While 2024 has just begun, already trends are starting to appear. If you want to be on the content marketing pulse, you have to anticipate what is rising to the top. We turned to our award-winning leadership team to paint the picture they are seeing.
Without further ado, let’s hear from Foundry 360’s Content Marketing experts on what trends to expect for the year ahead. Plus, don’t forget to check back in six months as we assess how our predictions have played out.
“Marketing noise is at an all-time high. Those brands that understand their customers and their channel and format preferences are going to win," says George Baer, SVP of Foundry 360. “That means brands can’t lock into a single channel strategy anymore. It has become paramount to act across channels and align your brand’s strategies with customer preferences to deliver measurable outcomes. Formats and channels can and should be personalized to audiences preferences. While we are seeing customers turning to video in droves, others are finding renewed success in print and direct-to-home strategies, where there’s less competition. Put together, 2024 will be about truly matching your channel with the format based upon audience needs. Content is always evolving, and it’s our job to evolve with it. Being aligned to channel and format preferences so that you are audience-first is going to rise to the top.”
According to Dan Rubin, VP of Strategy & Marketing at Foundry 360, “there’s only one thing that can’t ever be replicated in business and that’s consumer trust. Everything else can be copied — your product, your pricing, even your promotion. But trust can’t be copied, and content is the trust maker. In 2024, more senior level marketers will recognize that trust is the result of solid content marketing and therefore will continue to increase budgets, seek company-wide attention, and generate higher expectations.”
“Building brand credibility and loyalty is directly impacted by your speed to market,” says Paula Giroux, Foundry 360’s VP of Client Partnerships. “Delivering quality content in a timely manner increases your chances for differentiation and enhances your overall value proposition. So 2024 will be about the balance of quality content done with speed. Our clients are continually requiring faster turnarounds, and Foundry 360 always delivers while never sacrificing quality.”
Foundry 360’s VP of Content Licensing & Health Solutions, Renée Lauber, predicts that “wellness marketers will embrace a shift toward the idea of improving healthspan — the period of life spent in good health, free from chronic and age-related diseases — through preventive health strategies and personalized wellness plans. This approach will be supported by a surge in educational content focused on lifestyle choices that extend healthspan and the integration of technology in monitoring and optimizing individual health metrics.”
“We saw that 2023 was a year of 'settling in.' Consumers began to realize what it means to live in a truly post-pandemic world, with all the necessary adjustments and hurdles that go along with it,” says Marco Zuccarello, Director of Strategy & Marketing at Foundry 360. “A core economic factor that spanned sectors was ‘value.’ We have a very positive outlook for 2024, which marks a potentially serious trickle-down boon for many consumers. This means that winning content marketers need to think about two things concurrently: Brands need to be hypervigilant about providing value and should remain positive in their tone — 2024 is truly the first new-normal, post-pandemic year.”
“The arrival of generative AI in 2023 initially led marketers to believe that the technology could deliver content on demand, at scale, and at speed. However, what we discovered is that while AI is good at some things, it is not great at creating original content that is differentiated and feels right for your brand,” says Robin Riddle, Chief Strategy Officer at Foundry 360. “I think this brings a sharp focus to the need for content that aligns to a sound strategy and is mapped back directly to your customer journeys. In 2024, that might mean more is actually less.”
“Building on Robin Riddle's wise words about AI's impact on content creation, we'll also see profound changes to the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page, currently characterized by what's commonly called ‘10 Blue Links.’ Instead of serving up those links, Google (and other search engines) will increasingly provide comprehensive and on-page answers to users' queries,” says Diane di Costanzo, Chief Content Officer & VP at Foundry 360. “The impact on publishers, both journalistic and branded: reduced traffic driven from search. The remedy for this is as yet unproven — but we do know that garnering first-party data via channels such as e-newsletters and social posts that drive to helpful and high-quality content will always win the day.”
“Video has always been an important channel, but so few brands are doing it well,” says David Matt, Chief Creative Officer at Foundry 360. “Video strategies are already a major focus, and we see video creation answering the need for brands that want to demonstrate their brand values, provide audience inspiration, educate their customers, and more. Video is the format of 2024. It’s going to be a year filled with sight, sound, motion… and Action!”
So there you have it! Just like any good content marketer, we will be looking to see if we deliver…. just like we did in 2023. Check back here when we look at how our predictions are holding up as the year progresses, or sign up for our newsletter and we’ll reach out to you with our assessment and so much more.
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