5 Marketing Trends for Tech Startups in 2024

In 2024, startup businesses will need to adapt to challenges brought on by new technology, constantly changing platforms, market conditions, and more. Organizations looking to gain capital and scale their businesses quickly face unique challenges when integrating emerging technology and maintaining a competitive edge.

With these hurdles in mind, we delved into our latest GetApp survey data from your fellow marketing peers, uncovering five of the top trends.* These insights are invaluable to successfully navigating the evolving landscape of technology and market conditions, helping you to effectively enact change within your business and address the challenges you face in 2024.

For the purposes of this report, a startup is defined as an organization that is one to five years old and characterizes the state of their business as in a growth state.

A startup company’s aim for rapid growth lends itself to making significant software investments. And even though many face challenges such as limited budgets or funding, a majority of software buyers working at startups say they plan to spend more on software in 2024 compared to 2023.

This behavior speaks to software’s critical place in streamlining processes, enhancing efficiency, automating tasks, and so on.

Marketing software specifically holds the power to transform many aspects of business functions today. It aids startups in building their customer base, making important strategic decisions, and driving growth, making it a necessity across industries.

Among software buyers working at startup businesses, marketing software is the number one priority software investment for 2024 at 30%, the second being IT security (26%).  

It’s never been more essential for software buyers working at startup businesses to make informed software purchasing decisions. Start by assessing your organization’s priority needs or pain points to help identify the core requirements and desired features of software before conducting your research.

Unfortunately, many startup businesses find fault in their software investments. Among software buyers working at startup companies, roughly three in four express regret for one or more software purchases made in the past 12 to 18 months.

A full third of respondents that have experienced this regret say the top product-related contributing factors are that the newly-purchased technology is not compatible with their company’s existing systems and that the technology is lacking necessary features:

While it’s expected for software implementation and onboarding to take some time, you certainly want to avoid incompatibility and feature mismatches when investing in software. Such problems can lead to disruptions or even impact the delivery of products or services. 

Below are a few tactics to help you avoid software purchase regret:

1. Thoroughly check requirements: Conduct an assessment of the compatibility requirements for any new software that defines items such as APIs, essential features, data formats, scalability, and security protocols. 

2. Consult with IT teams: It’s important to engage with your IT team early on in your software search to discuss integration capabilities, compatibility needs, and use cases. 

3. Encourage testing: Trial periods or test pilots prior to making a full investment can help your organization determine how well the software aligns with existing systems and identify issues prior to making a full investment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) training is essential for navigating rapid changes in the year ahead.

According to another study from GetApp among marketing professionals, a majority (83%) have already adopted AI marketing tools to perform their day-to-day work tasks and anticipate a range of benefits, particularly when it comes to efficiency and productivity improvements.**

Additionally, 70% of marketers say they have used open source AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT for marketing or advertising work.

As new tools continue to flood the market and become more entrenched in day-to-day functions, startups investing in AI upskilling position themselves as future-ready and adaptable.

Our research found AI training in data analytics (39%), automation (37%), and writing (35%) are especially desired among marketing professionals. These highly common tasks are recognized as pivotal areas for enhancing the overall value of marketing initiatives.

Incorporating AI-specific training and policies around how your business uses AI will be valuable investments in future success for growing companies. Start by identifying current marketing roadblocks and the most common use cases where AI can improve your team’s workflow.

Is it writing social media posts? Weeding through data? Generating new ideas? Sorting this out can help lead your organization in determining the essential AI-specific training versus the nice to have.

Big social media platforms such as Meta, X, and TikTok have faced significant volatility over the last year. From Twitter’s rebranding to X to TikTok’s potential ban, businesses are often caught between investing in established platforms or exploring new contenders such as Threads, Telegram, and more.

Today’s users have more choices regarding the number and types of platforms available to them than ever before. This fragmentation and uncertainty make it difficult for businesses to determine how and where to allocate social media marketing budgets.

In another recent study from GetApp among marketing professionals, 40% say that their company typically only adopts a new or emerging social media platform when they see their competitors use it successfully for marketing.***

While there is certainly hesitancy surrounding the adoption of new platforms, businesses and especially startups looking to grow their audience base will need to expand their social media footprint beyond the traditional.

When we asked marketers to describe how their organization allocates spending for social media marketing or advertising, 53% said they allocate resources fairly evenly across multiple platforms or apps, while 47% focuses a significant portion of resources on one or two main platforms or apps.

In 2024, it’s important to monitor emerging or niche social media platforms that cater to your specific audiences. It is wise to plan ahead by allocating a portion of your social media marketing budget specifically for testing and experimenting with new platforms in order to drive growth.

With 2024’s election pending, social media’s relationship with consumer trust is murky at best. Growing concerns over misinformation, lack of moderation, and privacy have turned some consumers to seek refuge in smaller or private spaces online—effectively going “dark.”

Dark social media simply refers to the private sharing of content through channels such as email, texts, direct messages, private groups, etc. This type of activity makes it difficult for marketing professionals to track brand conversations and effectively measure campaign performance.

According to GetApp’s 2023 Dark Social Media Survey, nearly one-third of marketers (32%) say that the limited or complete lack of ability to track customer conversations in private channels is one of the top challenges hindering their ability to understand customer behavior at their company.****

A majority (81%) also believe that consumer conversations that happen in private spaces will only continue to grow over the next year.

For startup businesses where peer recommendations are critical for acquiring new customers, embracing dark social media activity needs to be on your radar in the year ahead.

Many marketers are already optimizing their content for dark social by creating content that encourages sharing or conversation (57%), including direct links through social media apps (50%) and by tailoring content to specific audiences (48%).