Introduction
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. We’ve listed the top trends to consider for 2025.
Consumer behaviour and decision-making are influenced across digital channels, whether it be through AI personalisation, Influencer marketing or guerilla UGC (user-generated content).
It’s important to stay informed and understand how your competition will ride these trends, and what the advantages and disadvantages are.
The Rise of AI-Powered Personalisation
AI. Artificial Intelligence. There’s nothing “intelligent” about it – it’s a large language model that when prompted will determine a best-fit answer based on the dataset that it was trained on. The quality of the model depends on the data it’s trained on, “Garbage In, Garbage Out”.
Personalising your customers’ experience at scale allows for better conversion and can help rapidly drive your business forward. This may be in the form of AI lead generation efforts, using tools that create personalised emails based on your prospects’ publicly available data. It can also be in the form of newsletters for existing customers – ensuring that you can continue generating value for your customers.
Be mindful of the following:
- Niche tools require niche data sets, an AI tool is only as good as the data it’s trained on
- Alienating your customer by outsourcing communications to AI tools
- “Flash-in-a-pan” approaches. If you plan on adopting AI for the long run, it is best to build an in-house solution where you have control over the data and can keep training the model as your customers’ journey with your brand evolves.
Influencer Marketing 2.0 – Authenticity and Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing initially thrived on aspirational content. Picture-perfect lifestyles and seemingly effortless product placements dominated. But audiences have grown savvy. They crave realness, relatability, and genuine enthusiasm.
As the amount of digital content keeps growing, sifting through the ‘noise’ for consumers becomes an effort – they feel sold to, while they crave connection, not just curated perfection. This means that influencers who prioritise genuine reviews, impartial opinions and products that seamlessly integrate into the influencers’ lifestyles will resonate better with consumers.
With this in mind, a shift towards Micro-influencers (typically with 1,000 to 15,000 followers – depending on the size of the market) is evident, given their niche authority, high engagement with core audiences and affordability. Make sure to research influencers before collaborating, and look beyond follower counts – engagement and audience alignment are crucial here.
User Generated Content 2.0
In a similar fashion of building authenticity and trust, consumers at a stage may become wary of polished influencers and lean towards UGC (user-generated content). User-generated content comes directly from the consumer, giving a level of trust that brands can struggle to achieve with their own efforts.
TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts – all prioritise UGC, ensuring a higher reach and visibility for audiences. Throw in a mix of AI-powered tools and your consumers are empowered to create relatable content at lightning speed. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha seek recommendations that they can relate to, particularly from their peers who are engaging with brands – they can evolve from brand awareness to advocacy.
Given the awareness of consumers and their inherent desire to be informed about brands and how they interact, UGC should be a key consideration for any retail brand in 2025. By using relevant hashtags and running contests, you can encourage your audience to create content for your brand.
Conclusion
Whether it be AI, Influencers, UGC or some other trend – 2025 is the year of authenticity and an effort to build long-lasting connections. The core message is to be authentic with your customers and to ensure your brand is connecting on a personal level, through digital channels and how those digital channels are operated.
Think about the recent changes on X (formerly Twitter), and more recently the implementation of the Digital Markets Act. At the end of the day, your brand is what your customers say it is – not what you believe it to be, or how the channels you use may end up representing you. Ready to bring your digital marketing strategy in 2025?
