By 2025, marketers should be prepared to attack, defend and cajole; a perfect storm of technological advancements and a behavioural and attitudinal sea change will have left no sector unscathed. For business owners in Canada, a country in which the retail sector accounts for a staggering one-fifth of the working population, keeping up with essential trends is no longer enough. Now there is everything on the line. This guide will examine all the essential marketing trends that are likely to define 2025. It will consider where these shifts present the best opportunities for brands to strike out in new directions, understanding what they are to capitalise on them effectively. The marketplace is about to get a whole lot more complex and bespoke.
Social Media = Social Commerce
It should come as no surprise that social media reigns supreme as the digital marketing frontier and is assured to do so for years to come. As its worldwide user base is projected to grow to 5.42 billion by 2025, the power of social platforms as a medium for marketing is undeniable.
While the growing numbers mean a bigger audience and more avenues for engagement for any business, it also means a more crowded environment that needs the right strategy to survive. In many cases, this will translate into a greater requirement for companies to post unique and compelling content to stand out from the crowd.
With the increasing number of businesses switching to social commerce, it is likely that the platforms may soon be converted into direct sales channels, and companies will learn to seamlessly integrate e-commerce abilities into their social media strategies.
The recent trend towards social media marketing and commerce not only leads to streamlined and easy buying processes for consumers but also presents a lucrative revenue stream for the brands that are ready to invest and flex their social muscles.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are now essential to both storytelling efforts and rooting followers’ ongoing attachment to the brand influencer partnerships will need to be both authentic and genuinely relevant to the target audience by 2025.
Being able to authentically partner with the right influencer – someone with significant reach and also a genuine affinity with the brand’s own ethos – will soon be key to ensuring that the marketing message is heard and understood as genuine and trustworthy. As regulatory bodies scrutinise influencer marketing even more carefully, transparency will also be paramount.
Brands will be expected to clearly disclose partnerships, and relationships with influencers will increasingly need to be managed with an emphasis on ethical standards to ensure the continued goodwill of consumers and the evolving standards of advertising.
Advanced AI and Machine Learning
Computers are expected to take on increased roles in marketing over the next 10 years. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will play key roles in the future of marketing by 2025. Marketers will use AI and machine learning to intelligently analyse large amounts of data in order to provide useful insights about what the consumer prefers in goods and services, as well as what the consumer will do next. Advanced AI algorithms can automate many marketing tasks like
- curating content,
- tailored advertisement,
- and reducing redundancies in customer relationship management,
which can be optimised in real-time to gain the maximum response and conversion rates. Machines are also poised to help marketers make more accurate short-term predictions in the market long before it becomes clear to the human mind. This will help them proactively envision what will happen and which brands will get the desired market share.
So, if a business can identify future demands, it can start supplying those products and services accordingly and capture the low-hanging market fruits.
Ethical Marketing
The rise in ethical marketing is part of a larger trend – in which it is seen as favourable for a brand to demonstrate a social and environmental conscience. This trend in ethical thinking among consumers is revealing itself to be a powerful and democratising force and by 2025 it will move beyond a moral choice for some and blur into a business imperative for all: businesses will have to embed ethical thinking within themselves and their products and marketing strategies – how things are sourced and made (including the welfare of those involved), fairness and respect and inclusivity (everything from how products are sold to customers to who is represented in the workforce) will all be part of the more naturally ‘expected’ marketing threshold. This is because ethical practices will need to be seen to be part of the ‘fabric’ of the brand, and demonstrated and evidenced through its communications. Companies that cultivate and manifest conviction for ethical practice are likely to emit a trustworthy and equitable glow that goes further than the ‘green’ halo effect of previous decades. Greater communications about and honesty towards sustainability – from whom bags are sourced to what findings arise from in-house Environmental, Social and Governance ESG programmes – might well solve communications problems. This is because they should align with what consumers increasingly wish to discover about the brands they purchase, and leads the way to a larger focus on thinking behaviourally about brand and marketing strategy.
