Now that we’re out of the bombardment of 2025 marketing predictions in January, we felt that it was the right time to offer some digital marketing predictions of our own! (Ok, we’re late to the game, but we wanted to ask around, choose some trends that we agree upon, and be realistic about what to look out for, but sorry, we couldn’t go anywhere without mentioning AI in one of them!).
AI is not going away, and marketing teams need to get ahead of the curve, but with so many options it’s difficult to know where to focus, and what is genuine AI-innovation vs rebadged functionality that has been marketed well. Either way, marketing teams need to be smart to keep up with AI-driven marketing, customer movements across channels, privacy laws and social commerce.
From a personalization renaissance to shifts in the world of search engine marketing, we bring you four B2C digital marketing trends & predictions to help you be prepared for another year of hustle and bustle.
Trend: In 2025, more and more brands will have to (and want to!) embrace predictive AI & automation for personalized targeting, search engine dominance, paid media optimization, conversational marketing and more. According to Deloitte’s 2025 key trends for marketing leaders report, 40% of brands anticipate using GenAI tools in their business.
AI is becoming more ingrained in each part of our lives. It is maturing fast, and shifting marketing behaviors and consumer behaviors alike. To name a few examples of how AI is reshaping digital marketing, here are two thoughts:
And how does AI change the life of a B2C marketer? It opens potential doors to help us acquire more customers and hyper-personalize experiences like never before. While 90% of marketers have become pretty good at segmenting audiences and personalizing their acquisition and retargeting campaigns for known customers and prospects, only 1 in 10 is able to do the same for anonymous website visitors (in various channels like website, paid media, and social) and deliver personalized experiences or recommendations to the 95%+ of web traffic that is not converting or handing over their personal data to you.
AI-driven personalized marketing will be about dynamically tailoring content, offers, and messaging in real-time based on anonymous behavioral signals across all channels they’re present in. That’ll require marketers to have the necessary tech stack to segment audiences at lightning speed and predict customer intent before they even realize it themselves (and hence act upon the next best action & offer).
Gone are the days of relying solely on demographic segmentation. AI can now segment audiences based on micro-behaviors like browsing patterns (page views and clicks), products added or removed from carts, site searches, social media interactions, and sentiment analysis. This means marketers can craft highly personalized campaigns that feel intuitive rather than intrusive. AI-powered chatbots are also stepping up their game, no longer just answering FAQs but engaging in real, context-aware, human-like conversations to assist and guide customers.
Simply put, AI is definitely not replacing marketers. On the contrary, it is supercharging their ability to deliver relevant and engaging experiences for a much wider pool of prospects by making it easier to deliver the right experience, at the right time, to a huge volume of untapped digital prospects showing intent that isn’t currently acted upon through current marketing tools . Creativity, strategic planning and human touch are still in the hands of your marketing team.
Trend: 55% of marketers prioritized personalized marketing efforts in 2024. This is already on track to advance even further in 2025 with room for growth, as only 59% marketers described their current efforts as ‘mostly personalized’, and 37% saying ‘somewhat personalized’. The driving force behind this? Customer data. (Investment to unify customer data for loyalty and marketing tech stacks will triple, found Forrester in a Q3 2024 survey with B2C CMOs)
Unlike popular opinion (!), personalized marketing is not only about slapping a customer’s name in the subject line of an email. Consumers expect more than that, almost 1-1 experience or a relationship with a brand of their choice. We should respect how many messages they are receiving, ensure we provide the most relevant products that they would be interested in, and certainly move away from 3 to 4 offer emails every week. If I don’t engage with your emails for 2 years, stop sending them; if I’ve purchased your product, stop retargeting me for that product. The reason why personalization used to be difficult for many marketers is because most brands did not do a very good job in customer data orchestration (a low of 8% according to a recent study).
To truly understand the urgency behind this shift, we need to zoom out and examine the global economic climate. “This prolonged period of economic stress has resulted in ongoing price sensitivity, causing consumers to more closely scrutinize prices and the value proposition of the retailers and brands they shop from,” said a retail analyst from Mintel; once again underlining the need for brands to focus on deep personalization to demonstrate clear value and maintain customer loyalty.
With today’s MarTech tools, marketers’ ability to launch personalized campaigns has improved, as they learned how to connect data in real-time to customer journeys across all marketing channels, be it an SMS, email, social media channel, mobile app, or website.
The shift to first-party and zero-party data collection is also accelerating due to Google’s unpredictable stance on third-party cookies. Brands that find smart ways to collect and use more first-party data will certainly future-proof their marketing efforts, and also build trust with consumers who demand transparency and control over their data.
Trend: Brands and marketers will continue burying their heads in the sand a bit longer while the Cookieless World delays continue; which will likely lead to a last-minute scramble when third-party cookies finally disappear.
Marketers have had years to prepare for the removal of third-party cookies, yet history shows that major industry shifts often trigger reactive panic rather than proactive preparation. Just as brands scrambled to comply with the GDPR in 2018; flooding inboxes with last-minute opt-in emails and watching their subscriber lists shrink, the end of third-party cookies is heading in the same direction.
Marketers who continue to delay their first-party data strategies risk finding themselves at a major disadvantage when the inevitable shift happens. Instead of waiting for Google to finalize its plans, you should be actively strengthening your direct relationships with customers, and ensuring you have mitigations in place to ensure your customer acquisition programs are not impacted.
First-party data is always a better solution as it provides a stable foundation for targeting and personalization, and fosters consumer trust - something that is increasingly valuable in terms of competitive advantage in a digital environment where privacy expectations are rising. Whether it’s through loyalty programs, gated content, or improved CRM strategies, the time to act is before the industry-wide panic sets in.
There are many shifts happening in digital marketing in 2025, but in this article, we’ve focused on 3 waves shaping B2C’s marketing strategies:
Are your marketing plans and goals all ready to go and conquer 2025? You may want to reconsider your marketing KPIs to make sure you got the most meaningful success metrics set up for your team via this article.