10 Marketing Trends for 2024

2023 is coming to an end. This year has been a year of rapid economic and technological change. The marketing industry is also evolving to adapt to social changes. This article will discuss ten marketing trends from the perspectives of consumption, branding, AIGC, and other operational areas to help companies and marketers better grasp market dynamics. Let's take a look.

With the end of the epidemic in 2023, the global economy has not seen the expected rebound, but has become more complex and challenging. In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that global economic growth will slow from 3.5% in 2022 to 3.0% in 2023, lower than the historical average of 3.8% between 2000 and 2019, and is expected to fall further to 2.9% in 2024.

According to Charles Schwab's analysis, the global economy may show a gradual U-shaped recovery in 2024, which is different from the V-shaped recovery in 2008-09 and 2020. This means that the future economy may enter an era of low growth.

In 2023, the retaliatory consumption that many people expected did not appear. On the contrary, we witnessed the so-called "reverse consumption", and the phenomenon of consumption downgrade became more obvious.

Of course, there is also good news. The AI ​​trend led by ChatGPT is changing our work and life. Collins Dictionary selected "AI" as the word of the year in the UK in 2023. AI may lead people into the next technological revolution.

In the era of low growth, the theme of marketing is no longer expansion, but contraction, and it is more refined and prudent. The development of AIGC is certainly a good thing, but for the marketing industry, it may mean more cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

Here are my top marketing trends for 2023.

1. Reverse consumption continues, and industrial belt brands come to the fore

Citywalk, special forces travel, reverse consumption, and military coats are becoming popular. These hot searches in 2023 reflect the significant characteristics of consumer consumption behavior - using the least money to buy the most cost-effective goods and services.

In September this year, Li Jiaqi's words "How is it expensive?" broke the defenses of many people. They found that in today's increasingly difficult time to make money, there is no need to spend several times the price to buy several times the premium products. The right choice is to rationally buy cost-effective products. Subsequently, topics such as "79 yuan to buy 5.5 kilograms of bee flowers", "5.9 yuan for liquid foundation", and "6 yuan to buy 7 eyebrow pencils" emerged one after another, further consolidating people's thinking about rational consumption.

In recent years, observing this reverse consumption pattern, we have discovered a problem: more and more people have begun to show off how they save money and how they spend the least money to buy the most valuable goods, rather than showing off that they bought more expensive goods as before. This may mean that the conspicuous consumption that has existed for decades is gradually coming to an end.

A direct consequence of the reverse consumption trend is the rise of industrial products. These brands usually do not have a prominent brand logo, but the quality is acceptable and the price-performance ratio is high, and some are even not inferior to well-known brands. With the promotion of e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and Pinduoduo, and the popularity of live broadcast marketing, these industrial products are becoming more and more popular among consumers.

For example, wigs from Xuchang, Henan, bags from Baigou, Hebei, pet food from Nanhe, Hebei, etc. These products usually come from specific production areas and are gradually becoming the new favorites in the market with their high cost-effectiveness and the ability to meet basic needs.

This trend also indicates a change in consumers' brand loyalty. Against the backdrop of economic pressure and rising living costs, consumers are more inclined to look for products that offer high cost-effectiveness and quality assurance, rather than simply pursuing brand effects. This shift poses new challenges to brand marketing strategies.

2. New consumption transformation, old consumption counterattack

Market changes are always unpredictable. It seems that yesterday everyone was still talking about consumption upgrades, and regarded buying high-quality, beautifully packaged, and eye-catching brands as a symbol of status. Today, people have suddenly begun to adapt to consumption downgrades and advocate reverse consumption. The so-called new consumer brands born in China in recent years seem extremely embarrassed in this situation.

In October this year, it was revealed that Zhong Xuegao was in arrears of wages, which caused a lot of concern. Last year, the title of "Ice Cream Assassin" had already affected its brand and sales.

Heytea and Nayuki’s tea have already carried out a round of major price cuts, but consumers still say that Heytea and Nayuki are not as popular as before because Mixue Bingcheng’s drinks are more cost-effective.

Netizens complained that Huaxizi's 79 yuan eyebrow pencil was too expensive, so they flocked to the live broadcast room of old domestic brands. They said that 79 yuan could buy 5.5 kilograms of Fenghua hair conditioner; 4 bottles of Yumeijing children's cream...

Yuanqi Forest's voice and praise this year are not as high as in previous years. The latest news is about internal leadership changes and structural changes.

