What does your marketing strategy look like for 2024?

In December 2023, I entered a room of Cambridge minds who were asking the same question.

There was a definite buzz. 2023 had been a good year in marketing, but everyone was keen to get a firm grip of the new year and plan ahead for all the certainties and uncertainties that lay ahead.

In an event run by Sookio and Cambridge Network, a panel of marketing experts (Sue Keogh, Kat Selby, Hector Corey and Gav O’Brien) set out how to approach a marketing strategy for the upcoming year.

This article aims to put my scribbly notes into something cohesive, and hopefully prove useful if you’re looking ahead too.

What do we know will happen in 2024?

The event kicked off discussing speculation about what would likely happen in the new year.

Looking at upcoming world events, we can approach this with some confidence.

Speculating for 2024: National and global politics

2024 will see a general election in the UK, and more than half of humanity will live in a country holding a vote.

In the UK, we’ll likely see Labour go head to head with the Conservatives.

Whatever, the outcome, we’ll see delayed decisions across many industries due to uncertainty. Funding and budgets will be withheld. Expect that to slow and slow as the election day approaches.

Then, as soon as we have an answer, expect a slingshot of funding and action.

Speculating for 2024: Sports

Among the many sporting events in 2024, we have the Olympics in Paris.

Expect brands to jump on the Olympic bandwagon, whether they are official sponsors or not.

There’s secondary themes at play, such as climate change. The Paris Olympics is aiming to reduce emissions by 50% compared to the previous Olympics in Tokyo.

Speculating for 2024: AI

The exponential developments in AI mean we’ll see more breakthroughs in our headlines in 2024.

There also hasn’t yet been a major scandal. It’s a negative outlook, but expect a big event that’ll paint AI in a bad light that encourages government action.

Consider we have a major year of elections, and the implications of its use to create political deepfakes and spread misinformation that’s indistinguishable from reality.

We’re likely to see new policies come into effect, which could hinder its development or use.

But, whatever your opinion on AI, it’s not the right approach to completely ignore AI in your content creation.

You should use AI to increase quality, not quantity. Stay human, and treat your audience like you’d like to be treated.

Speculating for 2024: Shifting social media

In July 2023, we saw Twitter rebrand as X, following Elon Musk’s successful takeover.

But with these high-profile takeovers, we also see awkward situations when brands don’t know how to react to bad news about those at the top, or they’ll react decisively to avoid hurting their brand image.

We also saw the introduction of Meta’s Threads, as an alternative to X.

We’re seeing average users spend over two hours a day on social media, and short-form video as the most popular form of content, with TikTok earning more than Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat combined.

So expect a rise in short-form content.

It’s also worth reserving your brand’s handle on these platforms, even if you don’t expect to use them immediately.

“How do we keep up with all these platforms?” someone asks, and we’re told the best approach is to focus on 2-3 platforms. I not only agree with this, I’d add that you should make the content unique to each platform - otherwise why would someone follow you on more than one platform?

“The Content Olympics”

I’ve forgotten exactly what I meant by this phrase, but I still like the sound of it.

There’s a few extra notes I made under this headline.

Firstly, paid ads are the best way to reach a new audience. One person asked a good starting figure, and Hector answered “£30 a day”. A lot of people write that down.

It’s worth mentioning that I make ad creatives for UK startups that convert, and the budgets vary wildly. The higher your budget, the more you can reach. But, it can be a balancing act.

Also consider closed social media for your outreach.

Your audience aren’t just on Facebook and Linkedin. They’re inside closed Slack and Whatsapp groups, and using new tools like Circle to build online communities.

You can either explore paid advertising in these communities, or you could spend more time as part of these communities, building trust and recognition, so when you make a suggestion it’s not an advertisement.

Make your plan

With all this in mind, you need to decide which parts of your marketing strategy you’ll stop, start, continue and change.

That’s where the sheet in the top image comes into play.

On my sheet, I scribbled the following:

Then, most importantly, “When?”

Which… I accept… I left blank.

However, I fully agree that putting a date in the calendar is a great way to get things done. Even if you need to shift the date, you’re still acknowledging that the task is waiting.

So my ‘when’ will depend on which days are free in my calendar.

What about you?

I should also mention Belt Software, a great company I made an animation for who are tackling this problem head on - stopping tasks from dropping off the radar.

What next?

Well, firstly, thanks for reading this far!

If you found this interesting, I’d highly encourage you to read the article about this event directly from Sue Keogh herself at Sookio: