Top Marketing Trends 2024 to Watch: From AI to Pop-Ups

We’re very positive when looking at marketing trends 2024. Why? It’s safe to say this year will make the shopping experience better for consumers and bring many fantastic creative campaigns. Of course, there will be a big place for technological advancements. AI, AR, and VR will be at the core of experiential marketing and retail will become even more personalized. Let’s take a closer look at the 2024 marketing trends.

The normalization of AI

2023 has shown us that AI is, indeed, here. And it’s here to stay too. We’ve seen the major tech players unveiling their chatbots. OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Microsoft rolled out Bing Chat. Google didn’t want to lose the game here and introduced the world to Bard. 

This time it felt real, though. There was a consensus that for the first time since all the artificial intelligence discussion, AI is actually changing marketing.

One of the top marketing trends in 2024 is understanding how AI can make your business more attractive to customers and drive growth.

There’s something AI does better than anyone, though. ChatGPT showed that chat-bots went on another level and it’s far from the generic and annoying robo-talks of the past. It produces coherent conversations that almost feel conscious.

In September 2023 OpenAI unveiled a new feature that allows you to use your voice to communicate with it. 

But what does it have to do with the marketing trends 2024 you may ask? Two words: customer support. The more advanced conversational capabilities the AI has, the easier it is for businesses worldwide to integrate it into their communication channels.

Sure, it brings a whole new dimension of ethical considerations with one big question hovering over whether AI can entirely replace the customer support human workforce. But the fact remains that artificial intelligence is a game changer in the support domain and companies will be eager to incorporate it into their operations in 2024.

Money is on the table too. The market for AI went from $15.84 billion in 2021 to a predicted $107.5 billion in 2028.

AI-generated content cuts costs

Yes, another AI-related marketing trend 2024. But what can we do, this technology is quickly becoming the new normal and you can’t keep it out of the mainstream conversation. 

This one is about content marketing. Content creation is one of the staples and pains of digital marketing. Creativity may be costly and businesses are always on the lookout for new ways to decrease the expenses and have the same level of the final product. Here’s where the artificial intelligence knocks on the doors. 

Apart from the conversational chatbot abilities of ChatGPT, OpenAI has brought another force into the world. That of generic content creation. And while you may think that maybe it’s still a raw technology and companies are not that eager to profit from it, the statistics paint a radically different picture. 

According to Statista, a whopping 73% of US marketers admitted to using generative AI tools in their work. 

Let that sink in for a moment. Not only has generic AI content production gained track in the marketing community, but it’s already widespread.

ChatGPT can write articles (this one was written by a human, just FYI). Such solutions as Jasper or Writesonic took the AI-generated texts to the next level by commercializing the concept. You can ask ChatGPT to give you SEO keywords, analyze data, do marketing research, and provide consulting advice. 

All of these things were previously reserved for humans. Now robots are taking over. While their work may be clumsier and, well, generic, AI is getting there. One text at a time. 

It’s not only the textual content, though. The visuals are also getting the AI treatment. Another OpenAI creation DALL-E is successfully used by marketers to generate images, illustrations, and content ideas.

Movement into the generic creative directions makes illustrators and human creatives quite unsettled and worried. But it is what it is, one of the hottest marketing trends 2024 for better or for worse.

Marketing Trends: Pop-up culture dominance

2024 will be a year of experiential marketing. Crafting memorable, immersive, unforgettable, and impressive campaigns was at the top of the list for the majority of brands in 2023. This trend is going to continue. 

Bridging the offline and online through the means of pop-up experiences is the new hot way brands use to connect with customers. With social media influencers on board, and AR and VR technologies in their hands, the companies are crafting engaging real-life pop-up campaigns for the digital-obsessed folks. 

From fashion brands (Jacquemus) to e-commerce giants (Asos), from social media companies (Pinterest) to music streaming giants (Spotify), they all used the engaging power of a good old pop-up to boost their marketing and get some extra attention.

And we’re in love with this kind of thinking. Having a limited time, offline experience is always about an immense level of creativity. Brands are competing with each other for the most original, most jaw-dropping, and most Instagrammable. In the end, it’s the consumer who wins.

TikTok changes the influencer marketing

Short-form video is a marketing standard in 2023. Say thanks to the huge TikTok influence for that. The Chinese social media platform has in many ways changed how brands were looking at influencer marketing and made the whole social media landscape play by its rules. 

We can see TikTok’s firm grip on the industry by seeing how Meta and Google were quick to introduce short-form video features of their own (Reels and Shorts respectively). Still, it’s TikTok that has higher engagement rates, a third of US social media users, and an unconditional Gen-Z love. 

The ByteDance-owned company is also dictating the rules of influencer marketing now. Its open algorithm feed is keen on promoting unfiltered, relatable content. This is a major difference between this platform and Instagram (where it’s still more about very curated content delivery and certain aesthetics).

The aforementioned changes the way brands look at influencers and tailor new influencer campaigns to the TikTok format that persists both in digital and offline advertising.