Industry Trends: Top Trends for Your Brand by Industry in 2024

In today's day and age, every industry is subject to fast-paced change. Between TikTok’s ability to send the world into a frenzy within minutes to the shift of consumer attitudes over the years, the evolution of industry trends comes quickly and often.

Simply put, the landscape is changing at such a pace that it can take time for brands to stay on par with the trends, and keeping up is crucial to ensuring your success against competitors — but it can be very time-consuming.

This blog explains:

• What industry trends are.
• Why it's important to follow industry trends.
• How to find industry trends.
• Top trends by industry.

What are Industry Trends?

In its simplest form, industry trends are widespread changes that alter the industry as a whole. These patterns or occurrences continually happen over time within a specific industry and materialize in several ways, such as product demand, purchasing, marketing strategies, packaging, consumer interests, and much more. 

The impact of these trends can be both positive or negative and will often be seen at a small scale first before rapidly growing. Examples of industries that are often affected by quickly changing trends include the fashion industry, the beauty industry, the food industry, and many others.

Is it Important to Follow Industry Trends?

Following Industry top trends is becoming increasingly more important. Just as consumers often follow new trends, businesses must pay attention or follow the trends in their industries, too. But why is it so important, you may ask?

1. Build Credibility: By implementing new trends into your business practices, consumers are more likely to see your brand as a thought leader within the industry. With an increased sense of leadership, consumers will trust that your brand knows what they should be doing and will see you as a credible source of information as trends continue to shift, as well as being able to relate easily.
2. Build Awareness: In the age of social media marketing, monitoring trends in your industry allows you to be part of the conversation before it passes. In 2024, for example, more brands are boosting organic content to reach more relevant users. Not keeping up with tactics like these means you risk losing ad space to competitors and engaged audiences. Keeping up with industry trends means that you might shift strategies often — but remember, staying informed lets you reach new audiences and build connections with those who may not know much about your brand.‍
3. Keep Your Brand Agile: Between learning new skills, growing new customer bases, and becoming more knowledgeable about the big things happening in your industry, staying on top of trends in your industry allows you to grow and shift in a way that feels natural.

How to Find Industry Trends

Staying current on social media trends can be tedious, time-consuming, and challenging, but there are several ways to help lead your search so you are aware of the situation. To make the process of finding trends within your industry easier, you should use some or all of these strategies:

1. Stay Up To Date on Social Media

Being active on various social media channels daily is key to staying updated with what is trending within your industry. Make sure that you’re paying particular attention to your competitors' pages and checking for new and popular posts using industry-relevant hashtags and search terms to help you ensure that you never miss out on a new or upcoming trend.

2. Leverage Your Team Members

Having just one person keeping an eye out for trends can be very time-consuming and makes it easy to miss an opportunity to capitalize on a popular new topic. Get your whole team involved in watching out for trends by creating a messaging thread or form where employees can highlight trends they see within the industry, along with a link to an example and any other relevant notes.

3. Utilize Search Engine Optimization

When a certain topic is trending, it’s likely that consumers are searching for it — this is why incorporating social media SEO is so beneficial to your entire digital marketing strategy. Enter industry keywords into an SEO tool to find patterns in popular searches and niche searches that are on the rise. Oftentimes by using this strategy you are able to find topics that may have a low search volume but if the patterns display an upward trend, it’s likely that you’re catching the trend early on and getting ahead of the curve.

4. Keep Up with Industry Journals and Magazines

In most trending industries, you can find publications that report on current and upcoming industry trends — like our social media trends report. Whether through trade journals or consumer-facing magazines, subscribing to these publications and blocking out time to read these regularly are great ways to keep up with trends.

5. Engage with Your Industry and with Your Customers

Don’t ever underestimate the power of networking. Whether you attend trade shows for your industry or engage with customers through socials, word of mouth is a great way to understand what others see happen within the industry.

6. Use an Industry Trends Tool

Even with the above strategies, finding industry trends can take work. Opt for a tool that tracks industry trends for you so you can take the guesswork out of finding topics on the rise. Using an industry trends tool can give you time back in your day and ensure you’re always up to date.

7. Explore Social Listening

Use a Social Listening tool to explore top-performing posts, the most common words users are searching and whether their engagement is positive, neutral or negative with sentiment analysis which analyzes the feeling behind user comments. This tool is fantastic to understand which trends your audience is mostly likely to positively engage with.

Beat Competitors with Industry Trends by Dash Hudson

Dash Hudson makes it easy for brands to stay on top of trends by helping them keep on top of what top competitors in their industry are posting, and where they are seeing success. By keeping an eye on what people are talking about, it allows brands to spend less time sifting through the noise, and being able to see what’s trending so they can capitalize on trends in a timely manner.

Dash Hudson easily provides brands the ability to create different trend groups by adding in competitors, inspirations, and/or market leader accounts to better understand the performance of how trends across all industries behave and engage with their audience. These trend groups can be as broad or generalized depending on use-cases for brands, as well as pulling in deeper next-level concrete insights. It’s a place for brands to analyze their data-backed creative strategies to save valuable time and money. Then hop into  Dashboards reporting tool to see how adopting these trends is impacting your performance month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter.

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Top Trends by Industry

Trends are prevalent in every single industry, from the largest to the most niche of industries. Below are some of the trends that we are seeing, and will continue to see, throughout 2024. The top trends we have outlined are general to each industry, though through your own research you may be able to find more granular trends specific to your niche.

