10+ Top Digital Marketing Trends 2025 [eCommerce Special]

The eCommerce world keeps changing constantly, and so does the digital marketing world.

In fact, they both kind of go hand in hand. After all, you need to keep up with the important trends in the market, right?

So, we know how digital marketing plays a crucial role in growing your eCommerce business — and we’re here to help you with the latest trends and strategies.

In this blog post, we’ll cover the top digital marketing trends of 2025, specifically for eCommerce businesses along with tips and resources that can help you win these trends.

Let’s get started!

Major Trends in Digital Marketing for eCommerce Brands

If you think Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the only hot topic in the digital marketing world, you need to reconsider that thought. Yes, it took the industry by storm for a while, but now, marketers are being more mindful about the subject and use cases of AI.

Also, there are some other critical trends that you must pay attention to in 2025 and beyond.

1. Human Connection in Content

In the midst of AI advancements and hype, human connection in your content is going to be more and more important with time. In fact, it has already started emerging as a critical factor.

Now, just to be clear — this isn’t a completely new trend. Real-life experiences, stories, personal thoughts, expert insights — all these facets have always been important in the digital marketing world. 

However, with more advancements in AI in recent times, there was a different wave in the market where many brands wanted to completely automate content production using AI. 

Thus, many brands started playing with AI and content production went up to insane levels — impacting the quality. But then, people started spotting AI-generated content due to the obvious similar patterns all over the internet.

The important takeaway here is that content with human connection will be considered more credible and authentic by readers.

It’s not to say that you shouldn’t use AI at all in content marketing. But it’s about creating high-quality content that can bridge a connection with your readers. Many content marketers have been using AI in the research process and keyword analysis as well. 

Pro tip: Highlight the human aspects of your brand in your content—wherever you can. Let the readers know who’s behind the content they’re reading/watching/listening to. You can cover the stories of your team members with your audience and they’ll feel a human connection.

Pipcorn — a brand with a mission to deliver delicious snacks — has been doing a great job at adding a human connection to its blog content in a unique way. On Pipcorn's blog, you can find "Black Founder Spotlight" articles that highlight amazing entrepreneurs from the community. 

Alt-text: Pipcorn’s blog page highlighting founders

2. Artificial intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

The emergence of AI & Machine Learning can simply not be neglected. Yes, AI is here to stay and it can have great use cases in many areas of eCommerce.

But again, the important thing is to identify where you must leverage AI and how. Find the areas where you can make the most out of the AI solutions in eCommerce.

Here are the areas where you can use AI in eCommerce marketing:

• AI-powered page builder to speed up the web design process

• Enhancing the content operations with AI

• AI-powered email marketing solution

• Optimize personalization in marketing using AI

Brands that will nail the proper use of AI will have a great advantage — not just in 2025 but also in the coming years.

Learn more: 

10 Best AI Tools for eCommerce Success

AI Solutions for eCommerce: Challenges, Risks & Future 

How to Leverage AI Tools for Dropshipping (+ Examples)  

3. Mistrust in Advertising

This trend is kind of associated with the previous two trends we mentioned—but it still needs to be addressed separately. Some brands went too far to leverage AI in their marketing and advertising campaigns, and it has negatively impacted the reliability of content and the trust of customers.

Alex Cattoni — the founder of The Copy Posse and one of the top marketing experts — considers this to be one of the top trends in 2025.

“With algorithm changes, spammers, and impersonators out there – the Internet is quickly becoming a place of frustration for a lot of customers and content creators.” — Alex Cattoni

Let’s take a quick look at the four major trends predicted by Alex:

1. Mistrust in Advertising is ON THE RISE

2. Linear Marketing is Dead

3. People Are Taking LONGER to Buy

4. Social is Becoming the New Search Engine

The solution that’s recommended by Alex — “Connect With Social, Sell With Email.”

Alex says the social media presence of brands has become more important than ever before. "Customers practically DEMAND it. They want to check you out, follow you, and take their time getting to know you before they buy," Alex added to her take on these trends.

But we’ll cover more on social media later in this article.

4. Hyper-Personalization

So, we talked about the significance of AI in various aspects of eCommerce. One of the most important aspects of it would be personalization.

Customers love personalized experiences. According to the 2024 State of Customer Service and CX Study, conducted by Forbes, 81% of customers prefer brands that deliver personalized experiences.

With the power of AI, personalization can be taken to the next level, i.e., hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization is a marketing strategy where brands can use real-time data insights, AI-powered analytics, and algorithms to offer advanced personalized recommendations to customers for products or services.

This strategy can play a crucial role in enhancing the conversion rate and average order value for eCommerce brands. 

5. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing will continue to shine through 2025 and beyond.

Influencers have become a great channel for brands to reach a wide audience and leverage their connections with that audience.

According to the study published by Business Wire, 69% of respondents are likely to trust a recommendation from a friend, family member, or influencer over direct information shared by the brand.

Business Wire further provided the breakdown of the types of influencers consumers love to follow on social media:

• Relatable personalities (61%)

• Expert personalities (43%)

• Just-for-fun personalities (32%)

• Aspirational personalities (28%)

This suggests that “relatable personalities” have the most influence on social media users — meaning, they are great for digital marketing campaigns. Basically, micro and macro influencers fit into the category of relatable personalities. Thus, you can enhance your marketing campaigns with the help of such influencers in your niche.

6. Social Media Marketing

The social media world is going through some major trend updates. But creating value for your social media followers is never going to go out of fashion.

According to the Hootsuite Social Media Trends 2025 Survey — More than 60% of social content is created with the aim to entertain, educate, or inform. So, keep creating content that brings either value or entertainment to your customers.

