News
News Article
Marketing+
Mon
19
Feb 2024
Brand Awareness, the battle for ROI, application of AI and more; We asked more than 150 marketing leaders to share the Marketing Communications trends, opportunities, and challenges they’re predicting for 2024.
From AI and GA4 to complex audience journeys and brand scrutiny, the last 12 months have seen huge shifts in the ways that marketing leaders both frame and shape their strategy.
With global challenges have put pressure on for in-house teams to demonstrate a return on any and all marketing spend at the same time as changes to tracking, attribution, and the ‘role’ of specific channels, the question for the year ahead is simple: where do we start?
In this year’s Industry ‘Pulse Check’ survey, more than 150 in-house and agency marketing leaders shared their predictions on the trends, challenges, and opportunities they’re expecting to see in 2024.
In this article, we're sharing all the key findings from the report to help you up the ante on your marketing strategy this year.
DOWNLOAD: The GO! Network 2024 Pulse Check
We’ve split our key statistics into 4 segments:
We asked both our in-house and agency marketing leaders to share their predictions on how certain aspects of client-agency relationships may shift in the new year from a scale of 0 (heavily decreased) to 5 (heavily increased):
With resource allocation and management cited as a key challenge in the 2023 report, in this year’s report we’ve explored how in-house teams have sought to address this in their budget.
We’ve examined the perceptions and predictions on both sides of the fence, particularly the changing nature of the work and budget being allocated to ‘external’ support.
Despite external challenges, in-house teams on the whole believe there will be ‘little to no’ change in their budget for the year ahead, with 71% of respondents giving a 2-3 rating.
Agency respondents aligned almost identically in their perception of expected client spend, with the majority also expecting no major changes.
Though in-house teams largely expect minimal changes to the scope and length of work put to external marketing agency support, agencies overall are expecting a marked shift towards client work that is wider in scope but with a decrease in length of projects with clients.
As Matthew Newman, Co-Founder of YourFilm, shares, “In 2024, my advice for in-house teams would be to ensure that all agency, partner, and supplier relationships are being managed for maximum efficiency and ROI. Every penny counts!”
We also asked our in-house respondents to share what percentage of work would likely be assigned to external partners – agency, freelance, or in-house – in the year ahead.
With 18% of brand respondents expecting to outsource more than 50% of their marketing resource in the year ahead, just 6% are predicting to keep everything in-house.
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For different businesses, how and where to invest in in-house or external resource will vary - but there are commonalities in where certain channels are expected to ‘sit’ in the ecosystem.
This year, we wanted to understand which channels were pinpointed for investment, and where, across the industry.
Split broadly across key ‘core’ competencies and channels within the remit of marketing leaders, we asked in-house respondents to share the elements they would expect to outsource to external support this year.
Digital performance & Paid, PR, and Branding, Creative & Design work made up the 3 areas of strategy more likely to be outsourced by in-house teams, with Digital Performance & Paid being chosen by more than 65% of all respondents.
In anonymous comments, key areas highlighted by respondents included SEO, Lead Generation, and Content Creation as dedicated points for outsourcing.
In this section, we asked in-house leaders to share their top strategic objectives, priorities for investment, and the most impactful trends for the year ahead, and contrasted responses to our agency leaders.
All statistics in this post have been pulled from The GO! Network 2024 Pulse Check. Want to read more? Download the full report now.
More than 30% of in-house and 45% of agency responses selected 'Lead Generation and CRO' as the #1 strategy objective for 2024, with Customer Retention, Awareness building, and Organic growth through social media and SEO making up the top 4 across both average rankings and % of #1 priority.
In-house respondents also aligned their investment areas largely to the top strategy objectives, highlighting awareness & audience building tactics, organic search, social, and digital performance as priorities for investment on the whole.
When asked to rank the expected impact of a series of marketing ‘trends’ in the year ahead, a clear frontrunner is found in AI, with 16% of all responses choosing ‘AI-driven or ‘conversational’ marketing’ as their predicted #1 trend for 2024.
However, agency leaders in particular highlighted the importance of looking past the hype and properly utilising AI in the new year.
Matt Rogers, Co-Founder of Hex Digital, shared that “The hype over AI will persist in 2024 and it will be a challenge for brands to not be distracted by it. An AI strategy will be essential to avoiding this. Collaborative AI (i.e. humans and machines working together) is a huge opportunity.”
Finally, we asked in-house and agency marketing leaders to rank the issues they predict will prove the most challenging in the year ahead.
Where last year, 'Product and service positioning against global challenges' held one of the top slots in average ranking, this year’s results has seen further pressure applied to teams around management of internal team capacity, and demonstration of ROI.
Coupled with data around predicted budgets for in-house teams, it would appear that the challenge is not in access to investment, but with what is expected of teams with their existing resource.
All statistics in this post have been pulled from The GO! Network 2024 Pulse Check. Want to read more? Download the full report now.
With thanks to our named contributors, including;
Aparito, Byotrol, Calor, Ghyston, Green Feathers, Housekeep, J.Parker's, Pilot Group, Red Flag Alert, Teamsport Indoor Karting, Watts Group, Wilson Partners, Aira, ARCH, Audience Collective, Bandstand, Beyond Collective, BH&P, Bowler Hat, Conversion Digital, Curated, Democracy, Different Narrative, Digit, Dog Cat & Mouse, Empower Agency, Finally Agency, Flaunt Digital, Giants & Titans, GottaBe! Marketing, Handyman Interactive, Hewitt Matthew, Hex Digital, Ice Blue Sky Limited, Juno Ecommerce, L-E-A-P, Leopard Co., Liberty Marketing, MGA, Present Works, Radial Path, Recipe, Resin Marketing, Sciart Marketing, Start Communication, The SEO Works, ThoughtShift, Userism, Vervaunt, Visualsoft, and YourFilm.
If you're investing in your marketing strategy this year, make sure you're getting the most from your time. GO! offer cost-free agency recommendations, pitch management, and more - get in touch to get started.
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