Top Industry Trends for 2024 Shared by the Experts at 9Rooftops

Marketing and communications in 2024 are set to evolve further, with no signs of slowing down. The year promises groundbreaking shifts, from artificial intelligence revolutionizing marketing and user engagement to big brands capitalizing on social media’s bite-sized content for enhanced product exposure. Add to this the rise of immersive digital experiences, and you have a transformative landscape.

Our experts at 9Rooftops are ready to guide you through these pivotal changes, offering essential insights and strategies for mastering marketing for your brand in the upcoming year.

Ready to Discover?

Creative | Social Media | CRM and Loyalty | Experiential | Digital Experience | Influencer Marketing

Creative Shifts: Renewed Nostalgia and Inspiration

 

Scott Seymour, EVP + Chief Creative Officer

About Scott: Scott Seymour brings over two decades of experience in the creative advertising industry. With a passion for creativity and innovation, Scott leads his team in pushing the boundaries of design, storytelling and brand strategy.

Leveraging kindness and the power of AI image generation are just some of the trends that will be pivotal for brands and advertisers as they look to distinguish themselves creatively and break through the clutter.

Adaptable Personalization: With advancements in customization and AI workflows, new opportunities arise to resonate in ways we never thought possible. People will have the freedom to consume content tailored specifically for them. The ability to create adaptable creative to match someone’s current mood or their desired need state is worth exploring. Then, having the design expressed in a way that is completely in sync with their personal aesthetic preferences will be incredibly valuable.

Minimalism and Decluttering: Now more than ever, with the massive amounts of information coming at us in any given moment, a movement toward simplification is welcomed. Reducing clutter throughout all aspects of our lives, including incoming communications, allows people to truly focus on what matters most without unnecessary distractions. Carefully curated content and purposeful design choices will genuinely deliver on the principle that less is more.

Fantastical Inspiration: Sparked by AI image generation and fueled by possibility, we anticipate an acceleration of surreal fantastical styles that provoke a sense of wonder and escapism. A hyper-real utopian aesthetic blurs the lines between reality and imagination. With this extraordinary style of captivating imagery, surreal illumination and dream-like color palettes, they will continue to delight and defy reality.

Rise of Kindness: Acts of kindness uplift people when they need it most. Brands that tap into this concept will deepen connections with their consumers in new ways. This will promote empathy, fostering a sense of gratitude that can be contagious.

Nostalgia Reimagined: Fueled by a need for authenticity, optimism and a desire for what’s next — a foundation of shared nostalgic cultural connections, themes and designs will create stronger social bonds. Blending this charm with a modern twist will keep things fresh and interesting.

Contact us today to see how our expertise in creative marketing can reimagine your brand’s impact with consumers.

Social Media Shifts: Connecting Through Social-First Tactics

 

Julia Repisky, Senior Content + Social Media Strategist

About Julia: Julia’s keen eye for social media trends and intimate understanding of audience engagement are the foundation for her success with clients. Her assistance on innovative campaigns helps increase our clients’ online presence.

With 2023 ending, you’re probably deep into 2024 planning. If you’re worried about a new year with the same old social media strategy, make sure to think about these top trends that will be key to online success in the new year.

TikTok: It’s no surprise that this social media platform will continue to reign; in fact, TikTok is anticipated to increase its user base to 900 million, an 8% increase, so being active is more paramount than ever in 2024, especially as the audience continues to diversify beyond just kids.

Bite-Sized Content (especially video): Short, easily digestible content led TikTok and Instagram reels to their huge success, especially as attention spans continue to shrink. People want content they can consume in seconds, and your brand should be able to deliver that in an authentic way.

SEO on Social: Gen Z and Millennials rely on social for more than entertainment. About 40% of young adults  between 18–24 use social media like a search engine, meaning you’ll need to go beyond just hashtags to hit the right keywords to make your social presence known.

Hybrid, AI Content: The AI buzz won’t calm down anytime soon and will become an integral part of social media content creation, whether to help with inspiration, optimize content or to create something completely new. Don’t be afraid to play around with what AI can help you do.

Raw, Authentic Content: Social media isn’t the place for polished product placement anymore. Users don’t want perfection, but a feed full of relatable, highly (or even completely) unedited content that feels natural. In 2024, aim for less over analyzing and creating more content in the moment.

If you’re interested in exploring how your brand can take on the new year with its social media marketing, contact us today to discover how we can help transform your social channels into powerful brand assets.

CRM and Loyalty: Emerging Patterns and Insights

 

Jenny Brenner, Group Director, Digital Strategy + CRM Solutions

About Jenny: Jenny is at the forefront of digital strategy and CRM initiatives. Her pivotal role in creating comprehensive digital experiences and transformative programs is key to enhancing and cultivating enduring customer relationships for brands.

The new year is a great time to revisit your CRM and loyalty plans, and renew focus on the customer. As you examine your approach and set goals for 2024 amid the changing digital environment, consider these areas to ensure your plans include innovations that will help make your brand, their brand.

