Rand Fishkin, Cofounder & CEO
How to Stay Ahead of Marketing’s
5 Big 2024 Trends
Shifts in digital advertising, changes to tracking and attribution, the dominance of zero-click platforms, the end of cheap money, and the loss of competitive advantages. It's been a rough year for the field; here’s how to stay ahead…
Most of the Marketing Strategies from the Last 15 Years…
Don’t. Work. No. More.
Strategies like…
The Performance Advertising Barrage
The SEO + Content Flywheel
The Influencer Marketing Takeover
The Big, Splashy Media Launch
…some are still viable tactics in a holistic campaign.
None create the competitive advantage they once did.
x
x
x
x
The Go Viral on Social Channels
x
How did it all
go sideways?
#1
The Death of Trackable MarTech
3rd-Party Cookies Are Only in Chrome
Source: StatCounter
1st-Party Cookies are Getting Less Effective & Accurate, Too
Source: Clearcode
Users are manually blocking more tracking in their browsers, too
Source: DuckDuckGo
Ad Blockers don’t just block ads… they block most tracking techniques, too
Source: EyeO
Multi-device journeys are now standard
Source: Cisco
What’s Possible & Legal in the US Isn’t Most Anywhere Else
Source: In Country
Marketers have forgotten how easy it was to justify content & SEO investments when Google provided keyword data
“We rank #12 for this KW, which means we could get 40-60X this many conversions by moving to #2.”
In 2024, Google’s learned their monopoly power is untouchable, so they might as well do things like:
Answer queries directly in the SERPs, continually shrinking organic clicks
Assembled & analyzed by
Source: clickstream panel provided by
* Study panel includes desktop & mobile browser searches only; zero-click searches may be higher in Google Assistant/Google Search App queries
% of clicks rising, keyword data is provided (unless you use PMAX).
% of clicks is declining, keyword data is intentionally hidden.
% of searchers who are satisfied by what Google surfaces on the SERP keeps rising
Running Ads Without Getting Scammed is a Full Time Job
Source: AdExchanger
Meta DOESN’T notify advertisers when the ML systems overcharge them.
They only refund the money if an advertiser finds & reports the issue!
And now Google’s following suit.
Takeaways for Marketers
AdTech is less trackable, and less reliable than in years past. Make sure you’re building and testing your own models.
#1
#2
Fraud, misleading attribution, and easy overspending mean it’s critical to regularly conduct ad audits, and manually file complaints with your ad providers.
#3
If you currently run ads in that rely on 3rd-party cookies (i.e. most everything outside Apple’s ecosystem), prepare for a massive shakeup in the next year, probably including higher ad prices.
#2
The Rise of Dark Traffic
First: Someone hears about our brand on a podcast, webinar, at an event, via a social post (these are our primary forms of marketing)
Second: They go to Google and search our brand name.
Third: They reach our site and get tagged as “organic search,” or “direct”
Both Direct and Organic Search are hiding a ton of the true sources that sent us web visitors.
76% of our visitors come from “Direct?!”
Yet, only 29% land on the homepage…?
Are people really typing or bookmarking these long URLs?
We ran an experiment to measure Dark Social, and found entire networks hiding referral data:
100% hidden
100% hidden
100% hidden
100% hidden
100% hidden
75% hidden
30% hidden
14% hidden
If these sites & apps send you traffic, your analytics will report those visits as “Direct”
Takeaways for Marketers
If you’ve moved away from social media investments because you can no longer see the referral traffic, you’re likely losing out to smarter teams who focus on reach > attribution.
#1
#2
If you need to track search and social for your client/boss, it’s time to revisit so-called “vanity metrics,” because they’re the only things that can show you relative reach & engagement.
#3
Investing in sources that send indirect or un-attributable traffic doesn’t have to mean un-trackable! You can build time-series or geographic measurement systems to see the results of dark traffic channels.
#3
The Big Lie of
“Marketing Attribution”
“What the pandemic showed is we can take marketing down to zero and still have 95% of the same traffic as the year before. So, we’re not going to forget that lesson.”
-Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb
Via Campaign
The Parable of the Pizzeria
WHY WORK HARD TO MAKE MORE SALES, WHEN I COULD JUST GET CREDIT FOR SALES THAT WERE ABOUT TO HAPPEN ANYWAY?
Attribution Was Always a Lie:
Neither online nor offline marketing can be perfectly measured, attributed, and invested-in.
Takeaways for Marketers
Test.
#1
#2
Turning Off.
#3
Your Ads.
#4
The End of The Rising Tide
Takeaways for Marketers
Talk to your C-Suite about the balance between growth vs. profitability. For a long time, marketers have been trained to invest in unprofitable growth to get share; now, that can backfire.