I thought the new consumer brands would reshuffle the existing market, but in the end I found that the old ones are still the best. Even the leading new consumer brands did not gain any advantage when facing the old consumer brands.

The retail scale of Oriental Leaves this year may reach 10 billion, which made Yuanqi Forest gasp; many people do not buy Hua Xizi but go to the live broadcast room to buy old domestic products; even at the most popular time of the year, the sales of Zhong Xuegao did not account for 1% of the market, and ice cream is still dominated by the four major brands of Yili, Wall's, Mengniu and Nestlé.

New domestic products with low cost-effectiveness began to lose their position under the counterattack of old domestic products. New domestic products, which were established not long ago, found that when the cloak of consumption upgrading was taken off, their products, prices, and channels had no advantages over old domestic products.

The next few years will be a period of transformation for new consumer brands, as well as a period of melee with old consumer brands.

3. Brands pursue “stingy marketing”

In recent years, people who work in marketing have a common feeling: there are fewer and fewer marketing cases that can go viral and go viral. The fundamental reason behind this change is information fragmentation and content saturation in the market.

Consumers' attention is being distracted by more and more information, and their attention to traditional large-scale creative works such as TVC is gradually decreasing. At the same time, the market is already flooded with a large amount of novel and interesting content, making it difficult for brands to create more novel content that can attract consumers' attention.

In 2023, the hot topic was the soy sauce latte, and the cross-border cooperation between Fnedi and Heytea is essentially a small-investment marketing. They use cross-border cooperation to stimulate consumers' curiosity, thereby increasing exposure and consumer discussion. The increasing number of cross-border marketing is also a manifestation of "stingy marketing".

In this context, the marketing strategies of brands have also begun to gradually change to adapt to the trend of "stingy" consumption. First of all, brands have become more cautious when producing big creative works such as TVC. In the current market environment, such large-investment marketing activities can no longer easily attract consumers' attention as before. Many brands have begun to split the budget of several million for TVC into several dozen budgets and find influencers to create content and delivery.

Secondly, brands pay more attention to the input-output ratio. With a limited budget, every investment in marketing activities needs to be carefully calculated to ensure maximum benefits.

Large platforms are also adapting to this rhythm. Content marketing platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu are all using closed-loop sales and various tools to make brand marketing investments measurable.

4. AIGC accelerates penetration marketing

AI-generated content (AIGC) is rapidly penetrating into the marketing field, bringing fundamental changes to marketing strategies. Driven by this trend, the roles and skill requirements of marketers are undergoing significant changes.

In the past, marketers needed to be able to write copy, make posters, or shoot and edit videos. In future marketing, marketers may no longer need to be proficient in traditional creative design or copywriting, but instead turn to more cooperation with AI, proficient in editing prompts and communicating with AI, so that AI can continuously provide content that meets their needs. For example, the picture below was made by DALL-E.

Take e-commerce image production as an example. I have a friend who is responsible for producing e-commerce images for a brand. In the past, it might cost 10,000 or even tens of thousands of yuan to produce a picture through a traditional agency. But now, with the help of AI technology, he can produce pictures in batches and quickly at a price of 1,000 yuan per picture. This cost and efficiency advantage will undoubtedly have a profound impact on marketing strategies.

However, one disadvantage for marketers may be that as AI technology is increasingly used in content generation, data analysis, and customer interaction, some traditional marketing roles may face the risk of being eliminated. Nevertheless, in the long run, the application of AI technology will greatly improve the overall efficiency of marketing, help brands more accurately target markets and consumer groups, and reduce marketing costs.

5. ChatGPT and visual search change the search landscape

In China, Baidu is no longer the only player in search. Douyin’s monthly active users have exceeded 550 million. On Xiaohongshu, 60% of daily active users actively search on Xiaohongshu, with an average daily search volume of more than 300 million. In addition, ChatGPT allows people to obtain information more quickly. Since using ChatGPT, the frequency of my use of Baidu has dropped significantly.

It can be seen that the current search pattern is that for knowledge and text searches, ChatGPT replaces most of Baidu's functions, while for life and consumption searches, more and more people search on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. Google's own internal research shows that 40% of young people will go to TikTok or Instagram first when looking for a place to have lunch, rather than Google Maps or search. It seems that the trend is the same both at home and abroad.

In this situation, brands used to do SEO on search engines, but now they should optimize search content on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. At the same time, this year's ChatGPT voice function has already made people feel that its level is far higher than SIRI, so in the future, brands may also need to do AEO (Answer Engine Optimization).

