As marketers, we are aware of how quickly things can change.
There are numerous options to communicate with customers because to the variety of digital channels that are available. On the other hand, this can occasionally indicate that you’re juggling a lot of marketing responsibilities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has a huge impact on digital marketing that cannot be denied. Numerous facets of your job can benefit from the ongoing development of new tools and platforms. But there are other changes that marketers must deal with as well.
The problem of declining marketing expenses in 2024 is still present in 2025. This implies that in order to maintain performance, marketing teams must accomplish more with less.
That’s why anticipating what’s ahead is so crucial! In addition to keeping you abreast of advancements in digital marketing, it can assist you in identifying chances to use a channel or strategy to outperform your rivals (and lighten your workload a bit).
The following five crucial areas will be examined in our examination of digital marketing trends for 2025:
We examine the conflict between X, BlueSky, and Threads on social media, the growth of employee-generated material, and the reasons why influencers are less significant than consumer content.
AI will keep developing, but in order to prevent AI weariness, it’s important to use the technology wisely. Additionally, we will examine the emergence of AI agents and how AI is transforming advertising campaigns and e-commerce.
In terms of digital marketing competencies, 2025 will witness the increasing importance of soft skills, the need to improve AI expertise, and the need of broadening your knowledge beyond marketing.
The increasing significance of voice search optimization, social search, and generative engine optimization (GEO) will be the main topics of
search marketing trends.
The success of AI and human-generated content, the value of older content, and the emergence of a new audience demographic known as Gen Alpha (those born after 2010) are all examined in content marketing.
1. Trends on social media
Users of social media are devoted; they spend 2 hours and 19 minutes a day on average on 6.8 different platforms. As per Data reported, this amounts to 14% of their waking hours.
Any marketer should pay attention to that audience. Additionally, it allows marketers to reach a large number of consumers from all demographics.
Now, let’s examine some things to be aware of in 2025.
The conflict amongst real-time platforms
There is enough evidence of X’s fall in popularity. Two social media sites, Threads and BlueSky, are currently gaining traction as businesses and individuals migrate away from X in large numbers, citing moderation problems, low participation, and subpar content as their reasons.
Jack Dorsey, the former founder of X, founded BlueSky, which is drawing users who like specialized groups, ad-free areas, and content management. It aims to be “a great home for journalists, publishers, and creators” and is easy to use.
“BlueSky only has 24 million subscribers worldwide, despite all the attention they are receiving. On the DMI trends webinar, Alison Battisby, Founder of Avocado Social, stated, “That is not a huge figure, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that to see if that grows over the next year, which I’m pretty sure it will.”
Additionally, Meta’s Threads is presenting itself as a platform that empowers content producers. It now boasts 275 million members, about 10 times more than BlueSky, since its user base has grown steadily this year!
Fans of social media appreciate Threads because it’s easy to use and lets users ask questions, hold conversations, or joke about (like X used to). Additionally, businesses can benefit from organic content, which may eventually lead to sponsored possibilities.
“They intend to look into monetizing Threads with advertisements after it reaches one billion. This year, the site has seen tremendous growth, with new features like personalized feeds, list-style content, and algorithm trending themes being released virtually every day. Therefore, they are putting a lot of effort into making it a strong rival to X,” Alison Battisby stated.
Expert advice: Because Threads provides social media users with a respite from the deluge of video content on other platforms, brands who post humorous or instructional content exclusively in text do well there.
The increase in content created by employees (EGC)
Employee advocacy is more than just a catchphrase; it’s a potent tactic to use the unique voices of your organization to engage with audiences, establish brand awareness, draw attention to social issues, and even support organizational objectives.
Because LinkedIn is the ideal social media channel for businesses and employees to share EGC information, this is particularly true there. Additionally, the B2B network is expected to reach 800 million users by 2025 due to its steady annual growth.
“LinkedIn is an underutilized or underestimated platform. I think LinkedIn Organic is fantastic. On the DMI trends podcast, Peter Murphy Lewis stated, “Every single one of my prospect calls said that they heard about me on LinkedIn and their newsletters are working really well.”
