Lessons Learned from the Digital Marketing Institute’s 2024 Trends Seminar

Scala took part in the Digital Marketing Institute’s 2024 Trends in Digital Marketing seminar. In it, delegates learned some fascinating insights into the future of digital marketing, AI, and utilising social media.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated the conversation across almost every sector and indeed all walks of life over the past couple of years. It was no surprise to see it at the forefront once again for this year’s Trends in Digital Marketing seminar. The industry insiders ranged in opinion, from sceptical warnings to businesses to exciting encouragement for the future of industries. AI is changing the game, and changing it rapidly, with more developments set to launch in the coming months. One thing is certain: we all need to adapt to this new dawn of AI.

Yet, digital marketing is not confined to this seismic shift in how businesses operate. There are plenty of good old-fashioned digital marketing tips and tricks you can still employ. Though they need to remain agile as we head into the new year, in this article, we’ll explore our findings from the seminar and unpack them here for you to get to grips with.

AI Will Dominate 2024

The emergence of AI has left many of us scratching our heads over how exactly it will change the industry. Who exactly will be affected? And what measures will be put in place to safeguard staff from a digital replacement? It leaves people with a mixture of emotions, both exciting and worrying.

Companies need to be mindful that in 2024, Google Ads will roll out new campaigns and AI assistance. While Google is an effective tool, it’s also designed to make companies spend more money. This is also true when dealing with Google reps. So when they do come knocking, make sure that you  avoid on-the-spot pressure. Always say no while on the phone, and don’t make any major changes to the process before considering it thoroughly. If you push back, the Google reps may try to contact other members of your company, so it’s always wise to send out a warning about this before hand.

However, the debate on AI was raised when follow-up speaker Brian Corish joined the conversation. During his presentation, he showcased the exciting potential of the tool.

But that to one, the potential of AI is exciting and it is essential for companies to embrace AI if they have any hope of surviving over the next three to five-year period. To navigate this coming storm, it’s worthwhile tasking a senior staff member with formulating an AI strategy plan. This would be a roadmap for exactly how your company will utilise AI to enhance its business. It can be used to reduce copywriting times, plan ideas and strategies, and aid in numerous marketing factors.

Yet, as the author of this piece, who has been copywriting for years across multiple industries and for various different intended audiences, says, AI is not a replacement for human-made copy. AI can help with sentence structure, grammar, filling in unknown details, etc. But it should not be used to write entire pieces of content. AI aggregates information and displays it in article form. This is all content that is lifted from other written pieces across the internet. Keeping SEO in mind, if you are using wholly AI-generated articles, they will never perform well or be picked up by Google due to their inherent regurgitated nature.

The Social Media Platform to Embrace

Threads: yay or nay?

One surprising revelation during this years’ seminar was the push to embrace Meta’s Threads as a viable social media platform. Needless to say, the app hasn’t seen the best launch in 2023 (it was launched in United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan). Following a highly publicised rollout during the summer, its userbase quickly shrank in the following months. What was touted as a platform to rival or even take down X (formally Twitter) was ultimately crushed by the legacy competitor.

According to demandsage.com, as of 2023, Twitter has around 528.3 million monetisable monthly active users. Threads, on the other hand, lost 80% of its users as of August 2023, with Mark Zuckerberg confirming it had fallen to below 100 million monthly users.

However, things could be about to change, as it was suggested by one of the presenters, Alison Battisby (Avocado Social and DMI Tutor) that Threads could be launching in the EU as soon as December 2023. This would naturally provide the platform with a significant boost in usership, along with ad revenue and business development.

As per Battisby’s advice, now is the time to start exploring the platform, as it will put your business at a major advantage in the new year. Once or if Threads gains traction in the social media platform space, giving your company a record of authority on it will help you stand out.

LinkedIn

Less controversial was the discussion around the  continued importance of LinkedIn for business outreach. What’s clear is that it will continue to be the best platform for organic opportunities for marketers in 2024. The main aspects of LinkedIn that we all need to be aware of are the:

1. Organic opportunities generated by Creator Mode on personal profiles, which supports those who want to use LinkedIn grow an audience and cultivate a following to establish a personal brand. This emphasises the need for an employee engagement programme.
2. Embrace new formats, including LinkedIn newsletters, collaborative articles, and LinkedIn live events
3. Video engagement ads will be the focus for paid content

Understanding the Experience in EEAT

Google’s search rater, EAT, which stands for ‘Expertise’, ‘Authority’, and ‘Trustworthiness’, has long been a focal point for all written content on the internet. However, the search engine recently added another ‘Experience’. This slight adjustment has had a profound impact on what content is picked up and promoted on Google. In the coming year, this will only become more important.

Essentially, expertise in EEAT means that Google values firsthand experience on any page’s given topic. This will help promote authority, as users typically want to find information from the experts themselves. This means that Google will reward pages that are penned by a first-hand author.

This author needs to be directly involved in the topic they are discussing, so, for example, if you are writing about the latest legislative changes for injury lawyers, Google will reward the page for having been written by one. It’s therefore going to be increasingly important for organisations to ensure that any articles are attributed online to an individual, rather than simply referencing it to a generic ‘team’.

Google’s updated Search Quality Rater Guidelines say this about experience: “Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of personal experience.

“For example, which would you trust: a product review from someone who has personally used the product or a 'review' by someone who has not?”

 Search Generative Experience (SGE). This is a major advancement in the field of search technology. It is Google Search, which is enhanced by AI. It offers AI-powered overviews to quickly understand a given topic. These AI snapshots generate multi-section responses that are easy to understand and engage with, based on aggregate data similar to ChatGPT.

From an initial search, you can naturally ask follow-up questions within the context of the original search. This means the information you find becomes more specific and detailed the further you continue to search. For further information on how you can improve your digital marketing strategy, please contact Scala today and speak to a member of our marketing team.