Decisioning and Personalization Relevancy: This has always been a key driver in connecting effectively with prospects and customers, and with new AI tools aiming to decrease technical barriers, automate and ease integration, anticipate an even higher baseline for personalized product offerings, content and communications in the marketplace this upcoming year.

Revisit your personalization capabilities to ensure you’re scoring and maximizing output across transactional, behavioral and situational data.

Zero-Party Data Campaigns: They’re not going anywhere — gaining popularity in 2023 as an initial outcome of cookie deprecation announcements, expect brands to continue to take advantage of these for turnkey data collection and application. Well suited for on-the-fly personalization, situational/environmental touchpoints and driving conversion rate optimization results.

Incorporate zero-party data campaigns into your CRO strategy to gain quick, actionable learnings about your audience.

Interactivity: In an increasingly digital environment, it’s even more challenging for brands to break through the clutter in inboxes and experiences. Increasing the interactivity of your digital touchpoints — from email to MMS/SMS can help significantly boost engagement and results.

Make interactive features and formats, like GIFs, quizzes and countdown clocks a regular part of your digital brand experience to engage customers and deliver offers and content in a unique and memorable way.

Experiential Rewards: Engaging loyalty program members requires a blend of transactional and emotional benefits. While transactional benefits — discounts, offers, points — can drive direct replenishment and purchase retention, incorporating experiences whether gamified or as exclusive rewards can drive brand differentiation, preference and loyalty.

Pilot a gamified or exclusive experiential element in your loyalty program to spark member interest and engagement.

Prioritizing Customer KPIs: Increases in consumer privacy policy will continue into 2024 and as key platforms and providers decrease the amount of data shared back to marketers, brands need to find alternative measurement solutions across digital ecosystems.

CRM is no stranger to this, as customer-centric marketing is channel agnostic. From an eCRM perspective, email marketing campaign rates and website metrics historically tracked for performance and attribution will have less reliable coverage in the new year, something the industry is already realizing from the recent iOS17 update adoption.

Prioritize defining, regularly calculating and placing weight on customer-centric metrics alongside campaign KPIs in 2024 to provide a bigger picture of your campaign’s impact on ultimate goals: changing key behaviors and growing customer lifetime value.

Explore our CRM and loyalty solutions with our expert team and get started on surpassing your 2024 objectives. Contact us today. 

Experience Marketing: Transformational Engagement

 

Kate Bradbury, Managing Director

About Kate: Leading our NYC Experience Marketing team, Kate’s expertise lies in CPG, particularly in wine and spirits. She’s adept at developing innovative concepts and strong partnerships to deliver memorable brand experiences. Her emphasis on impactful execution and deep audience engagement ensures a strong brand-consumer connection.

Experiential marketing appeals to brands of many sizes and fortunately in 2024, technology will begin to favor the mid-sized brand.

Immersive Digital Experiences:  The introduction of the Sphere in Las Vegas has sparked a ton of excitement around the power of immersive artistic experiences where visual, sound and physical form all come together in awe-inspiring ways.

An inside look at the brand new Las Vegas Sphere

The good news is, you don’t have to have a sphere-like budget to spend to achieve your experiential marketing goals. Advances in technology have made production more flexible and affordable for smaller-scale events.

Moreover, my perspective discussing experiential marketing ROI through data science remains a way forward to measure results for a diversity of experience marketing strategies.

Scalable and Reusable: Efficient execution and long-term thinking around event assets will be critical as larger economic trends put pressure on marketing budgets. Creating event platforms that can scale up and down and reusable assets can help stretch marketing dollars. Plus, reusable assets help make events more sustainable.

Tech Powered Personalization and Customization: AI has seen a rapid technological increase and adoption rates. In experiential, we think AI will enhance targeting and customization exponentially, allowing marketers to build dynamic experiences precisely tailored to their consumers from beginning to end. AI will also allow for consumer-driven personalized experiences.

Sought After/Exclusivity: FOMO is real and post-COVID consumers are again placing an emphasis on gathering once-in-a-lifetime-style memories and experiences. Highly curated events with a level of exclusivity are a perfect fit for the right brand and can be magnified via an influencer approach.

The 9Rooftops Experiential team delivered two high profile, luxury events for the latest Penfolds release. Check them out.

Experiential Retail and Pop-ups: Online shopping is more convenient than ever, so if people are going to spend time going to a store, they want something special. Creating unique experiences with the full transformation of spaces or launching memorable pop-up shops are ways for brands to stand out. These dynamic and bespoke experiences help drive social sharing, additional brand impressions and customer loyalty.

Want to see how our expertise in experiential marketing can create unforgettable events and campaigns? Contact us today. 

Digital Experience: Advancements in Personalization, AI

 

Patti Mulligan, VP + Director Digital Experience

About Patti: Patti’s strategic expertise helps clients stay in tune with the ever-changing digital landscape. Her approach is centered on creating data-driven, user-centric experiences aligned with business objectives. This ensures that the right technology is employed to integrate data effectively, providing customers with the optimal experience.

The influence of AI on the digital experience will continue to be an overriding theme found in digital solutions and real-time, data-driven on-page content population.

