Five Smart Marketing and PR Trends for 2024

2023 is almost over. It’s time to start thinking about your 2024 marketing and PR strategies.

The current economic climate is still in flux and the possibility of a recession remains a possibility. Now is not the time to pull back on PR and marketing efforts.  Now is the time for intelligent promotion. Get smart and strategic, so you still meet your goals.

The more you know about your customers, clients, employees, and competitors, the better your planning will be.  You need to understand your potential clients’ mindset and craft a business strategy that provides what they need and want. Find gaps and threats you would otherwise not have known about. In-depth insights can uncover opportunities that allow you to thrive in a tough economy.

These PR and marketing trends can help you thrive in 2024.

Embrace AI

A lot has changed in this arena this year – not the least of it the introduction of AI.

Generative AI services like ChatGPT can be incredibly helpful for research and drafting content. The trick to getting good content from an AI service is to learn how to write excellent prompts. 

Always edit and put your own voice on a piece that’s created by AI. Never use it straight from AI. Optimized AI content wins every time.

TIP: Talk to ChatGPT as though it were a real person or co-worker.  Give it an identity to write from, a tone of voice to use, and enough context about the topic so that you get a great response back.

Example: As a nutrition expert, write an informational 600-word article about why women over 35 need to eat a healthy diet that will help improve their health. Use subheads and bullet points. Use a friendly, informal tone of voice.

Brand Visibility in 2024

“The only thing I’d really be thinking about is, can I get my brand name next to more mentions of the words and phrases I want to be associated with all around the web.”  - Rand Fishkin.

For example, if you are the CRM software space, is your brand mentioned in articles about new CRM features or comparisons of CRM systems? What are people saying about your brand when discussing CRM systems on social media?

Do you show up in Wikipedia, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, ChatGPT, relevant blogs and podcasts when people are looking for words and phrases related to your product or service?  

Discover your current Brand Visibility Score.

Audience Analysis

Knowing as much as you can about your audience has always been the key to success.  In the past it has taken hours of grinding hard work, combing through surveys, interviews, research, and news material to come up with a guesstimate of what this audience cares about.

With audience tracking and analysis you can gather all kinds of data and discover the true sources of influence for an audience.

  • Who is in your audience?

  • Where are they on social?

  • Who are they connected to?

  • Who do they follow?

  • What hashtags are popular right now?

  • What podcasts are they listening to?

  • What YouTube channels do they subscribe to?

Sally Falkow

Sally Falkow is the CEO of Meritus Media Inc, a digital marketing and PR agency and publisher of The Proactive Report, a blog that covers the how technology affects communications, media, marketing and public relations. Since 2000 Falkow has been an advocate for the adoption of digital communication strategies and has helped thousands of PR and marketing practitioners improve and master digital skills. She is the author of SMART News: how to write branded content that gets found in search and shared on social media. Her annual research report on how technology has changed the way the public gets news and information and how the media gathers and reports news, highlights the gap between what the media needs and how brands supply news content to the media. She is Accredited in Public Relations (APR) with the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and a founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR).

https://meritusmedia.com
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