Top Beauty Industry Trends

The beauty industry is more popular than ever. Some trends to note for 2024 are:

• Kitty cuts: Messy layered cuts were a hit in 2023, and this trend Gen Z has adapted this look as the ‘kitty cut’ in 2024 — this style involves mid-length hair with long layers, tousled in a fun, messy way. Even if you’re a makeup or skincare brand, you could highlight beauty looks that complement this hairstyle or even ‘cat-inspired’ makeup looks.  
• Accessible packaging: Brands (and consumers) are becoming more conscious about accessible packing, with brands like Rare Beauty and Guide Beauty creating products that are easier to use for people with arthritis and multiple sclerosis. This trend extends to social media, with creators valuing and highlight brands with accessible packaging.  ‍
• Short nails: Longer nails have been on trend for the past couple of years, but short nails are becoming more popular — brands should find opportunities to incorporate shorter nails in their visual strategy, offer tips for short nail care and highlight nail art that makes use of a short nail-style.

Top Fashion and Luxury Industry Trends

The fashion industry, ever-evolving and dynamic, continues to captivate and influence global culture and consumer behavior. As we move into 2024, the landscape is set to transform with emerging trends that reflect shifts in sustainability, technology, consumer preferences, and global socio-economic factors. These changes promise to redefine what we wear, how we shop, and the way we engage with fashion and luxury brands. With an eye on the future, let's explore the innovations and movements poised to shape the fashion world. Some fashion and luxury industry trends for 2024 are:

• Color analysis: No, it’s not the ‘90’s — color analysis is back. With filters that promise to help users find their most flattering color palette, this is a new trend that brands are in a unique position to capitalize early on. Try adding ‘seasons’ to clothing, or create content that focuses on the best pieces from your brand for a Summer, Winter, Fall, and Spring color palette. 
• UX-focused and personalized shopping experiences: Web 2.0 emphasized UGC, while web 3.0 will focus on understanding the user, and results being tailored more to their search activity, browsing habits, viewed products, and more, rather than tags or product categories. Brands should focus on remarketing efforts, personalized product recommendations, and other opportunities to personalize the user experience. ‍
• Sustainable fashion: Sustainability (and brand accountability) is another trend that’s still strong in 2024. Highlighting the ways your brand helps close the circularity of clothing helps increase your brand’s credibility.

Top CPG Industry Trends

The consumer packaged goods industry will always be important, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sensitive to change. Here are three trends for the CPG industry in 2024:

• Cross-channel marketing: CPG brands should practice cross-channel marketing and finding unique opportunities on each platform — don’t just share the same content on multiple platforms, consider your audience, the platform medium, and what type of content performs best.
• Private label brands: While CPG brands have been launching their own e-commerce sites, retailers are increasingly creating their own brands — think Amazon’s Goodthreads or Kirkland. ‍
• Product personalization: Have you used Sephora’s Foundation Finder, or completed a quiz to find the right sneakers for your lifestyle? These are perfect examples of product personalization, and CPG brands are following suit. Introduce quizzes to help consumers find the best self-care products for their unique needs, the best food for your cat, or the best beauty product for your skin tone.

Top Financial Industry Trends

The financial sector plays a pivotal role in the daily lives of individuals and businesses alike, offering essential services that facilitate everything from everyday transactions to long-term financial planning. As we look ahead to 2024, several emerging trends are set to redefine the landscape of the financial services industry.

• Finance influencers: Yes, it’s a thing — more financial influencers are emerging on ‘FinTok’, where influencers provide investment advice, discuss their financial mistakes, and how they budget. 
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): Both small and large financial firms are experimenting with AI — some of the services that AI supports include personalization for financial solutions, call routing, to identify investment opportunities, and more. ‍
• Buy now, pay later: Financial tools like Afterpay, Klarna, and other platforms that let you make a purchase and pay later without a credit card will continue to be popular in 2024.

Alongside these developments we'd also like to spotlighted top financial Instagram accounts that not only reflect these evolving trends but also provide valuable insights and inspiration in the realm of finance.

Top Automotive Industry Trends

Sustainability remains a top trend for the automotive industry in 2024 — in addition to sustainability and electric vehicles, these trends are on-the-rise: 

• Smart features: As consumers continue to shift from staying inside to getting on the roads, they are seeking out convenience more than ever. Technology-driven features like advanced assistance systems, voice commands, and more will become more popular. Brands should look for opportunities to highlight these features on their social channels. 
• Technology shift: Technology has advanced more in the last 15 years than it has in the past 100 — and the automotive industry is tasked with the challenge of keeping up. This involves reeducating automotive professionals and recruiting employees with technology-based backgrounds. Brands have a unique opportunity to promote not only their products, but their industry, and partner with tech-based influencers to promote the automotive industry and their products. 
• A shift from traditional dealerships: Subscription-based models for car services, e-commerce, and a general move from traditional dealerships is set to grow in 2024. Tesla is a brand that popularized a direct-to-consumer e-commerce model, and emerging brands like EV company Lucid Motors have followed suit.

FAQs

What is a trend in business?

In business, a trend is an overall shift or change in the direction of a market. This change could be either upward or downward and is depicted by a consistent change in the same direction. Picture a line graph; a trend would be graphed as a data line that consistently increases or decreases as time passes. 

Which industries are currently booming?

Some of the fastest-growing industries in 2024 are the personal services, travel, healthcare, information technology, and construction industries. The growth of these industries is expected to skyrocket throughout this year. 

What are 3 types of industry trends?

Industry trends can be short-term, long-term, or somewhere in between. Short-term trends are typically small things related to a specific type of product or service. Short-term trends are very prevalent in fashion as demands shift quickly and are typically influenced by what one person or one brand is doing. Long-term trends on the other hand are the results of a bigger shift in consumer needs or shifts in what is important to buyers. In many industries, one of the biggest long-term trends we are seeing in 2024 is a push for sustainability, which will likely continue for years and years to come. 

Though trends can often be classified as short or long-term, there are also trends that fall in between the two. These trends will typically stick around for a couple seasons or years, but will eventually decline as another medium-term trend arises to replace them.