Our latest post takes a closer look at the top trends in digital marketing for 2025 and how you can incorporate them into your marketing mix.
Every year, a few new trends pop into the picture. Most fade away but a few stick around and become cornerstones of marketing.
We’ve seen this play out countless times in the last few years. Live AI, humanized branding and social media selling went from buzzwords to marketing mainstays.
As we step into a new year, it’s time to take stock again. What marketing trends should you keep an eye out for? Are these trends likely to stick around? Or will they fade away after the initial hype?
So, what are the trends in digital marketing?
In this blog, we’ll take a close-up look at twelve new trends in digital marketing.
AI (artificial intelligence) has got to top the list.
With the explosive interest and usage that ChatGPT has generated, AI has taken on a whole new meaning in digital marketing. From content creation to suit any demographic to SEO optimization, to Chatbot integration, AI has changed the face of digital marketing forever.
Learning how to leverage AI to your advantage takes time, but once you’ve learned the tricks of the trade, you’ll find that a whole new world of marketing opportunities and time-saving opens up to you.
A word of caution: AI needs to be used responsibly and transparently. While consumers may be aware that companies use AI in many facets of their business, they are also wary of how their data is being used. Make sure that your company complies with all data protection policies, especially when it comes to AI.
One thing is clear: to stay current and successful in 2025, digital marketers need to think carefully about how to successfully incorporate AI into their marketing mix.
Example of ChatGPT coming up with SEO titles:
Image Source: SEO.ai
If you’ve been keeping up with several brands over the past few years, you’ll likely have noticed that one of the latest trends in digital marketing is the shift they've made from professional and polished, to real and fun.
Gen Zers and millennials crave the human factor and brands that have noticed this and changed their branding accordingly, have seen great success.
Practically speaking, humanizing your brand means using things like customer reviews, user-generated content, and in general, figuring out what speaks to your audience.
In addition, thanks to the advancement of technology and the ability of businesses to get to ‘know’ their customers across many touchpoints, customers now expect a certain level of customization in digital marketing. From the ads you show them, to the ‘suggested for you’ items in shopping, personalization is key in 2025.
A great example of leveraging your consumer’s interests in advertising is Apple’s ‘Shot on iPhone' campaign.
Image Source: Ads of the World
According to Forbes’ information on digital marketing news and trends, there are now 200 million users of voice search in the U.S. alone. Apple’s Siri is one great example of voice search. Users say “Hey Siri”, followed by any request, from asking what the weather is in the Bahamas, to a 20-minute chicken recipe, to a request to set an alarm for the morning.
Savvy marketers will optimize their ads and content for voice search in 2025 to suit a more conversational tone.
In 2025, more than ever, consumers are highly concerned with their economic footprint and will shop accordingly. Brands that promote (and importantly, put their money where their mouth is when it comes to) sustainability, will gain popularity over competition in 2025.
Ways to support sustainability include supporting social causes, showing concern for sustainability in your content, and most importantly, taking practical steps to ensure that your business actively supports sustainability.
Similar to the previous point, ethical marketing is something that is becoming increasingly important to consumers, and therefore imperative for brands to implement.
The modern-day customer expects honesty, transparency, and respect for human rights if they are to trust a brand.
While companies may have gotten away with overpromising and underdelivering in the past, there is little you can get away with these days without being exposed. Customers know an honest brand from a dishonest one and will even prefer to pay a little more to a company they trust than a company that has a history of deceitfulness.
The line between physical reality and digital reality is becoming increasingly blurred as digital technology takes over almost every aspect of our lives.
This means that VR is another one of the top digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2025.
VR is a fantastically useful and exciting tool that can be implemented in many aspects of marketing.
Take Ikea’s ‘Ikea Place’ virtual reality app that allows customers to view how furniture would look and fit in their homes from the comfort of their own homes. Imagine how many more sales Ikea makes from providing customers with this convenience.
VR is also being implemented as a collaboration tool, which has been super useful for companies that went remote since the pandemic, as they can have virtual meetings or even virtual workplaces.
In 2025, it’s worth thinking about how your company can make use of VR to up your marketing game.
As inflation continues to soar into 2025, expect your customers to hold your prices up to the light and critically examine them against your competitors. Whilst you don’t need to consider drastically lowering your prices, do make sure they are competitive within your market.
Also, the way you market your product will impact the way your customers perceive your price. If you do a good job of portraying the value of your products, you are more likely to succeed at selling them for your determined price.
Native Ads are another example of emerging digital marketing trends and are gaining popularity for two reasons. First, more and more consumers are limiting their app exposure on social media channels, which means traditional disruptive ads are less likely to be seen. Second, native ads are not ‘salesy’, meaning that they appear as helpful content (and they should be), but subtly try to sell at the same time. This gives consumers more of a feeling of control, making them more likely to actually buy.
Native ads can take the form of blog posts, with links directed towards a product at the bottom, podcasts that mention books, downloadables, or products, or sponsored posts on the news or social media sites.
Due to the ever-further-reaching arm of online customer data tracking, people are becoming more and more concerned about their data protection. The answer to this concern in digital marketing is twofold: transparency and tighter security.
Being transparent with consumers about how you plan to use their data sets them at ease, and enforcing tighter security on the data going through your platform allays people's fears that their personal details will end up in the wrong hands. Therefore, companies that align with data protection laws and are transparent with consumers are likely to see more trust, and subsequently, more traffic in 2025.
Patience is a rare virtue these days, even when it comes to videos. Hence, the recent marketing trend is to replace longer videos with short clips on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Though longer videos provide more opportunities to get a message across, marketers are realizing that they can get the same message across more effectively but cutting to the chase.
You can probably count the number of people you know who don’t own a smartphone on one hand. We’re a generation of hand-held devices and this is increasingly true as Gen Zers and millennials come to the fore. Marketers are therefore optimizing their content for mobile screens and this trend is sure to pick up steam in 2025.
Image Source: Pexels
Since COVID, online shopping has boomed in general, and in particular, social media shopping has gone from a minor presence to a major force. Consumers of today are both increasingly present on social media and also more comfortable and happy to purchase things through these platforms.
Image source: Flowbox
The marketing landscape keeps changing every year, but at no point has it turned so sharply as it did over the last two years. In our digital-first era, new platforms and technologies seem to emerge every few months, not years.
For marketers, balancing the new digital marketing trends with the tried and tested can be a challenge. Established mediums should always form the core of your marketing, but if you want to stay on the cutting edge, you’ll have to adopt recent digital marketing trends as well.
One way to make this adoption easier is to communicate better. Tools like Workamajig give you unprecedented insight into your organization. From managing tasks to collaborating across teams, Workamajig will help you run a more agile business.
Workamajig streamlines your projects and ties everything neatly into one place
You don’t have to take my word for it - try Workamajig today and see how it can help transform your business.
