Happy Holidays! It’s hard to believe, but 2023 is nearly over. This has been a transformative year for many marketers, and TBG is no exception. In addition to our merging with Isovera, we’ve had many client successes–and we’re even more excited for what marketing goals our new team can accomplish in the future.

So, in the spirit of the season, we’re here to put a marketing spin on some classic New Year’s resolutions:

Cut Down on Cookies
Don’t worry, we’re not talking about sweets here: we mean browser cookies, which Google may finally start phasing out of Chrome in early 2024 in favor of its Privacy Sandbox feature. According to TechCrunch, this program will apply to 1% of Chrome users but eventually jump to 100%, perhaps within the same year, with the goal of granting users more options. 

TBG Media Director Casey Ruggiero says this could be a trend that gives customers more control.

“In recent years, advertisers have been seen as ‘Big Brother’, always watching and following users in ways that are difficult to understand,” says Casey. “This massive pivot to new cookieless tracking technologies that focus on user-provided data, contextual relevance, and unique AI modeling is going to help earn some trust back and build a better relationship between marketers and their customers.”

So what can this mean for your brand? First-party data will be even more important to creating personalized experiences for customers – and more effective campaigns. For success in 2024, marketers need to make sure their website and CRM system are properly connected as a foundation, and develop campaigns that truly deliver value for customers – whether that’s relevant product suggestions, educational content, proprietary research, or personalized promotions – to keep them engaged and opted in.

Make Resolutions You Can Keep
As we step into 2024, marketers are buzzing with new ambitious targets. However, the secret to enduring success lies not in setting sky-high unachievable goals but in establishing objectives that are realistic, attainable, and measurable. Marketers should focus on crafting strategic plans that are both challenging and achievable, ensuring their goals are aligned with their current capabilities and growth potential. 

This approach involves a thorough understanding of market trends, customer behaviors, and internal resources. By setting incremental milestones and regularly assessing progress, marketers can stay on track, adapt to changes, and continuously evolve. Realistic goal-setting for 2024 will pave the way for sustainable growth and long-term success, with an emphasis on adaptability and resilience. 

Try New Things
2024 can be the year you expand your horizons. Don’t be afraid to responsibly embrace new tools like generative AI that can augment your creative teams, instead of replacing them. AI can offer a starting point for text and image variations, reducing content development time and enabling rapid prototyping and efficient creative and copy testing. 

At TBG, we’re also using AI to reduce production costs for our clients, from AI-generated music and voiceover to generative fill that can extend an image for use in extra-large formats or difficult sizes. Using AI tools even helps us create scenes in remote places like space, where it would be impossible for us to have a traditional photo shoot.

The pacing, availability and sophistication of commercial-grade AI tools will continue to grow exponentially in 2024. It’s important for marketers to stay on top of these changes and hone their skills with AI programs to help brands make the most of their marketing budgets. We have a lot more to say on this topic, so be sure to check back here in the new year!

Get (Your Customers) Engaged
Google Analytics 4 has upended many traditional website engagement benchmarks. Many marketers are seeing their average engagement time metrics dropping as GA4’s counter stops when a user focuses on a new browser tab. Event counts are soaring, since a user just landing on your site is now an automatic event in GA4. 

How can marketers adapt? Take this as an opportunity for a close look at how you measure true customer engagement and the impact on your website content strategy. Think about which engagement KPIs really matter to your business, versus default ones that may not be as important. 

For companies with long sales cycles and complex conversion paths, increasing customer engagement means prioritizing high-value tasks, like reading a feature article or watching a long-form video. Invest in developing high-quality content and focus your website design on encouraging interaction with those high-value tasks. And be sure to set up custom event tagging and conversion tracking so your advertising campaigns can optimize toward those metrics–and your reporting isn’t so time-consuming! 

Buy Local
Programmatic and paid search are often the most efficient paid media tactics – but don’t underestimate the value of local and offline media when you’re looking to target smaller local communities with a dense potential customer base. Look for local publications to partner with for content development, community events to sponsor, and offline media like OOH, local bus wraps, TV, and radio to make a big impact on the ground. 

Once you get out of the big cities, you’ll be surprised how cost-efficient these supposedly “expensive” tactics can be. TBG Group Account Director Allison Hartrich puts it this way: “For challenger brands with smaller budgets that struggle to outspend and outshout big brands in major markets like Los Angeles and Washington, DC, a creative surround-sound hyperlocal strategy is an effective way to gain mindshare and build deeper relationships with key customers and influencers.”

Identifying these smaller niche markets and activating local partnerships will be key to success in 2024. Read more about how TBG helped a local bank increase their marketing presence here.

No matter what your marketing goals are, we hope you have a happy end of the year and are as excited about the future as we are.