According to Forbes, 94% of consumers are more likely to remain loyal to a brand that is fully transparent, demonstrating that consumers demand more openness from businesses. Employee-generated content (EGC) tells the true tales of those who work for a firm.
“This type of content is very popular because it showcases very relatable people,” says Alison Battisby. Because they are sincere viewpoints, more faces and behind-the-scenes brand tales can be shared.
Work together with consumers rather than influencers.
Even if influencer marketing is still quite popular, many businesses are searching for new methods to interact with their clientele.
Instead of relying solely on user-generated content (UGC), some brands are working with their customers to prioritize the community. This leads to customer-generated material that can be published on the brand’s organic feeds or used in an advertisement.
Brands will start to avoid well-known influencers in favor of fostering their communities in 2025. Alison Battisby stated, “We’re going to see more collaborative content and brands will invest more in cultivating relationships with loyal customers, loyal followers, and the people who consistently log in to engage with them or watch their videos and stories.”
This strategy has been adopted by beauty company REFY, which recently threw an exclusive retreat for their closest community members in a branded villa in Mallorca. In addition to strengthening relationships with members, this presented REFY as a chic and ambitious brand.
2. Trends in AI and digital marketing
Whether you use many tools or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a crucial component of marketing. Numerous systems used by marketers, including search engines, social media, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, are integrated with the technology.
54% of marketers currently utilize AI, according to a Marketing Week study. Compared to a year ago, when just over a third (37%) had utilized the technology, this represents a huge increase. See our 10 startling AI marketing figures in 2025 blog post for additional information on the technology’s effects.
The focus now is on what AI tool or platform can assist you improve your everyday activities and advance your career, not if you should utilize it. However, be mindful that you must also understand how to employ AI in your digital marketing endeavors in an ethical manner. What are some of the 2025 AI developments that you should be aware of?
Recognize AI weariness
Marketers have had to quickly adjust as a result of the development and widespread use of AI.
As management encourages them to adopt AI to be more productive, efficient, and effective—a promise that seems to be constantly criticized by the media—they have had to contend with this new technology.
However, the truth is that it takes time to become proficient with AI! Additionally, marketers may have to put in more effort as they attempt to understand how things operate or employ a variety of tools or platforms to achieve the greatest outcomes.
AI fatigue, or apathy toward technology, is the effect of this. Instead of adding more work or obstacles, marketing leaders and their team should determine which jobs AI can best assist with.
As opposed to Elon Musk‘s gloomy vision of robots replacing humans in the workforce, AI will do things for you. They’re not that imaginative. They don’t have a lot of strategy. Small bits of information don’t work well for them. Jim Lecinski, a clinical professor of marketing at Kellogg School of Management, stated on the DMI trends podcast that while certain models are improving, they are unable to think like us.
Expert advice: Look at the business from a broad perspective to identify departments or procedures that can profit from AI. Marketers will have more time to concentrate on more strategic and creative features as a result.
AI agents’ ascent
The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), a collection of intricate technologies, enable it to manipulate other systems and create AI agents that you can utilize in your digital marketing.
An artificial intelligence (AI) agent is a piece of software that can communicate with its surroundings, gather information, and use that information to carry out activities and reach objectives by selecting the most effective course of action.
According to Brian Corish, Experience Architect at Accenture Interactive, “2025 is the year when AI goes from saying stuff to doing stuff through the rise of agents.” For instance, in the past, you could use ChatGPT to create material, but you then had to copy and paste it or translate it. [ChatGPT] will now manage the entire campaign, open and manage several platforms, and even do A-B testing on material.
Expert advice: To gauge the effectiveness of campaigns, use AI agents to extract and examine data from Meta or Google Analytics, generate a report, and distribute it to the team each morning. This makes it possible for marketers to focus more on successful initiatives and modify or stop unsuccessful ones.
AI is revolutionizing online shopping.
AI is revolutionizing e-commerce by enabling retail brands to provide a smooth omnichannel experience, optimize company procedures, and improve the customer experience.
The following are some efficient ways AI can improve e-commerce:
Customized suggestions: Make extremely specific product recommendations by using AI to examine past purchases, consumer behavior, and preferences.
Chatbots and virtual assistants: AI-driven chatbots are able to respond to consumer questions, offer assistance, and direct users through transactions.