Another big talk of the town has been one of the popular social media platforms — TikTok. According to BBC, TikTok claims to have 170 million users in the US who spent about, on average, 51 minutes per day on the TikTok app in 2024. However, the news about the potential ban had created a huge panic among users as well as marketers. 

After the speculations on the possible ban of TikTok, there have been new updates indicating that the platform might go in a deal with US-based entrepreneurs, the likes of Elon Musk and Mr. Beast.

As reported by BBC, Donald Trump — the 47th president of the United States — said, "What I'm thinking of saying to someone is buy it and give half to the US, half, and we'll give you a permit." For now, TikTok has restored services with a message crediting Trump's efforts.

Also, the rise of BlueSky — a rival social media app to Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter) — has been one of the hot topics in the social media world. According to Cascade Public Media, more than 10 million users have recently joined the platform.

As of writing this article, Bluesky has crossed 29 million users (and counting).

What’s in it for you? As a brand, you can leverage any new platform to gain a following in its early days. That said, you must identify if it’s the right platform for your brand. Check if your target audience is hanging out on Bluesky and prepare your new strategy accordingly.

7. Social Commerce

So, eCommerce brands have been using social media as a marketing channel for years. Then, brands started selling from social media directly with shoppable content.

However, social commerce has not grown yet to its fullest potential, or not even close to that. But that also means a great opportunity for brands to leverage social commerce through a robust strategy.

Here are the leading social media platforms as reported by Statista:

The most crucial platforms to be considered in social commerce:

• Facebook

• Instagram

• LinkedIn

• YouTube

• X

• TikTok

According to Statista, the penetration rate of social shopping was expected to reach 25% with the anticipation of further growth in the subsequent years. And the revenue of social commerce is forecasted to cross 1 trillion US dollars by 2028.

8. Voice Search Optimization

Consumers have started using voice assistants like Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa by Amazon. On top of that, many consumers use smartphones for search and shopping. So, that also adds to the voice search volume as people often use the voice search function on mobile devices.

To leverage this trend in 2025, you should prepare your voice search optimization strategy. Create content that can attract mobile and voice assistant users.

The way people search things on the internet varies depending on the device type. And that’s why search patterns on voice assistant tools, desktops, and mobile devices are different. So, you can prepare content that’s optimized for voice search as well.

Learn more: Shopify Mobile Optimization: Boost Mobile Speed & SEO  

9. Shoppable videos & UGC

YouTube has been one of the top platforms consumers use to research products. With shoppable videos, brands can reach out to those video content consumers.

"With people increasingly buying what they see — 62% of viewers in the U.K. agree that YouTube helps them decide what to purchase — shoppable video presents a great opportunity for brands in 2025," says Alison Lomax — Managing Director for YouTube UK & Ireland

Shopify App Store has many apps that can help you create shoppable videos and images.

10. Zero-click Marketing

Just as marketing evolves with technology, the search experience also changes with time.

Zero-click is a search pattern where a user searches a keyword on the internet and is able to find the needed information quickly without clicking on the website.

For example, upon searching for information on Google Search, users may find quick details through the features like “Featured snippet”, “AI-generated overview”, or “From sources across the web”.

Thus, there are a lot of instances where a user might take the quick information and stop the search without going to the respective website. And that’s why it’s called “zero-click search”.

Brands must optimize the content for these zero-click searches using strategies such as targeted keywords, content structure, schema markup, and Google’s EEAT guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

11. Ethical Marketing

Ethical marketing is committed to honesty, transparency, and responsibility.

To build a great brand, your brand must have established values. But more importantly, your brand must be following those values instead of just making it a statement on the About page.

For example, when making claims about the benefits of your product, you should be mindful that the way you present it should be realistic and not misleading.

Ethical marketing can also be seen as a huge social and environmental responsibility.

“Ethical marketing isn't just a trend, it's the foundation for long-term success. And it’s becoming increasingly important to make marketing long-term sustainable from an environmental and social perspective.” — Johan Eriksson — Insights Leader, Northern Europe, Google

Johan further explains that the areas where brands can lead by example in 2025 will be sustainability, AI, and inclusivity.

When you’re giving away value to society and the environment, your brand can receive rewards beyond the business. Brands that adopt ethical marketing can earn trust, respect, and loyalty from their customers.

12. Mobile Marketing

You must’ve seen the boom of mobile commerce in recent years. It has made it necessary for eCommerce brands to go for mobile optimization in their website design.

But it’s not just about redesigning your Shopify or eCommerce store for mobile — your marketing strategy may also require redesign to optimize for mobile. And that’s why mobile marketing is going to be crucial in 2025 and the coming years.

You might ask — how to optimize marketing for mobile? 

First, you must focus on the mobile marketing channels such as the mobile app, SMS, email, and social media. Of course, email and social media are accessed through other devices as well, but those are frequently used on mobile devices.

Your website content, website or ad copy, and any other marketing assets such as landing pages and eBooks should be created and designed keeping mobile users in mind. For example, when designing your ad creatives, you should ensure the copy is written concisely and the images are suitable for small mobile screens.

Final Thoughts on the Digital Marketing Trends

The eCommerce world and its marketing trends will constantly keep evolving.

One of the most important things for businesses to have is critical thinking. It will allow you to make wise decisions as to what trends you need to adopt, and more importantly, how to make the best use of those trends.

Jumping on the bandwagon — just because every brand is doing it — is not the right way to go about it. You must brainstorm, analyze, and visualize if, how, and where the trend aligns with your business goals and values.

With all that said, yes, you must keep yourself updated with all the trends. But don’t worry — we’re here to help you with that and much more. To learn more about eCommerce marketing strategies, trends, and best practices — check out more resources on the GemPages Blog. 

Also, join the GemPages Facebook community to network and learn from like-minded entrepreneurs and experts.

FAQs About the Digital Marketing Trends in 2025