2024 is going to bring some big changes to the digital marketing landscape, and we want you to be prepared. Preston sits down with Josh Dirks, the Founder and CEO of Project Bionic, to discuss what the year has in store. They talk about whether the AI and ChatGPT craze is over-hyped, plus cover first-party data, short-form video, the rise of the micro-influencers, and more.

Learn more about Fujisan Marketing here or email your questions/comments to contact@fujisanmarketing.com.

Full episode transcript:

Preston Parshall 0:13
Welcome to the digital marketers guide podcast where we break down digital marketing topics into bite sized episodes that can help make your marketing program and you a little better. I’m Preston Parshall, the founder and CEO Fujisan marketing. We’re here today with my good friend and mentor Josh Dirks to discuss 2024 Digital Marketing Trends. Josh is the owner of a digital marketing agency called Project Bionic. He has been in the industry for the last 14 years and is an icon in the Seattle market. Welcome to the show, Josh.

Josh Dirks 0:44
Thanks, Preston, awesome to be here excited to, you know, talk to the audience out there and give us some nuggets here today.

Preston Parshall 0:50
What digital marketing trends are you excited about that you expect to see in 2024?

Josh Dirks 0:56
Oh, man, there’s a bunch of new stuff coming out right now, I think the you know, obviously, you can’t talk about trends without talking about AI, first and foremost. And so how that begins to evolve things. I think I’m really excited about what I’m seeing there and some of the evolutions that are happening. And not that it’s going to replace us as marketers. And I think that’s the interesting component is so many people are scared right now, that and man is going to mechanize us it’s going to allow a marketer to do 10x, the work that they used to do and have that much more detail and intel on things. I think secondarily behind that, we’re going to continue to go ahead and see the data wars continue on now and really hoping different brands, and companies really understand how important first party data is, and that they can’t rely on third party data anymore. And it’s just going to be really incumbent upon how people thought to start to think about that strategy, inclusively across to all their different marketing mediums. And I think you’re starting to see some emerging things starting to happen and some new platforms where that short form video content, you know, ie tick tock, and reels and shorts and that kind of stuff to threads and Twitter x depending on what you want to call it game. So be interested, kind of see how the dust settles. Now we have so many new players in the space, because there’s even, you know, Legacy people like Pinterest right now they’re making some waves, but not many people are talking about them. So interesting things to think about.

Preston Parshall 2:15
Well, you have me intrigued. Let’s break it down a little bit further. So tell me a little bit more about AI. How you and your team are using it, and how you see it moving forward?

Josh Dirks 2:26
Yeah, man, I mean, I think first off, AI is a really big term, a really broad term, and you got to kind of break it down, because there’s actually three different tentpoles. Underneath that you have your machine learning model, which I think a lot of people know about, it’s been infused into the meta platform for a long time. Those are things that we talk about a lot, and that’s the machine’s gonna come eat us type side side of things. There’s generative AI, which I think is gonna be really interesting, which a lot of people originally poo pooed. But as we’re seeing now, with some of the tools and some of the advancements, it’s using data, and audiences start to inform your visual language. And that’s really, really exciting. You know, I was able to go ahead and we posted colab here this far, Amy belly yet from Killer from former killer infographics and I forget where she’s at now. So I’m sorry, Amy. But you know, she really is talking about from a visual standpoint, what that visual language looks like, and how much that’s being increased and promoted through her use of generative AI. And then I think the thing that I probably have been digging the most is the large language model stuff, and how you can start to go ahead and bring really, really deep datasets together, and begin to see relationships between them trends and start to go ahead and augment your marketing plan based upon that data and approach. And I think we’re gonna get to a place here very shortly where we have predictive models that will allow us to know whether we’re going to hit our sales goals or not. And that’s super exciting. Because since I was a young person, and 40 years before I was even in this space, everyone’s been saying 50% of marketing works and 50% doesn’t they just don’t which 50%. And in this day and age of data, it’s absolutely a travesty that we’re still talking about those things today.

Preston Parshall 4:07
Well, let’s get deeper in the weeds. What do you think about ChatGPT and how are you guys using it?

Josh Dirks 4:12
I think ChatGPT is awesome. It’s it’s a great way of starting to keep people familiarized with what machine learning can look like. However, what I see is a lot of people are misusing ChatGPT. They’re using it as a replacement for like a Google search bar. And so a lot of the threads are going ChatGPT are actually really, really tiny. And one thing that I’ve seen is like, you need to really think through your prompts and really put in very in depth prompts. And the more information you can give to ChatGPT, the better your results and the outputs are going to be, you know, for example, if you’re going ahead and sending a proposal to a food client that’s been a family run business with around 40 years, put that buyer persona in as you start to think about how you build your proposal and it’s amazing how it will customize, what might be your template to really speak to that person? I’m actually just proposing right now to a group of female founders in the Health and Beauty space. And they have a really cool brand that’s really focused on women 35-54. And as I started to create their proposal, there was a few places where I could tell that my male ism was coming through. And so as I went through and use ChatGPT, put that persona in there. And it started to spit out stuff that was a lot more along the lines of how they think and what they what they what’s important to them, and actually show to my girlfriend, she’s like, holy smokes, man, that is exactly that speaks to my soul. And so for me, it’s allowing me to be more tailored and customized around those things. So think about what you’re putting into ChatGPT. Think about writing longer prompts. Think about even within your organization, having a prompt sharing file where you guys are actually have a combined document where people have different prompts in it, that allow you to do different things throughout your day, and start to think about how you just change the way your workflow works.

