to keep users on platform where they can ship you ads. In 2024, Google is no longer the gateway to the web. It's the gateway to itself. Look for ROI on SEO and SEM to continue to decline but spends to remain relatively constant because no knows what else to do. (I do, I know what else to do.)
3. It's all about personality and POV. In 2023 we saw the expansion of the booming influencer marketing trend expand to "personality-driven marketing" (God save us from marketing-coined terms). In its simplest form, instead of just outsourcing their marketing to TikTok personalities (a short game if there ever was one), brands are realizing they need to have personalities in the building. The CEO-as-influencer has been a brewing category for a while, but it will spread into the boring businesses like professional services, financial, and B2B. Having a happy face on camera won't be enough; brands will need to lead with strong POV. The majority of Americans see a country in decline, and in the absence of other institutions, they'll continue to turn to commerce and its leaders for answers on what's wrong and what to do about it. This thought leadership is where money is made.
4. The marketing leadership gap will only get worse. Tough love, fam: We're in a cyclical decline in marketing leadership, and we have been for a while. Too many senior marketing leaders were conscripted into servitude to short-term metrics and platform KPI chasing in the 2010s, all the way absconding their leadership role in the organization. Simultaneously, the next wave of talent is trained on an internet that has left the building with minimal strategic skills to replace it with. Marketing leadership is only worth its price tag if it directly impacts corporate strategy, brand positioning, and interdepartmental work projects like service expansion, M&A, and employee culture. CMOs who can't do more than launch a new website or track the CAC of your seven agencies will continue to disappoint. The net effect? Pushing marketing further behind the amorphous "revenue" function, which, half a decade in, no one really knows what it is.
5. The Super Bowl commercials will be terrible. We are in a cultural deadzone where our creative classes are busy trying to launch their third podcast or go viral on Twitter. TV and film haven't had this bad a year creatively in decades and the agency world is in a generational reset, trying to decide what it wants to be now that they're back to being a commodity (thanks, internet.) The most public sign of all of this will be abject tomfoolery of this year's Super Bowl commercials. The zeitgeist going into 2024 is neither fun nor funny, giving those folks shooting their commercials as we speak nothing to work with.
6. Internal Comms/Culture will rise. The best organizations have always had a strong collab between marketing, HR, and the exec team to craft a winning company culture. Everyone lost their minds during COVID and the subsequent "Great Resignation," and now the cultural crows are back to roost. Organizations will have to build MUCH stronger internal marketing operations driven by much clearer cultural leadership. The dust has virtually settled on WFH tiffs, and now we have to figure out how to work together again, wherever our butts may sit.
7. 2024 (not Taylor's Version). Taylor Swift and Beyonce did a pretty stellar job distracting half of America from "the hellscape" in 2023, but they won't save us in 2024. The pop culture vacuum—and vicariously the content for marketers gaping hole—that they will leave in 2024 will need to be filled. Marvel is basically sitting out most of 2024, and the production schedule will still be metabolizing the strikes well into the spring. We will all need something to distract us from political ads, so look for an unexpected new culture hog to enter the scene. Boomers will continue to Boom and try to make septuagenarians a thing. Look for more geriatrics making headlines in 2024.

What exec teams should do about it:

Growth in 2024 will not be for the faint of heart. We are one year further into the unraveling of the digital marketing panacea. 2024 will accelerate the fracturing of digital marketing for the all the reasons above and some I didn't have the space to address. How most execs think about marketing (clicks, campaigns, and web traffic) depends on where attribution models can tell you what's happening where and why. This system no longer exists. If it ever did. And most marketing leaders lack the strategic experience to educate their CEO out the confusion and into the new world awakening.

Add to this that we believe the economy will stabilize in 2024. Perceptions will catch up to the reality of the American economy's overall health now that the Fed has worked out all (we hope) its interest obsession.

The environment for well-built, high-trust institutions will be ripe. But they will require strategic leadership that can rise to the occasion. Many will be disappointed. Here are three things you can do to get ahead of this:

1. Do not blindly assume your agency partners are acting strategically. Even if they say the word "strategic" over and over again. Most agencies use "strategy" as a catch-all term to keep you engaged in a basket of services that may or may not actually grow your business. The exceptions are rare. Reset scopes with agencies. Give them a clear map of your growth plans. Expect them to come back to the table with fresh thinking on how to address this. Sniff out boilerplate thinking and fire anyone who puts it in front of you.
2. Get your in-house leadership squared away. If you are a CEO who is actively keeping marketing in a tactical hampster wheel of projects that don't feed your strategic plan but appease squeaky wheels... stop it. Look in the mirror, and realize that you are not an expert on this function and you need strategic thinking on how to go to market and leverage your marketing function in a revenue-positive way. Likely, you haven't hired enough or the right kind of senior leadership talent for your go-to-market operation. Evaluate your budget for leaders you can trust, hire them, and give them the reigns to lead you.
3. Get your market positioning right. Nearly all categories are sinking under the wet blanket of American consumer cynicism. The default position now from consumers is skepticism. If you are simply one more of a group of RIAs, colleges, retail shops, SAAS providers, or consultants, you will be assumed to be part of the problem. Good positioning separates you from the problem. Good point-of-view work lets you lead the solution. Good marketing then evangelizes that leadership. Successful orgs in 2024 will do all three.

As always, there's a lot here and some of it's hard to contextualize to your business. I'm always here for a call. Let's chat.