Nick Mason, CEO of Turtl, the platform for creating online documents that drive pipeline and revenue, shares his predictions for marketing in 2024

2023 was a year of highs and lows for business. AI exploded onto the scene, transforming the content generation process for businesses and changing the standards required to remain competitive almost overnight.

AI wasn’t the only development to send shockwaves through the business world. The Silicon Valley Bank collapse triggered the most significant US banking emergency since the financial crisis, followed by mass redundancies across the tech sector as organizations battened down the hatches in times of economic uncertainty.

In the face of cost-cutting exercises and new technologies, 2024 will be a year of marketing teams doing more with less, as they battle to stand out amongst a glut of digital information facing B2B buyers. Here are three ways we will see this playing out:

1. Marketers will increasingly think like CEOs: 

Marketing teams will need to be able to show every dollar spent is generating revenue, accelerating the trend for marketers to be more data-led in their decision-making and rethink their KPIs, focusing on those with a direct correlation to pipeline. Momentum ITSMA’s Customer Buying Index revealed 63% of respondents frequently feel overwhelmed by the volume of information they’re confronted with, and marketers are starting to reassess how to approach measurement to cut through this issue.

Rather than focusing on superficial awareness stats like a number of downloads, marketers have the tools available to tap into metrics like read time to assess how well they’re grabbing and maintaining attention. With pressure building to deliver on spending targets and prove ROI, teams are increasingly going to start focusing on deeper data sets to secure engagement for longer. The longer leads engage with content the more likely they are to take in the key messages and ultimately be converted to customers over time.

To achieve this, we’ll see marketers turning to reliable sources of content performance and building on what already works. Content optimization will become commonplace, which teams will struggle to attain with legacy print formats that need to be scrolled through with little visibility on user engagement. We’ve observed a shift away from these types of content because they fail to encapsulate the fundamentals of how people consume information. Scroll fatigue needs to be considered, and the most successful pieces of content in the coming year will have come out on top in the attention economy with interactive, visually stimulating content.

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2. The dawn of hyperpersonalization 

Personalization will be key in cutting through the swathes of content brought on by the advent of Generative AI. Our research shows that 75% of businesses say they provide strong personalized experiences, but only 48% of consumers agree, while generative search will only further cement expectations of everyday personalized experiences.

Deep personalization coupled with audience behavioral data will reach highly relevant audiences more effectively. This means going well beyond adding a name to an email – providing meaningfully different pages or showing videos only to certain readers based on previous interactions would be an example of deep personalization. We found that deeply personalized content sees 64% less audience loss than non-personalized content, but the challenge for marketing teams is delivering at scale.

As marketers move towards the metrics that have a more notable business impact, we’ll likely find that interactive content formats are favored to gather first- and zero-party data to accomplish the hyper- personalization brands require to grab attention. Being able to interact directly with audiences within content with features like polls or feedback options contributes to the full panoramic view of an audience you need in order to truly understand what they want to see.

3. Email will continue to become less effective as a B2B channel

With recent privacy changes impacting the reliability of open rates, email is now less effective than previously at reaching buyers and building a picture of their intent. Marketers know that the content they share online needs to be optimized for their audience, so how can they inform the level of personalization expected by their targets at scale?

PDF formats create blockers on visibility and a hole in the marketing mix, as there is a missed opportunity to hear from as close to the source as possible about how people have used individual pieces of content. Intent data will be the route to providing a personalized experience and helping marketers prioritize lead gen, demand and ABM. Brands must understand what content a reader engages with, how they engage with it, and what converts, to inform the content they deliver and move leads through the funnel faster and more reliably.

Collecting this granular level of data and acting on it at scale isn’t possible with basic CRM tools or Google Analytics. Digital documents were made with this in mind, automating the process of gathering metrics from bounce rates to click-throughs. Companies that leverage these online doc formats to interact with audiences and gather metrics will get a much more specific idea of how they can differentiate content and stand out from the crowd in 2024 as Generative AI continues to drive up the volume of content.

Make the most of what you have in 2024

Marketing teams know that this year it will be crucial to differentiate their content – and therefore brand – from the masses. Addressing last year’s trends with a data-led approach that reaches the core of an audience’s desires will help them drive leads, pipeline and revenue. Those that consider the basics of how people consume content and select formats that help them to understand engagement on a deeper level are likely to look back on 2024 as a productive year.

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