Dynamic pricing: To optimize profitability, you can use AI algorithms to instantly modify prices based on demand, competition, consumer behavior, and other factors.
Visual search: For a more user-friendly purchasing experience, customers can upload photos to find comparable products.
Voice commerce: Customers may shop using voice commands thanks to integration with voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa.
Customer segmentation: To enable focused marketing campaigns, AI may classify customers according to data trends.
Product descriptions and content creation: To save time and maintain consistency, automate the process of creating product descriptions.
Sentiment analysis: Examine reviews and comments to learn about consumer sentiment and enhance goods and services.
Email and marketing automation: By examining user behavior, AI tools can help you optimize email campaigns by figuring out the ideal frequency, content, and timing.
Hyper-personalized advertisements: AI makes it possible for targeted advertising campaigns to change in real time according to consumer preferences and interactions.
According to Jim Lecinski, “e-commerce interfaces will rapidly advance with AI in 2025.” For instance, if I wanted to snap a picture of a wedding invitation and post it on a website that sells fashion clothes, I could describe it as semi-formal. Get me semi-formal clothing in my size; you know my budget, where I reside, and the wedding date. I have my Visa card.
AI can increase control for advertising.
By streamlining many parts of the advertising process, AI may greatly improve ad campaigns, making them more effective, efficient, and audience-specific.
As with Meta, Advantage Plus shopping campaigns, and Performance Max campaigns, I believe there will be more machine learning-based campaigns that handle more of the labor-intensive tasks. Therefore, they’re more simpler for people to manage than previous advertising campaigns,” Nikki Lindgren, Pennock’s founder and managing partner, said on the DMI podcast.
Marketers with the best strategic thinking will benefit the most from the increased power that AI will give advertisers. Right now, it’s difficult to tell if your money was spent on advertisements or Gmail, for instance.
If your audience doesn’t convert on Gmail, you can go back to the AI and instruct it to stop spending so much time there. AI will help increase visibility there. Consider using Google Maps.
3. Job trends and competencies in digital marketing
To stay up with both internal and external settings, marketers require a constantly changing set of skills.
Not surprisingly, developing AI skills is at the top of the list for 2025. However, it’s more important to concentrate on the AI tools and platforms that are relevant to your function and may contribute to company success rather than utilizing every new one.
According to our Global Digital talents & Training Report: Insights from Corporate Leaders report, 54% of CMOs and marketing executives listed “AI strategy development and AI in digital marketing” as the top talents that their teams require.
What more career trends and abilities should you be aware of in the upcoming year, though?
Soft skills are crucial.
Technical proficiency is obviously necessary to advance in your 2025 job as a digital marketer. Even as a generalist, you must be familiar with SEO, write and plan posts on social media, and utilize GA4 to extract and analyze data.
However, with AI taking over the more fundamental and repetitive activities, many businesses are increasingly searching for soft or practical talents that they consider to be “durable” and necessary for business growth.
In reality, “human” skills are becoming more and more important, according to LinkedIn’s Global Marketing Jobs Outlook Fall study. It recognized ‘collaborative problem-solving’ as the top marketing skill of the year — a gain of 138% since 2021.
“Marketers should hone their soft skills in order to establish themselves in a company more quickly. Develop your soft talents and do it with greater intention. That will give you a competitive edge, in my opinion,” Mischa McInerney remarked.
Expert advice: Provide opportunities for developing soft skills, such as volunteering, active listening, locating a mentor, attending conferences or workshops, or enrolling in leadership and management or strategy courses.
Marketers and AI users will start looking beyond the productivity box and into the revolutionary growth box in 2025.”
— Jim Lecinski, Kellogg School of Management Clinical Professor of Marketing
Develop your AI abilities.
The Language of Effectiveness survey conducted by Marketing Week found that:
AI is already being used by 46% of marketers for market research.
44% create various campaign assets using machine learning.
For mid-campaign creative optimization, 44% use it.
This demonstrates how AI is being used extensively in marketing for a variety of purposes. By 2025, you’ll need to hone those abilities and learn more about the tools that you find helpful.