Preston Parshall 6:05
So as one agency owner to another, I’m really curious about how you’re letting your team use chat GPT Are you putting up guardrails? Or how’s that going?

Josh Dirks 6:17
Yeah, I mean, we have some basic rules around it. I mean, obviously, you’re not going to put your financial data in it. But again, Project Bionic has been playing within the guardrails for a long time, I like to say we don’t have any secret sauce except for common sense. And so for us, there’s not a whole lot that we can put in a ChatGPT except maybe that financial information or certain contract details. So yeah, we have some parameters around it. Lots of people have different access to different tools. I think that’s just, you know, important to think through depending on what your organization does, and what kind of trade secrets or hidden sauce you think you have.

Preston Parshall 6:52
So to move to your second point, you were talking about first party data, and what that looks like in 2024. Can you tell me a little bit more?

Josh Dirks 7:00
Yeah, I mean, I think we all know what happened in 2016. And I think we’ve all gone forward from that independent of where you fall on the political spectrum. What you’ve seen is gone from very open ad platforms across the space to what I call the Deathstar kind of closing up right now. And all these big data players are starting to close up. And as laws are being passed in places like California, and Massachusetts, in New York, and Wyoming out of all weird places, you’re starting to see now that the GDPR stuff that happened in Europe is coming to the states. And so a lot of the third party data targeting that we used to be able to use us to allow us to get really granular and our audiences are being removed. And so what you need to do now is have your own data. And when we talk about first party data, first party data is anything a customer has given to you email address, phone number, device ID address, you know, that information and said yes, you can go ahead and market to me. So that’s your first party data. third party data is anything that you get from a third party platform that they’re giving to you and allow you to target. So a lot of third party sellers getting turned off. And we’re working with our clients. Right now we’re using their first party data, whether that’s customer lists, whether that’s, you know, CRM information to go ahead and build out the audiences. And then as you go ahead and start to market those audiences, see the response, then you can start to use things again, like lookalike audiences and stuff like that. So the, the segmentation and the targeting is actually better. But it takes a lot of work. And you have to think about how you’re capturing first party data, getting those permissions, and then how you’re re onboarding that data. And using it, it’s easy to do in the first few steps. But I see a lot of people not actually putting standard operating procedures around that re inclusion of first party data like even on a monthly basis. And so they start off really strong, but then they harvest all the apples at the bottom of the tree, and there’s nothing growing at the top. And so making sure that you’re creating standard operating procedures that are constantly onboarding, that first party data is really important to success.

Preston Parshall 9:02
Yeah, it’s really interesting. So as time passes, you know, getting email addresses was always the first thing and foremost thing. And then, as audiences rose and all of the third party data rose, it became a little bit of a secondary or tertiary goal in our digital marketing. But now it’s right back up to number one. So we’ve kind of made it full circle.

Josh Dirks 9:21
Yeah, I mean, everything is new again, the way it always goes around this thing, and I you know, I think that also COVID really highlighted the idea of owning the customer experience, because we had so many brands that had depended on either industry rags, or traditional or some of those things in order to go ahead and do their marketing. And all of a sudden, they didn’t own their customer relationship. And so whenever COVID hit, they lost that direct connection to their customers. And a lot of those brands suffered greatly, both from a sales standpoint, an inventory standpoint, so it’s time to wake up and start thinking about your first party data strategy people

Preston Parshall 10:00
More on that later. Okay. You also touched on short form video, and specifically the rise of new platforms and TikTok, do you want to kind of go a little bit further there?

Josh Dirks 10:11
Yeah, I mean, I think the Tick Tock thing is such an interesting evolution and stuff, because it’s not necessarily we take TikTok the platform out of and just think about the medium. It’s really interesting, because we had all heard three to five seconds is all anybody would give you yet people are sitting for hours now consuming two, two and a half minute videos that are shot in portrait instead of landscape, which violates all of my video, guys, best rules and all the things that are, you know, sacred to them on stuff. But this is not going away. And now you have reels and you have stories on Facebook, and you have shorts on YouTube. And so that format has come to bear on the market. And as marketers, we really need to think about that as a new tool in our arsenal. And make sure we’re thinking about how we’re capturing video content, how we’re chopping that into two, two and a half minute segments, and then how we’re distributing that back out through these new tools. But I don’t think the platforms the names might go away, but the type of content has been created is here to stay

Preston Parshall 11:12
Got any tips for the audience?

