Five Digital Marketing Strategies For Brands To Use In 2025

Al Sefati is CEO of Clarity Digital & Digital Marketer, AI & Digital Transformation Enthusiast, & a Podcast Host.

As 2025 approaches, the digital marketing landscape is set to experience seismic change. Emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and shifting consumer expectations mean marketers must adapt.

From my time in the digital marketing space, there are trends I believe will be prevalent in the coming year, along with the strategies companies can use to keep their brands competitive, relevant and successful.

1. Personalization At Scale

Today’s consumers expect brands to engage with them on a personal level. Generic, one-size-fits-all approaches often fall short, as people want content that feels tailored to their unique preferences and desires. Personalization at scale enables brands to deliver this experience to a large audience while simultaneously maintaining efficiency.

To boost personalization, brands can use advanced analytics. Data analytics tools can help you gather insights into customer behavior and preferences. You can also implement dynamic content on websites and in emails that fits with how the user interacts with your brand. For example, you might display product recommendations on your website based on a user’s previous visit. Similarly, you could use a personalized subject line in an email or send a curated email offer based on a customer’s browsing history to improve conversion.

Automation can further enhance personalization by sending messages shaped to user actions. This can help drive engagement and conversions. Perform multivariate testing to evaluate different types of messaging to understand what resonates best with your audience. You can use AI to help segment and sort your audience, predict behavior and customize messaging as well.

2. Voice And Visual Search Optimization

As generative AI powers smart devices, optimizing for voice and image searches like Siri and Google Lens is now essential for marketers. To help with this, brands can use:

• Image optimization: Label images with descriptive alt text to enhance their discoverability in visual search.

• Structured data: Structured data is a series of markup codes, also known as schema markups, that help search engines and crawlers better understand the information your content is trying to convey. When search engines understand your content, your brand’s visibility in search results can improve. For example, using structured data to specify your legal organization name and any alternate names can improve branded search visibility. Marking up product reviews or details can help with this as well.

• Voice search content: Structure content for natural language queries, as people typically phrase voice searches differently from text-based ones. They tend to be more conversational and specific. For example, if you run an Italian restaurant, you could publish your menu on your website not just in PDF or picture form but also use conversational text in descriptions. If someone uses voice search to look for an Italian restaurant that serves a chicken parmesan sandwich, yours will be more likely to show up in the results.

3. Advanced Analytics And Marketing Attribution Models

Understanding customer journeys has become more complex, with multiple digital and offline touchpoints. AI-powered analytics and advanced attribution models can help marketers decode these journeys and identify which channels contribute to conversions.

To improve marketing attribution, brands can use multi-touch attribution, which involves tracking multiple touchpoints to gain a nuanced understanding of the buyer’s journey rather than crediting only the last interaction.

For example, a brand that invests heavily in blogging or social media posting might not see the immediate value of each individual blog or post. However, these content and marketing activities play a crucial role in getting the brand in front of the right audience, who may later convert through other channels like ads or SEO. Taking a more holistic approach to calculating return on investment and giving blogging efforts and social media posts some credit for the transaction is essentially what we call “multi-touch attribution.” There are various ways to implement this, so brands can consider working with a knowledgeable analytics consultancy or firm if they’re struggling to get it right.

I also recommend regularly reviewing your data. Continuously monitor performance metrics to identify which channels drive the most engagement—and reallocate budgets accordingly. Metrics vary depending on the channel. For example, on social media, engagement metrics like shares, comments and saves/bookmarks are key. For search, focus on rankings, impressions, clicks, conversions, conversion rate and return on ad spend. Taking a more holistic view, metrics like cost per customer and customer lifetime value are crucial as well. These are just a few of the metrics your analytics team should be tracking to map out a successful marketing campaign.

4. Shifting Consumer Search Preferences

Consumers, especially Millennials and Gen-Z, are increasingly using platforms beyond traditional search engines for product discovery. Channels like TikTok, Amazon and AI-driven tools like ChatGPT are reshaping search behavior, meaning SEO strategies must be modified to reach audiences where they’re actually searching.

• TikTok: Use engaging, short-form content. Include trending hashtags to improve visibility and create viral moments.

• Amazon: Optimize product listings with detailed descriptions, high-quality images and relevant keywords for Amazon’s search algorithm.

• AI chat platforms: Structure content for natural language queries. I’ve found this can improve a brand’s odds of appearing in AI-driven conversational searches.

Ultimately, in 2025, brands need to pivot to a more comprehensive SEO approach and augment for mobile, AI-driven platforms and social media to maintain visibility and engagement with younger, mobile-first users.

5. AI Integration Across Departments

Many organizations are now using AI across multiple departments. Brands can consider integrating AI throughout customer service, sales and marketing to help streamline operations and create a more data-driven organization.

For example, in customer service, AI-powered chatbots can help handle customer inquiries and provide personalized responses. In sales, AI tools can assist with lead generation and sales forecasting, which can help improve prospect targeting and sales cycles. In marketing and communications, brands can use AI to help create text, images and videos efficiently. However, you must ensure this content still aligns with your tone, messaging and quality standards.

I believe the new year will have a foundation centered around AI-driven, customer-focused strategies. From personalized experiences and voice search optimization to advanced analytics and cross-departmental AI integration, each trend emphasizes the need for a data-oriented, responsive approach.

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