Curious about what’s next for digital marketing? 2024 saw AI-driven personalization, voice search, and short-form videos take the spotlight. So, what’s in store for 2025? 

From emerging tech to shifting consumer habits, it’s all about staying one step ahead. Ready to keep your strategies fresh and effective? Let’s explore the digital marketing trends that will shape the future.

Key Takeaways

• Marketers will need to prioritize efficiency by leveraging technology and data to achieve better outcomes with fewer resources.
• Search engines (such as Google and Bing) and AI platforms (such as Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Search) are changing the SEO game, requiring content tailored to new formats like voice search (currently utilized by 41% of adults) and visual search
• An integrated, omnichannel approach will be critical as consumers engage across diverse platforms and touchpoints.
• With more than 73% of consumers  preferring a personalized shopping experience, AI will need to do a lot of heavy lifting to deliver personalized content and adaptive messaging.
• Authentic, value-driven branding will help businesses build trust and foster deeper connections with their audience.

• Digital Marketing Trend #1: Doing More With Less

  In 2025, marketers will need to get creative as budgets shrink and resources become limited. The challenge is clear: achieving better results with fewer resources. 

  So how can marketers do more with less while still meeting customer demand?

  Marketers should use smart targeting and data-driven decisions to get the most from every dollar. Efficiency is key. So where to begin? 

  Brands can:

  • Streamline workflows by creating standard operating procedures (SOPs), automating repetitive tasks, and batching their tasks
  • Enhance cross-team collaboration by implementing project management tools (like Trello or Asana), centralizing communication (with tools like Slack or Teams), and having regular check-ins.
  • Leverage technology by integrating marketing tools, adopting customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce, and using AI across platforms (e.g. social media, search, email marketing software, etc). 
  • The brands that adopt these strategies will win despite budget cuts and resource limitations.

  • Digital Marketing Trend #2: Google Keeping Users on Google

    One of the top digital marketing trends of 2025 is known, quite fittingly, as “zero click searches.” Let me explain. 

    Google’s latest updates have introduced new features—like AI summaries–or made existing features—including rich snippets—more prominent on search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal of these features is two-fold: 

    1. Keep users on Google longer.
    2. Give users the answers to their queries quickly.

    The problem for website owners is this creates a “zero click” environment. Users search, see an answer at the top of the page, and then leave the platform without clicking through to your website.

  • Because of this, ranking high isn’t enough anymore. To stay visible, you must optimize for Google’s new SERP features like rich snippets and local packs. You can do this byusing schema markup and optimizing your content to include short, direct answers to the most common questions for target keywords. 

    Focus on capturing attention within Google itself, because simply getting clicks to your site may not be enough to drive results.

  • Digital Marketing Trend #3: New Search Platforms Will Play a Role.

  • In 2025, search won’t be limited to just Google or Bing. AI search engines —like Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Search—and other platforms will continue to grow. They will offer new chances to expand your reach. To stay ahead, optimize your content for voice search, image search, and the latest—conversational search, a subset of voice search that allows users to ask questions and receive answers in a natural language format. 

    Here are a few ideas:

    • Voice search: Use structured data and create content that directly answers your audience’s frequently asked questions.
    • Image search: Use high-quality but compressed images that are optimized with alt tags and that incorporate your audience’s key image search terms.
    • Conversation search: Create concise content that has a natural, laid-back tone, mimicking the conversational way people ask questions to their voice assistants.

    These new platforms will help you find new audiences and broaden your digital presence, making them a must for your marketing strategy.

    Digital Marketing Trend #4: Search Everywhere Optimization

    SEO stands for search engine optimization, right? Well, in 2025, search everywhere optimization is more like it. 

    But what does it mean?

    Search everywhere optimization is a term with a broader meaning than its original counterpart. Instead of focusing solely on search for Google and other traditional search engines, it broadens it to include your search optimization efforts across the board—social media, AI engines, voice assistants, and more. 

    The fact is, you can no longer afford to focus on just one channel. People are searching for your brand everywhere. 

     

    To capture their attention, you need to be there at every touchpoint. This means thinking omnichannel. Integrate search, paid ads, social media, and more to create a seamless experience. 

    It starts with tailoring content to fit the platform. For example, you might create content for Instagram Reels if your content is aesthetic or trendy, while you might use YouTube Shorts for short-form educational content. 

    You must also monitor your content and quickly adapt to new trends as they emerge. Tools like HootSuite Insights and Sprout Social enable you to monitor your campaigns, track hashtag or brand mentions, and track user sentiment across platforms so you can stay on top of your game.

  • Digital Marketing Trend #5: Sense Search Leveling Up

    Voice search and image-based search are on the rise.

    Google Lens alone processes 10 billion visual searches each month, while more than 1 billion searches every month are done via voice assistant devices like Alexa and Google Assistant.

  • As a marketer, it’s crucial to optimize your content for these sensory searches. How? By adjusting your SEO strategies to incorporate visual and voice optimizations. 

    You can optimize for visual search by:

    • Using size-optimized, high-quality images.
    • Labeling images with appropriate titles, alt text, filenames, and EXIF data—technical data embedded within an image file, like data and location.
    • Incorporating structured data makeup into your HTML.
    • Uploading a product data feed to Google Merchant Center.
    • 
      
      • Create conversational content.
      • Use structured data to increase your odds of landing a featured SERP snippet.

    As for voice search, consider the following:

    Digital Marketing Trend #6: Customer Journey Will Become Seamless

    Your customers expect a smooth, connected experience across every touchpoint. Whether they’re browsing on their phone, making a purchase in-store, or leaving a review, everything should feel effortless and unified. 

    By connecting data across platforms, you can create a more personalized and consistent journey. How? With AI-driven customer experience tools.

    Apps like Zaymo allow consumers to make a purchase or leave a review directly within your email campaign. Target connects in-store purchases to the Target app simply by capturing a customer’s phone number or saved payment method. Integrations like this reduce friction in the customer journey while improving engagement.

  • Brands that can deliver this level of integration will build stronger, more loyal customer relationships.

  • Digital Marketing Trend #7: Continued Blurring of Platform Boundaries

    Platforms like Google and Amazon will continue merging their features, making it harder to distinguish between search, shopping, and content. 

    

    Think of Google (where Google Shopping results now dominate more than 80% of e-commerce keywords or Amazon Inspire—both are blurring the lines between e-commerce and search. 

    To stay competitive, you’ll need to adapt to these changes by understanding how these platforms work together and optimizing your presence across them.

  • What it comes down to is needing to be everywhere your customers are and ensuring a seamless experience across different touchpoints.

    Digital Marketing Trend #8: AI Use Will Shift from Generating Content to Making Efficient Use of Data

    Continuing from 2024 marketing trends, AI is here to stay. However, AI’s role in marketing will shift. 

    Rather than relying on AI to write blog posts or social media content, the real power lies in using it to make smarter decisions. By analyzing consumer behavior and fine-tuning targeting, AI will help you get better results faster. 

    Take our Universal Technical Institute case study. We used AI to identify close cities to campuses based on population and distance. We then worked with UTI to optimize over 200 local web pages, incorporating features aligned with user intent queries. 

    This resulted in an 18% year-over-year increase in total organic search inquiries and a 20% increase in #1 SERP rankings on non-branded queries. 

  •  

  •  
  •  
  •