Privacy-First Strategies
Rising data privacy is a growing concern for consumers worldwide, and tapping into true authentic data privacy will be a key differentiator for brands by 2025. Marketing strategies that focus on consumer privacy and built on transparency and trust will see success. For instance, how the company vows to keep consumer data safe and how it will use it. Marketing personalisation will also be a huge area of opportunity for brands to innovate in the future. It is vital to continue offering tailored products to customers without crossing the privacy line.
For example, leveraging technologies to improve identity matching measures, reducing data leakages and other best measures to safeguard data could prove to be valuable in the future. It’s worth remembering that respecting consumer privacy and actively advocating for robust data protection standards is not virtuous for virtue’s sake. It will help brands comply with their legal obligations and maintain deeper trust with consumers. These customers are critical assets when it comes to retaining customers in a diminishing market due to the rise in privacy consciousness.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
The use of chatbots and virtual assistants for customer service functions will become much more sophisticated by 2025: better natural language processing capability will enable these systems to parse and memorise much more complex customer enquiries, so that instead of offering only basic information, the same underlying objects will provide a channel for performing increasingly complex customer service functions such as
- sophisticated troubleshooting,
- personalised shopping advice,
- or the management of returns and exchanges.
Users may not be aware that they are speaking to a machine since the chatbot is little more than a more intelligent text box. This holds great potential for organisations that want to improve their customer service capabilities while lowering operational expense. In the process, it will underpin the development of impartial, 24/7 customer services that can increase customer satisfaction while also boosting operational efficiency. Once these technologies become more entrenched in everyday consumer interactions, they will play a key role in shaping the overall customer experience (including driving both customer retention and acquisition strategies).
Gen Z as a Dominant Market Force
By 2025, Gen Z’s influence in the trend will be accentuated as they emerge as a powerful segment because of their sheer numbers and buying power. Brands must realise that this generation has a distinct set of values and preferences, which it will expect them to cater to. While Gen Z in general seems to prefer authenticity, digital fluency and social responsibility in their surroundings, marketing to them in ways that align with these preferences will likely include robust digital experiences, mobile-first content, and active engagement to social issues.
Video, gaming, real-time elements and interactivity of their content will also likely resonate, given Gen Z’s enthusiasm for similar content on other media platforms. This is because Gen Z seems to prefer authentic, dynamic and interactive experiences. To connect with this cohort, it will become important to facilitate collective cause-oriented actions that can be hashtagged, shared and give Gen Z a sense of contribution and being part of a larger reason.
This will be no mean feat but to capture their interest, brands will have to become tech-savvy and technologically competent, while also being more socially conscious, in order to offer products and marketing messages that match up with a growing cohort that will increasingly demand that brands ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to making a positive real-world impact.
NFTs in Marketing
The NFT concept might soon move beyond digital art markets into more mainstream areas of marketing. By 2025, NFTs could become a catalyst to bring back a fresher and technically more advanced version of loyalty programmes for companies. Unique assets with tradable specifications could engage customers more and foster higher levels of brand loyalty. An application could be that brands issue exclusive NFTs with limited numbers that can be exchanged upon purchase of affiliated products, or that give access to events or unique stops on the physical expedition of certain brands. The product can then be repurchased to earn new NFTs for access to higher levels of rewards.
Basic loyalty programmes are often regarded as not adding real value to customers, but an NFT-loyalty could go beyond the usual points or air miles. Through blockchain technology, such a bonds programme could ensure safe implementation of rules and agreements, making the loyalty programme a trusted promise that can be kept, all the while seeing value increasing through the hours of creative work displayed in the NFTs. As NFTs are adopted by the general public, understanding them over the years to come could offer possibilities to become competitive. They could be applied anywhere where the embracing of the digital development of products and services is highly valued.
Conclusion
While technological innovation, changing consumer values and the growing importance of ethical and privacy considerations will mark the marketing landscape in 2025, the challenges and opportunities these trends pose for Canadian business owners present a double-edged sword. Additionally, as technology advances, digital fraud becomes more prevalent. This requires business owners to continuously upgrade their IT security systems and verify new measures are in place when engaging with customers. Forging stronger connections with customers, as technological solutions help them become more knowledgeable, will not only help your company remain relevant but, most importantly, ensure long-standing growth and success in a dynamic environment where change is the only constant.
