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Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends Small Businesses Should Know for 2025

Digital marketing is ever-evolving, and staying ahead of the curve is key to staying competitive. As we fast approach the new year, small business owners must adapt to new trends to reach their audience effectively and grow their businesses.

Here are the top five trends and actionable tips to help you implement them.

1. Authentic Marketing

We’ve said this before but authentic marketing continues to be a key trend. Consumers crave genuine, human connections. Storytelling and authenticity are essential to stand out in a competitive market. 

How to Implement: 

  • Share behind-the-scenes content, customer success stories, or employee spotlights. 
  • Use relatable, conversational language in your digital marketing campaigns. 

Need help creating authentic content? We’re here to assist. 

2. Video Marketing Takes Centre Stage

Video continues to dominate as a preferred content format. From short-form content like YouTube Shorts and Reels to live streams, video is highly engaging and helps to drive conversions. 

How to Implement: 

  • Create short, value-packed videos that highlight your products or services. 

Struggling with video strategy? We can help you create and distribute engaging video content that forms part of your wider digital marketing strategy for 2025.

3. Voice Search Optimisation

With the rise of voice-activated devices, optimising for voice search is no longer optional. People search differently when using voice, often asking conversational questions. 

How to Implement: 

  • Incorporate long-tail keywords and question phrases in your website content. 
  • Optimise for local SEO to appear in “near me” searches frequently used in voice commands. 

As part of our marketing services, we can audit your website and help you to optimise it for voice search. 

4. Social Commerce Expansion

Social media platforms are transforming into shopping hubs. Features like in-app purchases and shoppable posts make it easier than ever for customers to buy directly from social media. 

How to Implement: 

  • Set up a shop on platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. 
  • Regularly post product showcases with direct purchase links. 

We can help you build a social media strategy tailored to your brand. 

5. Interactive Content

Interactive content such as like quizzes, polls, and online calculators keeps your audience engaged and provides a personalised experience. 

How to Implement: 

  • Add polls or quizzes to your social media to gather insights and boost engagement. 

Ask us how we can design interactive tools tailored to your business needs. 

Ready to Elevate Your Marketing in 2025?

The digital landscape in 2025 is all about personalisation, innovation, and meaningful connections. Implementing these trends may seem daunting, but you don’t have to do it alone. 

At Smart Cow, we specialise in helping small businesses thrive in the digital world. From strategy development to execution, we’ve got you covered. 

👉 Contact us today for a no-obligation digital marketing consultation and discover how we can tailor a digital marketing strategy to your goals. 

2024 - Happy New Year

Digital Marketing Trends for 2024

As we head into 2024, it’s time for small business owners to start planning their digital marketing strategies for the new year ahead. While 2024 will surely bring its own challenges, understanding emerging trends will help you stay proactive and make informed decisions to move your business forward.  

In this article, we outline key digital marketing trends that are projected to gain even more momentum in 2024. Whether you’re just beginning your digital presence or looking to optimise your current efforts, understanding these shifts in consumer behaviour and innovation will help ensure your business makes the most of online opportunities well into the new year. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming one of the most important digital marketing trends for 2024. AI can be used to automate many tasks such as content creation, lead generation, and customer service.  

AI can also be used to create personalised experiences for customers by analysing user data and providing tailored recommendations. Consumer behaviours have undergone quite a transformation. In the past, customers could only sit and wait for a business to respond to their queries. However, times have changed, and now, customers demand immediate responses. Conversational marketing, powered by AI chatbots and virtual assistants, has become the go-to solution for this need. With artificial intelligence (AI) guiding customer interactions in real-time, businesses can provide the seamless personalised experience that customers crave. Such interactions increase customer satisfaction by providing instant solutions to their problems and providing shopping assistance, ultimately leading to increased sales.  

In 2024 and beyond, forward-thinking brands will rely on conversational marketing to reshape how they engage with their customers. By leveraging AI, businesses will be able to increase their efficiency and reach more potential customers. 

