Charting the Marketing Course for 2024: Expert Insights on Strategy, Technology, and AI

Rob and LJ are teaming up with the legendary Jeffs (Staats & Pelliccio) and the fantastic Lesly Cardec for our 3rd annual Marketing Trends episode!

Get ready to hear what will help you grow in 2024 as the crew spills the beans on what'll be driving the industry forward.

Specifically strategy shifts, technology, and AI.

Tune in for all the takeaways and head over to www.yoepodcast.com this week for a deep dive into the group's full takeaways.

And hey, don't get left in the marketing dust! Tune in and see if your team's on the same page with these 2024 visions.

The Full breakdown from each leader is below:

Lesly’s takeaways:

1. Go Deeper - The need for more meaningful and targeted connections and interactions with prospects and clients rises.

2. Efficiency - Success will hinge on developing new ideas and optimizing what you’re already doing; a lot more spending and performance measurement. 

3. Marketing vs. sales - Businesses will be looking for marketing and sales to work as a unified team to hunt, farm, and grow leads. Look for “team-based pipelining’ versus sales-driven pipelines. 

4. AI - 2024 will be the year of more widespread adoption; Will a vendor who doesn’t bring a platform with some application or relevance for AI to the table be able to compete?

5. Customer Experience - how do companies maintain high levels of customer service and care with fewer people? Loyalty will suffer if orgs are not careful, where price becomes the determining factor in decision-making.

6. Techstacks - Companies are prioritizing anything they can do to get closer to their customers and get insights from data; not tolerating inefficient tech

7. Hiring + the Role of Marketing - What mix of talent and tech do we need? How can we source talent internally and externally to support AI? Opportunity for companies to also take a look at their own Employer Branding, as candidates prioritize stability and healthcare – marketing can play a big role in this.

Jeff Staat’s Takeaways:

1. Tech Re-Alignment - fixing/deleting broken or inefficient tech pieces - evaluating via the process

2. Automation Supermove - after years of talking about automation being important, this is the year and AI is the boost. I think AI is the catalyst to think about the easier move to automation. Plus, I’ve been intentional about saying 100 is the gold standard. 

3. Marketing roles - conductor is more important than tactical role. With all the choices, the staffing firm that has the best conductor/director/prompter will win. It’s like about 10 years ago with the Agency Blueprint and how best you should structure your agency. 

4. Building a community - content creators have it right. Building your own fanbase will be key as 1st party data and contacts continue to be most important while attribution is still going to be a mess. 

5. AI Fit - it fits, but where and how? Is it okay to use AI? When? Is a copilot important? What do we need to check to make sure it is correct? What vendor does it best?

Jeff Pelliccio’s Takeaways:

1. Market Realignment: review and adjust the Current Sales/Recruiting Processes to realign your mission and execution of efforts with the community in a more meaningful way that celebrates your competitive advantage. Why are you the best?

2. Develop Meaningful Offer(s): create conversion opportunities further up the funnel that are meaningful and respond to present market conditions and seasonality or cyclical nature of your prospects. What’s in it for them?

3. Coordinate Sales/Marketing: review corporate initiatives and frontline activities as a group to structure collaboration of innovative ideas, define priorities, and set quarterly delivery objectives. Coordinated efforts generate the BEST results!

4. Map Tech Stack: beyond website/digital UX design, software has a huge impact on the capabilities and limitations a staffing firm has to provide a better user experience than the competition. Without knowing how all the systems integrate, your ability to pivot will be limited and blind decisionmaking to implement could be a detriment.

   1. Technical Gap Remediation - identify communication and visibility gaps in the funnel and take efforts to create more seamless connections (website included)

   2. Automation is a non-negotiable. Avoiding automation is costing conversions.

   3. AI is here to stay. Play and Learn as much as you can. Be vigilant in scoping new tech. Establish guides for its use and feedback loops to monitor performance.