For marketers, today's search market is more complex. It is not enough to just do a good job of traditional search engine optimization. Search marketing should adapt to new trends and focus more marketing efforts on visual search platforms.

6. The top anchors are retreating, but it is not easy to make money from live streaming

After Li Jiaqi's Huaxizi incident, the sales volume of Double 11 dropped sharply compared with last year. After Dong Yuhui's Xiaowenzhu incident, although Dongfangzhenxuan handled it properly, the company also realized that it could not rely entirely on one anchor. In addition, Wei Ya, who had already retired behind the scenes, gradually became less like Luo Yonghao. In the entire live streaming industry, the top anchors began to retreat.

In such a market environment, the relationship between brands, anchors and celebrities has become more complex and diversified. Although these three parties are still important components of the live streaming ecosystem, the market no longer expects the emergence of super anchors, and platforms are more inclined to avoid over-reliance on a single anchor.

So does it mean that with fewer top anchors and the end of the monopoly, merchants can make money? Not really. For merchants, if they do not pay channel fees to top anchors, they will need to pay more traffic fees to the platform. In this case, many merchants are faced with the dilemma of no traffic if they do not invest in traffic, and no money if they invest in traffic. They need to find a balance between no traffic and declining profits.

Here, I think the more fundamental solution is to build a good brand. Once the brand’s popularity, reputation, and trust are improved, its sales can be guaranteed and will not be held hostage by top anchors or traffic.

7. The rise of video accounts and accelerated commercialization

According to Tencent's second quarter 2023 financial report, the advertising revenue of Video Account exceeded 3 billion yuan, the total user usage time doubled year-on-year, and the DAU increased by double digits year-on-year. In addition, the GMV of Video Account live e-commerce increased by about 150% year-on-year.

Tencent President Martin Lau once claimed that video account advertising revenue is expected to exceed 1 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2022. Just half a year later, advertising revenue exceeded 3 billion in the second quarter of 2023. Although the current commercial scale of video account cannot be compared with Douyin, it allows people to see the rapid growth of Douyin in those years.

At the same time, Video Account has an advantage that Douyin does not have, namely, the ecological mutual assistance between Video Account, WeChat Official Account, and WeChat Community. In the future, Video Account may open up an e-commerce model with new attributes of "brand power" and "strong social binding". Video Account forms a private domain traffic matrix by connecting with WeChat groups and official accounts, providing brands with opportunities for comprehensive operations on WeChat.

When a platform is making efforts to commercialize, the best choice for brands is to follow. There is a saying that goes, "The spaceship is moving, don't worry about the position, just get on board first." Compared with the current Douyin, Video Account still has certain dividends. The dividends are in two points. First, there is less competition, so it is easier to do well, and second, the ROI of the investment is relatively higher.

Today, the monthly active user base of Video Account has exceeded 800 million, and the usage time is close to that of WeChat Moments. With such a large traffic field, there is no reason for brands to ignore it.

8. The rise of vertical and professional KOCs

When short videos and live broadcasts became trends, more and more people began to enter the platform in this way to create commercial value.

I once heard a story from a friend about a self-employed piano teacher who, in his spare time, obtained leads by teaching piano skills on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and then successfully recruited new students through offline contacts. I call this marketing method vertical or professional KOC.

In fact, professionals in various fields can become experts in their vertical fields through this method.

This is also true. Practitioners in specific fields such as teachers, real estate consultants, lawyers, organizers, etc. are accelerating to enter this ecosystem and participate in talent marketing. These vertical talents are not only content creators, but also experts in their respective fields. They attract a group of specific audiences through their professional knowledge and practical experience.

For example, some vertical experts and 4S store salesmen who are very knowledgeable about cars can use live broadcasts to introduce the selling points and promotional information of a certain model, attracting interested users to watch, thereby helping car brands obtain leads.

There is such an example on Douyin, where a certain brand finds hundreds of such KOCs to conduct live broadcasts, and each live broadcast can bring in dozens or even hundreds of leads on average. For such vertical creators, they themselves do not have many fans, but through this marketing method, they can earn up to several thousand yuan a day.

In my hometown, an 18th-tier county town, I found that some store owners and sales clerks live-streamed their products on Douyin during business hours every day. Each live-stream had dozens or even hundreds of people watching. These people spread the word of mouth and shared on social networks, reaching hundreds or even thousands of people. In a county town with only tens of thousands of people, such data is already very high. His store also has people coming to the store through live-streaming every day, which creates new business growth.