Josh Dirks 11:13
Got any tips for the audience? start just start shooting and see what goes on. I I think the other thing that’s really important is making sure that whenever you are using the platforms that they do reward you for actually loading the native video on it, and then using their editing tools to go ahead and put them emojis and stickers and all that good jazz on top of it. So make sure that you’re not just taking I see all the time because I’m still a Twitter head. Don’t Don’t tell anybody. We’re not on podcast. Right? Cool. So you know, I still a Twitter head, I see how many people just start dropping Tik Tok videos into into your Twitter feed, right? So it doesn’t feel customized in any way. But we have done side by side comparisons at project bionic. And if you did that, like it took a TikTok video in its raw format and download and just put it right into stories. It’s not going to get the depth and breadth of what if you did it natively on both platforms. So use the platforms, use the editing tools, start to play experiment, set up a weird name, find something of interest that you care about and start playing with a video format so that you understand what’s there and what the editing tools can do for you and how that can further your brand message.

Preston Parshall 12:17
You and I talked about this all the time. But what trends do you feel like are overhyped right now in digital marketing? And for 2024?

Josh Dirks 12:24
Wow, there’s so many of those right now.

Preston Parshall 12:27
So many so many

Josh Dirks 12:28
Holy smokes.

I think the influencer space is playing itself out right now. I think it’s it’s still important. There’s still some really cool opportunities in it. But I think the rise of micro influencers here, I think that the days of following somebody on Tik Tok that endorses one makeup line, and the next week doesn’t know that makeup line, another makeup line, those brands are being seen. I’m fortunate enough to have two guinea pigs in my life, I have a 13 and 15 year old, so I’m watching how they’re doing things. And they’re seeing that brand incongruency you know, you didn’t see Shaq go from Reebok to Nike. That just isn’t how it used to work. And yet these influencers have built such a following that brands discounted that. And my kids can see that very quickly. You’re like, why is he endorsing that brand a day or that drink today, when last week he was doing this. And so I think that space, some of the froth is off that space a little bit, in a big way. I think that you know, some of the traditional stuff is still seeing the weight to bear on how impactful it is because people just aren’t watching TV and the media habits and consumption habits have just changed forever due to COVID. And I also think that the the podcasting thing, ironically enough, here we are on a podcast, but there’s so many podcasts in the world today, that marketing through them and having some types of tools that can help measure and understand what the impact of those things are, is really coming to bear now on people’s podcasts budgets. So they start to look at how they spend and sponsor.

Preston Parshall 13:53
So we’re not going to hear a project bionic podcast anytime soon.

Josh Dirks 13:57
Probably not a project bionic podcast right now I got enough here at Fujisan to go ahead and come over here and give you content. That’s great.

Preston Parshall 14:03
What makes you nervous going into 2024?

Josh Dirks 14:06
I think it’s like anything is the economy has been really slippery for the last 24 months. I think that there has been a wild swings and whether CFOs are incentivized to have in house teams versus outhouse teams. So what does that look like? And how does that you know, bear on things but it feels like we’re at a place now where everyone is kind of understanding what the new normal is a little bit and we’re starting to see people spend money again, which is really encouraging. But you know, it’s been a it’s been a skinny nine months. And you know, I hope that this trend continues with people spending money. But one hiccup one thing we don’t expect one additional war who we all know can tip over the applecart on that kind of stuff. So just the unknown of the world economic and political stage is always a little bit troubling whenever you’re running a business that’s dependent on people spending money,

Preston Parshall 14:59
so that being said, if you’re a marketing leader heading into 2024, what are the one or two biggest priorities that you’d focus on?

Josh Dirks 15:07
Get crisp about your goals and KPIs, like, understand what it is and understand what’s worked for you and what hasn’t, and stop trusting Google Analytics as your true source of truth, because they’re overcomping you to Google. And while Google is great, I’ve just I’ve know couple brands that use Google as their source of truth in 2023. And their sales are off in the double digit percentiles, because they cater to women. But Google’s analytics told them YouTube was a thing. So they went there, even though Google’s 60 youtube 60% male, right, so figure out a different source of truth. Figure out something that’s non biased, it doesn’t have a dog in the fight and you know, get a good measuring stick on things. And then third, get crisp on your strategy, understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and how it all ties together across all your different marketing mediums, because that then plays in the first party data capture and everything else we just talked about.

Preston Parshall 16:02
Thanks, Josh. Thanks for listening to the digital marketers guide podcast. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date when a new episode is released. If you have any feedback or topics you’d like to see covered, email us at contact@FujisanMarketing.com or learn more about us at FujisanMarketing.com. See you next time.