If you’ve been in the industry for some time, you definitely know that marketing is one of the fields that isn’t static. Especially in the online landscape. A huge variety of online channels offers us endless opportunities to connect with and capture consumers. Keeping up with the crazy pace of change is essential for staying ahead, especially as an agency. This enables you to give more timely and winning help to your clients, which will get them ahead of the competition. So, what is out there for us in 2025? Here, we’ll guide you through the most prominent digital marketing trends to watch out for!
Table of contents
- 1. AI in Everything—But Not Without a Human Touch
- 2. A Shift Toward More Conversational (and Visual) Search
- 3. SEO Has Evolved Into a Full-Funnel Approach
- 4. The Rise of Owned Data
- 5. Authenticity Becomes the Main Pillar in Content
- 6. A More Profound, On-SERP Strategy
- 7. A Greater Focus on Customer Reviews and Online Reputation
- 8. Short-Form Video Is Still Thriving
- Conclusion
1. AI in Everything—But Not Without a Human Touch
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been establishing itself as one of the first-level trends in digital marketing for years. And it continues evolving. According to a 2024 study by SurveyMonkey, 69% of US marketers reported feeling excited about AI in their job, and 56% of them said their companies and agencies have been on the path of adopting it. While there are still some people who are rather worried about this technology and ignore the opportunities it provides, implementing it in your agency could give you a significant competitive edge.
The opportunities it gives are endless:
- Audience segmentation
- Market data analysis
- Predictive analytics
- Chatbots and customer support
- Personalization
Not to mention the diversity of tasks it can automate. From guiding data-driven decisions for your strategy to implementing monotonous or even creative tasks, there are many things you can do with AI. Still, this year, we can see an explicit trend for using AI without overly relying on it. Adding a human touch is important not only for avoiding penalties but also for maintaining transparency in customer communications and a unique brand voice.
2. A Shift Toward More Conversational (and Visual) Search
Although the use of AI for automation isn’t exactly one of the most recent digital marketing developments, AI-powered search is. After the introduction of AI Overview and AI Mode in Google, more and more people are switching to AI when they are looking for information on the web. In 2024, as many as 15 million US adults were using generative artificial intelligence as their primary search option. And this enables people to perform searches the way they speak.
For businesses and agencies, this means a significant shift toward more conversational, as well as visual, search in their strategies. Getting featured in AI-powered results requires us to make our content informative, yet more natural. Integration and optimization of visuals also play big roles in getting noticed.
3. SEO Has Evolved Into a Full-Funnel Approach
As it has been for the past decade or so, SEO and content marketing trends still take a deserved position among the top trends agencies should embrace. However, instead of being more like a standalone tactic, SEO has evolved to become a part of a full-funnel ecosystem. This means that instead of simply optimizing our website and content in general, we now need to focus on user intent in the first place and adjust our optimization efforts to every stage of the funnel, from awareness to a buying decision.
This trend allows for a more effective and strategic optimization that finds users just at the right stage of their journey. Respectively, it can offer capturing more high-quality leads, earning more traffic, and keeping conversions high. For us, this means the necessity to demonstrate strong optimization skills, a culture where SEO and marketing are one whole, and, probably, a greater reliance on cutting-edge agency SEO software that enables optimization efficiency and success.
4. The Rise of Owned Data
After many years of a lack of transparency in business-customer communication, we’ve come to a point where data breaches are rising. Consumer concerns about cybersecurity are getting stronger. This led to the increasing transparency and complexity of data privacy laws, which no longer let marketers collect, process, or use as much client information as they used to. Furthermore, today’s data-conscious environment makes privacy compliance more than just a legal requirement but a competitive necessity.
This brings us to one of the most recent trends in digital marketing—the rise of owned data. Since owned data is pretty much all information that YOU collect and have control over, this means that agencies need to focus on creating their own system of data collection for digital market analysis. And this type of data becomes a real powerhouse in 2025.
5. Authenticity Becomes the Main Pillar in Content
In a world filled with information and generic AI content, Google has updated its E-E-A-T quality rating to stimulate the growth of expert content that focuses on users in the first place. This means that authenticity becomes the future of digital marketing.
Now, agencies should focus on creating genuine and original content. It has to bring expert insights and proprietary data, such as original case studies and research findings, that will make your clients stand out from the pack and engage the audience.
6. A More Profound, On-SERP Strategy
As you can see, there are quite many changes affecting search and, respectively, SEO. And here comes another one – now, we need to focus on an on-SERP strategy more than ever. These days, users want to get quick answers to their questions and aren’t as willing to browse through websites as they used to. An on-SERP strategy is what lets you give them just that. In a nutshell, this strategy implies optimizing beyond your website, using a variety of SERP features to get in front of your users more right in search results.
To implement this kind of strategy, you need to embrace zero-click content—one that users can see instantly in SERPs and gain the answers they need. This means striving to get featured in AI overview, knowledge panels, featured snippets, and answer boxes in search engines. It also affects social media marketing, requiring us to create posts that provide quick insights without forcing users to click on our account and look through the feed for the information they need.
7. A Greater Focus on Customer Reviews and Online Reputation
Online reputation and customer feedback are now considered strong ranking signals, especially in local search. Now that users want to research available businesses on their own, ratings and reviews have become one of their primary means of analysis. They indicate trust and credibility of a brand and make it look more worthy of buying from. Understanding this, search engines use these indicators to define your rankings. To them, your online reputation shows not only a trust level but also content freshness and user engagement.
This requires agencies to amplify their reputation management efforts by more proactively asking for feedback and effectively responding to reviews. One of the fresh trends in digital marketing is to use AI to automate customer review management.
8. Short-Form Video Is Still Thriving
Although this one can’t be called one of the latest and lesser-known digital marketing insights, it’s still worth talking about as we review the key trends of 2025.
Short-form videos started rising with TikTok and quickly earned customer affection. Today, this format still remains a dominant force. And there are many additional opportunities to tap into it apart from TikTok. In 2025, agencies should focus on all types of engaging, bite-sized videos, including YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and others. These deliver easily digestible content that truly engages the audience.
Conclusion
Marketing is a field susceptible for change. However, while traditional ways of advertising tend to stay more static, promoting businesses in the digital landscape is much trickier. User behaviors and available technologies advance all the time. And as they do, we observe more and more new opportunities to capture and engage the audience. Needless to say, keeping an eye on these changes is essential for success.
After reading this guide, you have an overview of the key digital marketing trends that we should focus on in 2025 and beyond. Use this knowledge to refine your approaches and thrive in the fast-paced industry