9. Emotional marketing continues to benefit

Dopamine wear, Maillard color scheme, more and more products that target people's emotions have become the focus of the public this year.

In the field of market consumption, emotional value is not only an emotional experience, but also a psychological resonance. It touches the deep emotions of consumers and stimulates dopamine and other chemical reactions of pleasure. Similar to the passion and attachment in love, emotional value also has very practical applications in business. The marketing method that uses emotional value can be called "emotional marketing."

Dopamine dressing is a vivid example of emotional marketing. It not only considers the functionality of clothing, but also focuses on how to stimulate consumers' pleasure and self-confidence through factors such as color and design. When people wear a piece of clothing that makes them feel confident and satisfied, dopamine surges and a sense of emotional pleasure comes with it. This emotional connection makes people willing to buy more fashion products, not just to meet basic clothing needs.

Dopamine dressing is just the tip of the iceberg of emotional marketing. More and more brands are actively adopting this strategy, such as food, travel, electronic products, etc., all trying to create pleasant and satisfying emotional experiences to attract consumers.

Emotional marketing will still have dividends in 2024. When the economy is not so exciting, the market will find ways to stimulate the emotional needs of consumers. In 2024, the two emotions will still run through the whole year.

One is retro. When reality is not satisfactory, people will recall the past. The post-80s and post-90s undoubtedly have a collective memory of the times. Some brands use retro marketing to evoke the collective memory of this group of people to promote sales.

The second is sadness. The essence of sad emotional marketing has certain positive significance. It tells consumers not to keep sadness in their hearts, but to express it, so that they can feel better and be better able to face problems. Sadness and lying down are essentially manifestations of these emotions. It is a sense of powerlessness in the face of unsatisfactory reality, and also a self-mockery of life.

10. Generation Alpha Enters the Marketing Stage

Generation Alpha, also known as Gen Alpha, refers to the cohort born between 2010 and 2025, following Generation Z. This generation is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century and has grown up around digital technology and streaming services. They are seen as the most diverse and technologically exposed generation to date.

The main difference between Generation Alpha and Generation Z is that they are more proficient in the use of technology and the Internet. Generation Alpha is also considered the most diverse and globalized generation in history. They live in a world where technology and the Internet are always present, and it is easier for them to connect with people from different backgrounds and cultures.

Additionally, due to constant exposure to mobile internet and social media from a very young age, Generation Alpha has a shorter attention span than Generation Z. Generation Alpha also demonstrates greater adaptability and resilience because they grew up in a world that is changing more rapidly than the one Generation Z grew up in.

The rise of Generation Alpha has a significant impact on brand marketing. First, as "digital natives", Generation Alpha's use of social media and online content creation capabilities will provide brands with new marketing opportunities. This generation's acceptance and understanding of multiculturalism, as well as their creative spirit, indicate that they will play an important role in consumer behavior and market trends.

Secondly, this generation has a deeper understanding and concern about environmental issues, and they are more likely to support actions that benefit the environment. When targeting Generation Alpha, brands need to focus on sustainable practices to attract this generation of consumers who are more environmentally conscious, which is why ESG has become increasingly popular in recent years.

Brands are also gradually beginning to pay attention to Generation Alpha, because they are the future consumers and will have a profound impact on consumption trends. By attracting and influencing this generation, brands can occupy their minds in advance and lead future consumption trends.

11. Conclusion

In 2024, at the intersection of economic slowdown, consumer behavior change and technological innovation, brands must respond flexibly and adopt more sophisticated and prudent strategies. From the rise of reverse consumption to the commercialization of video accounts to the rise of the alpha generation, these trends point to a common direction: the future of marketing lies in understanding and adapting to consumer needs while using technology to create value for brands.

Brands need to realize that consumers’ pursuit of value is not just a consideration of price, but also a deep concern for brand philosophy, social responsibility and sustainability. Therefore, marketing strategies should focus more on establishing a deep connection with consumers. At the same time, the further integration of AI and digital technology will continue to reshape the landscape of the marketing industry. Marketers need to constantly improve their skills to adapt to this change and find a perfect balance between artificial intelligence and human creativity.

In summary, the marketing trends in 2024 herald a more dynamic, diversified and technology-driven future. For brands, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. The key lies in how to take advantage of these trends, create real connections with consumers, and optimize marketing strategies to adapt to the ever-changing market environment.

Author: Xunkong

WeChat public account: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)