3 Areas Of Business That Need Your Focus In 2024

It’s hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. The world has been disrupted by technology, climate change, and a global pandemic. Companies often struggle to keep up, let alone stay one step ahead.

If you own or operate an enterprise, you know that forces affecting your success are in constant motion. Digesting information from purported prognosticators of the business climate may or may not be helpful. Much of what you read may change by the time you learn about it.

The rest is information that diverges among sources.

You can’t anticipate every single issue that your company may face in 2024. But if you don’t get up to speed with some key issues, your brand may begin to wither. Here are three areas you’ll need to focus on for certain.

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1. Marketing Strategies

Marketing efforts need to engage your target audience, not just represent a hard sell of your products and services. You aren’t only competing with other companies. You’re competing for attention when attention spans are shorter and more demanding than ever.

Content is how you’ll engage prospects and customers, so make sure your content strategy is detailed and on target. It can be informative, entertaining, or both, so long as it’s memorable and designed to achieve your goals.

Where you place your content and in what format you present it both need to be highly intentional as well.

Make sure you’re using all the best tools. Video, virtual and augmented reality, and interactive content are the formats preferred by increasingly larger audiences. That’s particularly true for almost anyone under the age of 65.

If you still think traditional keyword metrics are the secret to search engine optimization, you’re behind the curve. Developing content clusters rather than single pages will move the SEO needle in the right direction.

Establishing your company as a topical authority should be your endgame, not keeping up with the long-tail keywords du jour.

It can be intimidating to try new content formats and build new metrics. If you can’t keep up with the constant changes in marketing strategy, partner with an agency that does. Otherwise, you’ll never know what sales and connections you’re missing out on.

2. Artificial Intelligence

You can’t turn around these days without bumping into artificial intelligence. Self-driving cars like General Motors’ Cruise, voice assistants like Alexa, and the iPhone 15’s camera all rely on AI. You may already be using AI somewhere in your business, but are you leveraging it everywhere you can?

For example, maybe you’ve employed a chatbot on your website to make it easy for users to troubleshoot solutions quickly. That AI offers reactive customer service, requiring them to make the first move. Now, AI can provide predictive customer service that anticipates customers’ needs before they ask.

A customer who just received your product pulls up your website and your chatbot is there to greet them with a personal message.

In fact, AI has opened a whole new world of predictive analytics that enhance the customer experience (CX). It makes it possible to personalize content, anticipate a customer’s next purchase, and even foresee supply chain issues.

You’re probably familiar with the use of AI in creating written and visual content for marketing. Dive deeper and use it to automate insights from millions of unstructured data points, like customer feedback and social media reviews.

AI can do it in seconds, not the hours it would take humans to analyze that volume of qualitative information.

AI-driven automation can save your company time, money, and the hassle of hiring and retaining employees. But it can also provide the information you need to make CX extremely personal, and that makes your marketing efforts more effective. Think of using AI as taking the “mass” out of marketing.

3. Sustainability

Sustainability encompasses environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters. It takes a long view in business. Companies build value by targeting how their operations impact the ecological, social, and economic environments around them.

Issues such as social justice, climate change, and fair trade have become increasingly important to people. As a result, they’re looking for companies who are committed to those same values. They’re voting for sustainability with their pocketbooks, and they’re willing to pay a premium to do so.

There are a multitude of examples of large companies dedicated to utilizing carbon offsets and renewable energy. They also eschew single-use plastics and petroleum-based fabrics. But even mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar businesses can adopt sustainable practices.

You should begin to review every function of your business through a sustainability lens. Make your supply chain local when you can. Install solar panels and motion-activated lights. Give your employees reusable tumblers to use at the water cooler. Replace your company car fleet with electric vehicles over time.

You don’t have to add a sustainability guru to your payroll. Take the opportunity to engage green-minded employees by appointing them to audit everything from governance to packaging. You may be surprised at the solutions they come up with.

Once you commit to sustainability, let people know, from your employees to your customers to your vendors. Although some sustainability measures can reduce operational costs, others may require a price increase to maintain profitability. Just remember that customers interested in your corporate values will be OK with that.

Areas Of Business – Adjust Your Focus

The rapid pace of change can make it tough for businesses to respond to them. But bringing a few key areas into clearer focus will help you pivot when you need to.

Targeted and personal marketing strategies, smart implementation of AI, and a commitment to sustainability are what stakeholders are demanding. Why not give the people what they want?