As the end of the year approaches, businesses everywhere are taking a hard look at their performance over the past twelve months and laying the groundwork for future success. This is about more than just reflection—it’s a time to recalibrate, refine goals, and align strategic priorities to match the ever-changing market landscape.
Knowing how to adapt to the latest trends and customer behaviours is essential for success, and if you can get a head start on which areas to focus on, so much the better. With that in mind, here are a few of the essential marketing trends that we’ll be seeing more of in 2025, so you can get ahead of the competition by improving your digital marketing strategies.
Optimise Your E-commerce Advertising
Retail e-commerce is expected to reach $6.5 trillion in global revenue by 2029, which means e-commerce sites are likely to be a large part of your advertising budget in the upcoming year. Not only will this mean optimising your advertising spend on these platforms, but it will also mean making sure listings are as compelling as possible. High-quality, vivid product images, information-packed descriptions and keyword-rich listings will be essential to help your ads stand out.
Develop Short-Form, Interactive Video
Video content remains a powerful tactic for digital marketers, particularly short-form content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. In 2025, focus on developing engaging content that delivers the facts quickly and in a creative way. Live streaming, for example, can be great for engaging with your audience in real time, while snappy videos like YouTube Shorts can help you expand your reach and grow your audience.
The Rise of Social Commerce
The line between shopping and social platforms is becoming more blurred with every month. In 2025, social channels won’t just be for conversation—they’ll be a place of commerce for businesses in a host of industries.
Digital marketers need to focus on providing visually rich posts that customers can shop from in a single tap, as well as live shopping experiences combining brands and influencers for real-time shopping. User-generated content will also become more powerful with this trend, influencing potential customers with social proof and real experiences.
Digital Strategies Shaped by AI and Machine Learning
AI has been on everyone’s radar this year and it has become one of the most powerful tools shaping digital marketing. In 2025, it will be found in every aspect of our marketing processes, from automating tedious tasks to innovation and creative projects.
What will become more prevalent though is the use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) for studying customer trends, behaviours and providing recommendations for next-level personalised marketing. That may be in the form of chatbots to handle complex questions and offer more accurate product suggestions, or it might look like tailored ads and emails that are hyper-personalised to the receiver.
The Use of Voice Search Will Grow
Voice search is something that garnered a lot of attention several years back but didn’t hit the levels of popularity that experts expected. However, by 2025, marketers will need to adjust to the likelihood of voice search growing in importance, led by smart devices. The impact will be a shift in keywords, with longer phrases and more conversational terms used as users will be speaking instead of typing. Ultimately, natural language will become more crucial in SEO, and local search will reign supreme since many voice searches tend to be local by default.
Personalisation at Scale
Building trust is essential for any business looking to succeed today, but personalisation, in particular, is a recurring theme that we will continue to see going into 2025.
Customers expect seamless, tailored experiences now, across every channel they interact with, so companies need to do more than simply include a first name in a message. However, genuine interactions and authenticity are critical in order to build trust and loyalty. Make sure that your engagement with customers resonates with them and reinforces your brand messages and mission.
Brands Need to Leverage LinkedIn
LinkedIn Newsletters are a powerful way to enhance your influence in your industry, especially in the B2B space. The impact of LinkedIn becomes even greater when it’s paired with paid promotions, offering a comprehensive approach to significantly expanding your content’s reach.
Using paid ads to promote your LinkedIn Newsletter enables you to connect with LinkedIn’s highly engaged professional audience and attract more subscribers to your content. This approach not only strengthens your credibility but also broadens your visibility, combining the benefits of organic content with the added boost of paid media.
Embracing these trends can provide your business with significant advantages. From AI and ML, to personalising content and short-form videos, the upcoming year looks to be an exciting one where digital marketing is concerned. The goal is to be adaptable to the changing trends and focus on identifying opportunities for growth and improvement in order to stay ahead of the competition. The more seamless and personalised your customer experiences can be, the more your digital marketing strategy will drive engagement and growth.