Let’s say, for instance, that ChatGPT is assisting with blog outline creation, content review, or expediting content discovery. After that, you might play around with the program and discover how to make prompts to maximize your digital marketing approach.
Making sure AI upskilling is a collaborative endeavor is also important. Everyone on your staff should be proficient in the technology, even if you have an AI specialist for the more complex jobs.
“In order for AI adoption to grow more widespread, everyone in the company needs to upskill. According to Mischa McInerney, “everyone needs to have a certain level of skill, knowledge, and fluency in AI terminology to adapt it quicker in order for a company to use AI as a competitive advantage.”
Expert advice: Learn more about the AI platforms and tools you currently use or wish to utilize in the future. Consider taking an advanced AI course, reading in-depth blogs, seeing expert walkthroughs, or following experts on LinkedIn.
You must be knowledgeable about more than just marketing.
Marketing as a department must increase sales, build brand awareness, and produce leads.
Each of these will have an effect on a company’s growth and profitability. This implies that contemporary marketers must possess knowledge beyond “marketing.”
Jim Lecinski thinks it’s crucial to spend time learning the principles of marketing as well as how to propel a company’s expansion. These are the tasks that will be automated if you’re trapped in the realm of strategy or implementation.
“Marketers must begin to become more knowledgeable about a company’s financial elements. “I’m not a finance expert, I’m a marketer,” is a common statement made by marketers. However, anyone working in marketing needs to have a solid understanding of finance. According to Jim Lecinski, “you also need to know the strategies that can drive incremental profitable growth.”
4. Trends in search marketing
In the past few years, search marketing has seen significant transformation, and 2025 will be no exception.
Gartner estimates that traditional search traffic will decline by 25% by 2026 as people’s internet search habits shift. Businesses who depend on employing SEO to rank content in search engines will be greatly impacted by that.
Marketers must be aware of the search marketing trends to keep an eye on and take advantage of this year in order to be visible online.
The use of social search is growing.
Consumers are now using social media platforms, particularly the TikTok-loving Gen Z group, to access information online, whereas before search engines were the sole option.
“People are using more platforms in their searches, but they are also acting differently when they type any kind of query into a search engine. According to Luke O’Leary, “social search has grown significantly, and people are using TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for more of their searches.”
Additionally, generative AI conversational searches—which let users search as they speak—are becoming more popular. For instance, “Where can I go for a walk in London on Sunday with two kids and a dog? An AI Overview will highlight important facts to think about along with connections to further explore it, rather than Google segmenting that query and presenting mountains of data.
Which trends will affect digital marketing in 2025?
Expert advice: Create high-quality material that people want to visit and link to, and incorporate keywords into your articles and profile to improve your content and visibility on platforms.
Voice search continues to expand.
22% of speech consumers make direct voice purchases, while 51% utilize it for product research. Additionally, 17% use it to place new orders.
Narvar : Reaching Out to Consumers in the Age of Choice
Voice search optimization is necessary since the way people use voice-assisted devices, such as Google Home and Alexa, has changed as so many homes now own them.
Finding the time or the requested music is no longer the only thing to do. Voice search is being used by consumers, especially younger consumers, to locate goods and services and start conversations that lead to purchases.
For instance, voice search may eventually allow users to request that a voice assistant prepare a five-day family food plan. Make sure that each meal is prepared in a straightforward manner, lasting no more than 20 minutes. Request that it order the ingredients, make recipe cards with illustrations, and deliver them by Thursday at 12 p.m.
That is incredibly effective. As a busy mother, all of the recipe cards have arrived in your mailbox. Convenience and a zero-click shopping experience are exactly what you’d want, according to Mischa McInerney, CMO of the Digital Marketing Institute.
Expert advice: Brands should look for strategies to integrate voice search. Consider how a brand can contribute to a discussion. Is it via creating conversational content, using keywords, or local SEO?
Consider generative engine optimization (GEO) first.
Generative engine optimization (GEO), which involves improving your website’s content to increase its exposure in AI-driven search results from Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini, is one of the most recent advancements in search marketing.
Within the next year, 79% of customers are anticipated to utilize AI-enhanced search, and 70% of them already have faith in generative AI search results, according to Gartner.
