As 2025 approaches, it’s time to strategise your marketing efforts. But in order to put the most effective strategy in place, it’s best to know what will attract your target audience and work most effectively. We’ve done the hard work for you and put together what we believe will be the top five marketing trends in 2025 for you to follow.
1. User Generated Content
User-generated content is on the rise and will continue to be so in 2025.
User-generated content (also known as UGC) is content that a person rather than a brand has created; this could be an image, video, review, etc. User-generated content comes in two forms: organic and paid.
As a person has created UGC, there is much more trust linked to this type of content; many people feel the brand’s content can be very sales-based and biased.
86% of consumers are more likely to trust a brand that shares UGC compared to 12% who are likely to purchase a product promoted by influencers.
| UGC Organic | UCG Paid /Influencer |
|---|---|
| Higher trust | Higher reach |
| Personal content | Brand content |
| Free | High fees |
| May not get in front of your target audience* | Can be targeted |
| Harder to track results | Trackable results |
Organic UGC does not just provide more trust to brands but is also more cost-effective; influencer fees are becoming higher and higher, and with the study above showing its effectiveness, it’s a no-brainer!
*Paid UGC, like Influencer arrangements, need to be with the correct partners. You need to consider their following and how this will be a positive or negative association and reach for your campaign. If you choose the wrong one, it might not yield the results you wanted.
UGC has seen a rise in popularity, especially amongst platforms such as TikTok, with more people than ever having a platform to share their opinions on almost everything, with more people viewing this content.
With that being said, UGC will continue to rise in popularity throughout 2025 and is something we recommend brands include in part of their marketing strategy 2025.
UGC paid/Influencer = paid or gifted to generate content.
UGC organic = not paid or gift and chooses to generate content.
2. Video content will continue to rule
We’ve already mentioned that TikTok has dramatically influenced other social media platforms. TikTok has seen a massive increase in the number of users worldwide, with the platform number growing year on year. Since 2020, the number of users has increased and is set to reach 955.3 billion active users by the end of 2025. This growth has influenced other social media platforms like Linkedin and Instagram to push video content on their platfroms.
Each month, when researching the changes/updates made on each social media platform, we have seen a theme across them over the past few months: the presence and emphasis on video content.
For example, Linkedin has recently launched its version of a for you page; similar to TikTok and Instagram, there is now a designated space within the platform to watch video content.
As well as this, Instagram has significantly emphasised the success of video for your platform, with its CEO sharing constant tips that primarily centre around perfecting your reels.
With these updates made and the continued rise in the popularity of TikTok, video content should make up a large portion of your social media strategy if you want to algorithm to be on your side in 2025.
Video tips for each platform:
| TikTok | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Always start with a strong hook, have a structure and keep videos to 30-60 seconds long. | Ensure your reels are over 30 seconds – the algorithm favours these, use trending audio and a catchy tagline and emojis in your caption. | Even on Facebook, ensure your videos are reel size (1950 x 1080) and keep your them short (15 seconds). | Keep videos to 21-34 seconds long, overlay concise text, make your video accessible by including captions and use trending music/sounds. |
3. Continued rise of AI
AI is no longer a buzzword, it is here to stay! We had to feature it in ourtrends, which we discussed last year for 2024. So why are we including it again a year later?
AI’s rapid growth in marketing continues; a recent Salesforce report found that 75% of marketers are experimenting with or using AI within their work.
The future of AI-generated content is uncertain, but we can expect advancements in content creation, user engagement, optimising segmentation and personalisation, and so much more.
As AI continues to evolve and be more and more present across applications which marketers are using on a daily basis (for example, on Linkedin, AI can help you when writing a post, or Canva can help you to create an image purely from describing what you want to see), we cannot not include it within the trends of 2025 as we know it will continue to be used and become more prominent as time goes on.
To find out more about AI and its role in marketing, check out our blog here.
4. Sustainable marketing
Sustainable marketing is a strategy that promotes both products and services that are environmentally and socially responsible. Consumer sustainability concerns are rising, with over 40% of consumers actively selecting brands with clear environmentally friendly values. Research has found that 34% of people will go as far as to boycott brands if they have any ethical concerns. This is why it’s more important than ever to have an ESG policy in place. Find out more about the changes you can make to improve your ESG policy here.
With sustainability concerns growing year on year, it’s clear that this is not just a passing trend but a new way of life. It’s something all brands will need to consider, and we can expect to see a continued emphasis on brands making sustainable changes in the future.
There are many different things you can do to help increase the sustainability of your business; these can include:
- Create socially responsible products.
- Promote fair labour practices.
- Partner with charities.
- Become third-party certified – such as B Corp.
- Invest in your community.
The key is to make it part of your business, not just a social media campaign. Start with your team, get everyone involved and integrate into your business objectives so it filters down through everything you do. Check out our ESG article here.
5. Personalised marketing
It is estimated that we see between 4-10k adverts every day; we are bombarded with so many ads that it is more than likely that you scroll past them or, in some cases, you do anything to ignore them actively. So, cutting through the noise is more critical than ever.
Did you know that the 2nd post on your LinkedIn feed is always an ad, then every 4 posts after that is an ad too. Ads are everywhere. These ads are personalised in the sense that they are relevant to the data the platform has about us.
Personalised marketing is a strategy that can help you engage more with your audience. Personalised marketing uses data to tailor your customer’s specific messages, interests and preferences. The aim is to make each customer’s brand experience as relevant, unique, and engaging as possible.
Examples of different types of personalised marketing strategies include:
- Segmentation-based personalisation
- Event-triggered personalisation
- Omnichannel personalisation
- Real-time personalisation
- AI-based personalisation
Find out more about personalised marketing here.
As mentioned, with the increasing number of daily adverts, the need for businesses to evolve and do more to reach their audience is becoming more pressing. Therefore, it’s not a matter of if but when we will see more personalised marketing strategies being implemented by brands, and the start is now.
2025 is the year to get on trend!
We believe there will be a number of different, exciting trends for brands to get their teeth stuck into this year; ensure to include these top 5 trends within your marketing strategy to help increase your brand awareness:
- UGC – establish trust with your customers and let them hear about how incredible you are through people who love your brand.
- Video content will continue to rule – utilise video across all social media platforms, but remember this needs to be different depending on its platform.
- Continued rise of AI – use AI with caution; it should be used as a colleague who is helping you in the office, not as a tool to do all of the work for you.
- Sustainable marketing – sustainability is more important than ever; if you still need to start thinking about your ESG policy, 2025 is the year to do so; it’s not going anywhere.
- Personalised marketing – With the number of brands trying to capture consumers’ attention, now is the time to personalise your advertising effort to make your audience feel special.
We are excited to see what 2025 brings for the marketing world, in a constantly changing industry, we are sure to see new technology and applications which will continue to further our industry!