Hyper-Personalization: As the practice of being treated as a unique individual increases loyalty, the demand for personalized experiences will continue to grow. AI will be increasingly reliant on analyzing customer data to facilitate these experiences.

In fact, AI will offer real-time personalization of user-experiences which may result in immediate data analysis. An AI algorithm will immediately analyze a user’s actions on platforms, including clicks, navigation and internal search queries, and adjust the website page’s products.

Sustainability: Developers will focus on improving performance of digital solutions, requiring less from servers and networks. There is a general concern across the spectrum of designers, developers, users and customers who are committed to social responsibility and the environmental impacts of their experiences and products.

AI Integration: An obvious trend that is only gaining traction from development tools for more efficient coding to image generation and behavior insights. In fact, by 2030, the global revenue forecast for AI is projected to reach a mind numbing $1.3 billion.

Every big brand is traversing the AI landscape, including Google’s Generative AI Search experience.

In theory, this will result in more data-driven designs that revolve around user insights.

Immersive Experiences: AR and VR will grow in usage and popularity and will be used increasingly to enable product interactions that are key to encouraging customer loyalty. Future evolutions will allow for virtual stores, enhanced product visualizations and experiences, and interactive product demonstrations.

AR already enables virtual try-ons, as our Warby Parker example displays, which allows users to see how products look on them with their smartphones, helping encourage more confidence in the purchase process. Moreover, AR personalization allows you to see if that sofa looks right in your living room, or if that hat you found online will match your sport coat.

Expect all of these examples to evolve and an expansion into more and more consumer use cases.

Accessibility: A timeless requirement rather than a trend, accessibility should never fall out of the limelight. With 1 in 4 Americans having a disability, it is imperative for all users to be able to access websites. By Implementing ADA guidelines the benefits to companies are great as accessibility fosters inclusivity and quality, expands audiences, builds brand image and reputation, and prevents costly litigation.

Contact us today to learn how we can enhance your digital experience, focusing on user-friendliness and creating engaging journeys.

The Creator Economy: New Influences

 

Pamela Pacheco, Senior Social Media Strategist

About Pam: Pam has an impressive talent for helping to build innovative social media engagement strategies. She helps amplify our clients’ online presence through campaigns that connect with audiences.

In the ever-evolving world of social media, influencer marketing is at the forefront. It’s time to prepare for what’s next, so join me as I unravel the innovative strategies and trends that will change the way I view and integrate influencers in our 2024 campaigns.

Brand and Influencer Collaborations: Influencer marketing has become an integral part of brand promotion. In a 2023 Influencer Marketing Hub survey, an overwhelming 83% of respondents said they believe influencer marketing continues to be effective.

Now, brands are taking it a step further by collaborating with influencers to create new products.

This approach enables brands to leverage the influencer’s creativity and knowledge of their audience, resulting in more authentic products for their target audience. It also generates greater engagement and loyalty among consumers. This mutually beneficial collaboration between brands and influencers has proven to be effective in enhancing the overall success of marketing campaigns and will continue to evolve during 2024.

Social Commerce: In 2024, the alliance between influencer marketing and social commerce is set to rewrite the rules of online shopping. As the annual average social commerce sales per buyer are projected to grow 21.3% (according to an eMarketer report) this year and social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube continue to incorporate shopping features, influencers will act as the center, providing firsthand product reviews, live demonstrations and real-time purchasing guidance to their audiences.

This trend will enhance the shopping experience and offer brands a dynamic way to reach and convert consumers directly within their favorite social platforms.

Brand Employees Become Influencers: As this industry continues to evolve, brands are recognizing the potential within their staff. In a fun twist, employees are stepping into the spotlight as new influencers, leveraging their connection to the brand’s values and culture to cultivate deeper trust and engagement with consumers. Employees turned influencers will be encouraged to share their experiences, opinions and knowledge about the brand to create authentic content that fosters deeper connections with consumers. So how are brands selecting these employees? They look for employees who are active on social media, have a considerable following and possess strong communication skills. Now anyone from the CEO to a sales associate can become a brand ambassador.

Macro and Micro-Influencers Combine: The combination of macro and micro-influencers will become a popular strategy for brands looking to diversify their audience reach and engagement in the world of influencer marketing.

Macro-influencers typically have a larger following and higher social media reach, while micro-influencers are more relatable and have a more niche following which can result in higher engagement rates.

By combining both types of influencers, brands can create a marketing campaign that appeals to a wide range of consumers and generates a higher level of engagement and loyalty.

Community-Centric Influence: Influencers will shift their focus from chasing follower counts to nurturing social communities. This trend emphasizes meaningful engagements, discussions and immersive experiences within niche communities, reshaping the influencer landscape.

Contact us today to discover how we can help transform your social media channels into powerful brand assets.

Conclusion

Wrapping up our exploration of 2024’s top industry trends, it’s obvious that the future of marketing will remain a world of innovation and transformation. Whether you’re looking to overhaul your creative or social media strategy, dive into the world of AI, VR, and experiential or refine your CRM and influencer tactics, our experienced team is ready to help.