“Marketers will need to take GEO—rather than SEO—very seriously in 2025. Although Google has switched to an AI interface, there are still many other players, such Search GPT and Perplexity, according to Luke O’Leary.
Expert advice: Google currently exposes generative AI in AI Overviews and employs it in more than 20% of its search results for certain queries. Learn the true implications of AI Overviews for search.
5. Trends in content marketing
As marketers, we are aware of how important content is to our work. Communicating with our target audience, telling an engaging tale, and converting a prospect into a devoted customer are all made possible by content.
Generating material is simple, but producing excellent content that connects with an audience is more difficult. Additionally, with so many channels available, it’s important to use the appropriate information for the right people at the right time.
What trends in content marketing should we look out for in 2025?
Older stuff is important.
A lot of businesses and marketers may be perplexed as to why content isn’t doing as well. According to your content data, it’s possible that your best-performing items have lost their appeal or aren’t receiving as many clicks from search results. Or perhaps people are simply not interacting with it as much.
But ignoring it and producing fresh stuff isn’t the answer! The goal is to revitalize the current information to make it more current or pertinent. According to Neil Patel’s research, content updates can boost traffic by up to 106%.
As the behavior of the web matures, Luke O’Leary stated, “You have to constantly revitalize pieces either with new information into the space, keeping a freshness to it, or in a bigger stage, adding elements.”
People now anticipate more engaging material, therefore it’s crucial to include more rich images, infographics, and video content to complement the text they’re reading, according to TikTok’s assessment of the web.
Expert advice: Perform a content audit to identify underperforming content and flag it for an update. Make an effort to incorporate unique data, such surveys or studies, as this increases your authority and is preferred by Google and other search engines.
Content produced by humans and AI performs best.
You are most likely already familiar with AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Notebook, and Claude if you produce any kind of material. In addition to assisting with content creation, all of these tools can perform research, sense check, and even analyze content to provide comments.
Customers’ mistrust in AI-generated content is the issue. Because Google is cracking down on “low-quality or spammy content,” which is what a lot of AI content is because it is repetitious, it is not as effective as human-generated content in terms of ranking.
Luke O’Leary, Vice President of Media Strategy & Operations at NP Digital, stated during the DMI trends webinar that “50% of consumers can spot AI generated content, and the biggest problem with that is that 52% of people are less engaged with content when they suspect it’s written by AI.”
What is the answer, then? When AI-generated and human-generated material are combined to create high-quality content, new information is added to the area and private data, such original research, is included to make it more interesting.
Research, drafting an outline, and identifying content gaps are some of the most time-consuming steps that this method will assist to streamline. This gives you more time to concentrate on creating excellent content that benefits your clients and contributes to Google’s E-E-A-T quality rating, which helps you rank highly in a search engine result page or appear in an AI overview.
Expert advice: To get a sense of what Google’s Notebook LM is capable of, view our tutorial. If you give it content, it can even produce a podcast that sounds real.
The arrival of Gen Alpha
Gen Alpha is defined as those born between 2010 and 2025, immediately following Gen Z. According to several analysts, this generation is known as “upagers” since they are more socially conscious at an early age and become consumers more quickly.
Because of this, marketers and businesses need to start talking seriously about this generation, how they vary from other generations, and what they can do to appeal to them.
According to the “Generation Alpha: The Real Picture” assessment, this generation’s top goals include sustainability, diversity in media, treating everyone equally, and assisting others.
What does that imply, therefore, if I’m a brand that has to instruct, train, inform, and communicate with my Gen Alphas?Lecinski inquires. “I’m not sure if an Instagram post will be enough. I believe we need to interact with kids in a variety of ways, including by letting them interact with a community online and by addressing our societal ideals.
Expert advice: Gen Alpha finds gamification appealing, therefore it’s worthwhile to consider integrating that kind of content into your marketing campaigns.
Comments
Muhammed Sinan
Honestly, I’ve been overwhelmed by all the new tools. This post helped me zoom out and see the bigger picture.
Dilshad dxn
This was a smooth read. Not preachy, just practical. Bookmarked for my next campaign planning session.
Salman Faris
Human-centered storytelling is trending; however, most brands still sound like robots. So, who’s really doing it well, in fact?