Enhanced Personalisation

Consumers expect unique and personalised experiences that cater to their specific needs and preferences. With the abundance of data available from various touchpoints, brands are leveraging sophisticated analytics to tailor their marketing strategies to individual consumers. This approach enables brands to provide content, product recommendations, and advertisements that are customised to each individual, resulting in a more engaging and effective marketing campaign.  

As big data technologies and machine learning algorithms continue to evolve, personalisation will become more refined, making mass marketing strategies increasingly obsolete. The ability to provide enhanced personalised experiences will be a key differentiator for brands in the future, and those that succeed in this area will gain a significant competitive advantage. 

Video Marketing

In the world of marketing, video has long dominated in recent years. But with the rise of short-form content platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, the dominance of video marketing has taken on a new dimension. Short-form video’s visually stimulating content is perfectly aligned with the modern audience’s attention span, resulting in its widespread consumption. Brands have taken notice of this shift and are using short-form videos not only for advertisements but also for other storytelling purposes, product launches, and customer testimonials. As a result, video marketing’s importance has only been compounded, and it looks to be the driving force of advertising for the foreseeable future.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that allows users to interact with virtual objects in real-world environments. AR has already been used in some digital marketing campaigns, but it is expected to become even more popular in 2024 as more businesses look for ways to engage their customers in unique ways. Businesses can use AR technology to create interactive experiences that allow customers to explore products from different angles or virtually try on clothes before making a purchase decision. 

Automation

Automation is another digital marketing trend that is likely to become more prominent in 2024. Automated marketing tools can help marketers streamline processes such as social media scheduling, email campaigns, and website optimisation (SEO). Automation will enable marketers to focus on more strategic tasks instead of spending time on mundane tasks such as manually creating content or tracking analytics.

Leverage Digital Marketing Trends in 2024

As we head into 2024, ensuring that your business is keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends and leveraging them to stay competitive will help you remain at the forefront of small business success and prepare for new opportunities as they arise. With the right understanding of today’s market conditions, you’ll be well on your way to using digital marketing to advance your business goals in 2024 and beyond!  

Get ready to make big moves and capture an even bigger audience with your digital marketing efforts in 2024! 

Robot creating video content for digital marketing

6 digital marketing video tips

With studies showing that people have the ability to recall 65% of the visual content they see almost three days later (HubSpot, 2017), we highly recommend business owners everywhere take the time to get to grips with the visual side of content marketing.

Consumers watching a branded video are 28% more likely to buy (Hootsuite), so video content will really enhance your inbound marketing strategy.

6 tips for great video

Here’s a few tips to help you create great video and ways of sharing video that helps increase views and helps Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

  1. A simple way to record a video is through a social media app and share from that for your social media marketing. You can also live-stream via Twitter and other channels such as Facebook and Instagram, which have a story function for live feeds. With 100 million hours of video content watched on Facebook daily (Facebook, 2016), using video makes sense.
  2. To make sure you utilise video across social media channels or on your website, use the video function on your phone for simple and effective images. You’ll find recording on your phone easy for short soundbites to offer your target audience tips and advice. This can even include email marketing campaigns.
  3. Remember that content is king. It’s not about posting any video, it’s important that your video content is also targeted to your audience, with a relevant script, tagline and a clear call to action for more lead generation.
  4. If you have a blog on your website with a relevant video, post it at the top of the page as it helps to keep the visitor on your website for longer. This reduces bounce rate and helps SEO.
  5. Host your video content on YouTube. With over 1.8 billion users on YouTube every month, the business opportunities for using this channel shouldn’t be overlooked.
  6. Be authentic so that your brand resonates with your target audience.

Get in touch

Talk to us about your digital marketing needs. Our marketing team will help grow your business through online marketing, web design, social media management and more.

We will advise of the best combination of channels and tactics to utilise to make you stand out from the crowd. A digital marketing agency in Croydon, Smart Cow will be glad to answer any questions on the inbound marketing strategy best for you.

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