#1
#2
Hard-to-measure channels are usually the least competitive, most affordable, most effective way to reach customers. It’s our job to educate leadership about how and why this works.
#3
No two companies should have the same marketing mix. If you’re copycatting competitors or investing in channels based on a standard template, there’s almost certainly room for improvement.
#5
We are living in a
Zero-Click World
LinkedIn wants to keep you on LinkedIn. Facebook wants to keep you on Facebook. Instagram wants to keep you on Instagram.
And Google wants to keep you on Google.
Every Platform Prioritizes Native Content*
* Mastodon is the only notable exception to this rule
Source: SparkToro
This one has a link.
This one has no link.
~10X the reach with zero-click content
“Don’t Let People Click Out!” –Every Network
Source: Hootsuite & Matt Navara
Does anyone
still send traffic?
** Sites with a single owner that pass referrals via multiple entities have been grouped (e.g. Twitter.com, Twimg.com, and T.co; Live.com, Bing.com, MicrosoftOnline.com, Office.com, and Office365.com; etc.)
&
42.3%
43.9%
44.6%
45.4%
NOTE: Total referral traffic from the 170 sites studied rose 0.103% over this period
The web’s dominant platforms are sending less and less traffic to the long tail.
As I studied the clickstream panel data about where people visit vs. where referrals come from, I realized…
Referrals ≠ Influence
I took every site in the study and manually categorized them into 13 broad classifications
Search may send the majority of traffic, but it’s only the 5th most-visited category.
90% of visits and time spent online ARE NOT search…
What does this mean for marketers?
#1
Those who focus exclusively on traffic acquisition are stuck with search.
Not a lot of channel diversity here.
#2
Trying to prove acquisition via referral strings will make you Google’s fool.
Almost everything that happens in these categories…
Leads to one of these… Guess who gets credit in your analytics?
#3
To win at social, you’ve gotta embrace zero-click content.
All these sites combined send ~1/7th what Google does.
#4
To determine platform prioritization, research where your audience engages:
e.g. If I wanted to reach graphic designers, I’d take a close look at Behance, Pinterest, and LinkedIn
“Fine, we’ll just do Zero-Click Marketing”
- Amanda Natividad
Source: SparkToro
#5.5
Email: The Last Channel Standing
Via The Verge
Via Inside
Via SimilarWeb
Via We Are Social / Meltwater and eMarketer
But Somehow, Email Marketing Stays Strong!
20 years of doomsaying, yet email marketing stats are nearly unchanged!
Takeaways for Marketers
Almost every marketing team should make email their primary channel of choice, nudging all non-sales conversions to those lists.
#1
#2
Investments in other channels should come with risk assessments about their future (could the US/EU shut off TikTok access? Could Twitter die entirely? Could Microsoft end linking out from LinkedIn?). Anything else is irresponsible.
#3
Acquisitions of web/media properties for their email lists are probably undervalued and may give significant leverage that the market hasn’t accurately priced-in.
#BONUS
A few predictions…
Human Content > AI Content�(yes, even in 2024)
The Minimum Bar for Content
Better than nothing
Better SEO’d than the competition
Better than what’s on page two of Google
Better than what Buzzfeed-style content mills are spitting out
Better than what ChatGPT can create
1995-2001
2002-2008
2009-2012
2013-2018
2023-20XX
2019-2022
Better than what the Big Tech platforms can zero-click answer*
* E.g. instant answers on the front page of Google’s results, native content in the algorithmic feeds of social platforms, etc.
Spelling
AI’s Content Advantages
Human Content Advantages
Quantity
Speed
Cost
Quality
Novelty
Creativity
Artistry
Humor
Resonance
In every algorithmically-driven field, someone is going to invest in these and win with them.
Threads is Probably
Going to Crush Twitter
Via AppFigures & Insider
~Same metrics, 1/100th the followers. Threads’ engagement rate is HUGE.
The Return of Barnacle SEO
Via Detailed
Want to appear? Better use YouTube.
Want to appear? Better use Reddit.
Mistrust of crappy, affiliate-ridden, private-equity-owned media is driving searchers to Reddit
Takeaways for Marketers
If you’re trying to reach an audience through Google and don’t have an established, high-ranking site, using YouTube, Reddit, or another powerful domain in your niche (while you build your site’s authority) is the right way to go.
#1
#2
If Twitter ever drove value for you/your marketing, it probably makes sense to adopt and use Threads now. Early users get outsized benefit through the following recommendation engine.
#3
The fundamentals: right place, right time, right message still work in marketing. The challenge is finding your audience’s true sources of influence and developing a competitive advantage to reach them.