As we look ahead at 2025 it’s a good opportunity to take stead and think about how marketing is going to take shape this year. With the ever-evolving changes in consumer behaviour coupled with rapid accelerations in technology, it is worth being aware of trends so that your business can move with the times.
In this article we delve into some of the marketing trends we believe will become more ubiquitous this year. From the ever-increasing presence of AI to the growth of social e-commerce, it is worth at least being across these trends so you’re not caught on the back foot.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
It is becoming harder and harder to escape AI as it becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives. From Chat GPT becoming a Google Search result and households using voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa to AI powering facial recognition on Apple Pay and Netflix recommending what content to watch next. Between January 2023 and December 2024, Chat GPT’s users grew a massive 80% from 100 million users globally to 180.5 million.
AI can be used for many things within marketing. In fact, Coca Cola used AI-generated video to produce their 2024 Christmas ad series which pay homage to their famous 1995 ads ‘Holidays are Coming’. On a more day-to-day level, AI can be used to power virtual assistants; to manage customer enquiries; to help find influencers best suited to your brand; and it also enables real-time bidding within programmatic advertising. AI can also help with hyper-personalisation to tailor offers and content to customers’ individual preferences.
What’s undeniable is that AI is here to stay with it creeping into so many elements of life both in and outside of work. Embracing AI may feel mammoth or daunting, but you may find leaning into elements of it saves you time and/or money.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming blog about how AI will affect digital advertising in 2025.
Sustainability and ethics
At the other end of the scale consumers are becoming more mindful of the companies they buy from and their ethics. Customers may seek businesses who source their products ethically, whose practices are kinder on the environment and who transparently communicate the steps they take to be more sustainable and ethical.
With the huge shift to online purchasing in the last few years there has also been a huge increase in the production of packaging. Some companies use recycled cardboard boxes or reduce the amount of plastic inside but, nonetheless, plastic packaging accounts for nearly 70% of the UK’s plastic waste.
Whilst it is highly commendable for a business to follow ethical and sustainable practices, it is also important to communicate them. Your customers and prospects will only become aware if you thread this message through all your customer touchpoints to continuously reinforce the message. What’s perhaps even more important is ensuring you follow through on any claims you make, otherwise you risk damaging your integrity and reputation.
Social e-Commerce
If you haven’t heard this term before it is quite simply the convergence of social media and e-commerce. With platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest enhancing their shopping functionalities so that users can complete the end-to-end purchase within the app. TikTok has even developed TikTok Shop a dedicated tab that has its own icon on the main menu, and has become a shopping destination in itself.
With social media advertising getting more and more intelligent and knowing what we want before we even do (thanks AI), selling through social media is an opportunity not to be missed. There are several under-utilised opportunities within social e-commerce which could become more commonplace this year. These include:
- Live shopping: An increase in interactive live streams encouraging purchases in real time.
- Social proof: User generated content, reviews and community endorsements.
- Micro and nano influencers: Many brands are choosing to work with micro and nano influencers who have smaller, but highly engaged and niche audiences.
Whilst the majority of social e-Commerce is tailored to B2C (business to consumer) products and services, there is no reason why some of the principles can’t also be used in a B2B (business to business) environment such as live demos of a new product or service.
Short-form video content
Short-form video content is not new, but it is becoming more commonplace in marketing. The video landscape has changed a lot over time from carefully planned and crafted high-quality content taken by a professional videographer to shorter, more authentic in-the-moment content captured on an employee’s smartphone.
Longer, more polished content definitely still has its place. However changing consumer behaviour means we need to get to the point quickly and therefore shorter videos often receive higher engagement. From a business’ perspective, the landscape is more competitive. Posting a video used to be more of an occasion and would stand out in a user’s feed. Now a user can instantaneously move past a video with a mere finger swipe.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and more recently LinkedIn have fully integrated video into their platforms which further shows just how important video is.
Conversely, there are also areas of marketing that just work and become a business’ ‘bread and butter’.
The saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is worth remembering when choosing where to focus your marketing efforts. If for example, you have a lot of success through Google Ad Words this probably isn’t going to change in the short term.
Another question to ask yourself is, who are your audience and have they caught up? If your audience aren’t likely to engage with these trends you may want to be more cautious with if and how you deploy them.
Perhaps a more appropriate action is to take a test and learn approach and direct a small proportion of resource to trialling new ideas to test them first. The above trends do seem to be gaining traction, so even if they aren’t the ‘next big thing’ this year then they might well be next year or the one after.
If you are feeling daunted by the year ahead and would like some fresh thinking injected into your 2025 Marketing Plans, do get in touch to speak to a member of our team. We would love to help.