Digital Marketing Trends: How to Stand out in 2025

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Digital marketing in 2025 is evolving faster than ever. AI, automation, and new platforms are transforming how companies are connecting with their audience, but standing out means going beyond the tools. 2025 is about leveraging these new technologies to create smarter, more human strategies.

I’m Andrew, Co-Founder and CEO of Pono Ventures, and today I’m discussing the most important digital marketing trends we’re seeing heading into 2025.

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1. Human-First Marketing

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AI + automation software has made it too easy for any average joe to spin up a campaign and flood people’s inboxes with garbage. This is leading to buyer exhaustion. Every client we speak to is sick of receiving the same poorly worded, clearly AI-personalized emails.AI + automation are game-changers when it comes to super-charging your personalized efforts, but spamming a large audience with poor copy is not a recipe for sustainable success. ompanies who take a human-first, personalized approach in 2025 are going to see much better positive response rates and build longer-lasting relationships.

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Here are some ways we’re taking a “Human-First” approach in 2025

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• Use AI to enrich buyer data and gain more insights. NOT to write our emails. 
• Smaller-sized campaigns, allowing us to personalize better and remain hyper-relevant to our leads.
• Manual campaigns on Dream 250. Running a manual, mutli-channel campaign to a hand-picked, researched list should land us a few amazing clients. 
• Meeting people in person. Run a local campaign, or get on a plane and meet your dream clients! 
• Snail Mail / Custom Gifts

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2. Cold Email Evolution

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Cold email is going to continue to get harder to run successfully. As software makes it easier for anyone to send spammy emails, ESP’s like Google and Microsoft will continue to crack down on protecting their users' inboxes.

Cold email agencies that can’t adapt to the changing landscape will die out. The effort and cost to run effective campaigns is going to be too much for unsophisticated players to handle. 

Agencies that survive will look like the following:

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1. Stay at the bleeding edge of email deliverability trends
2. Truly understand their clients ICP and can generate a high-quality lead list
3. Can run more, smaller campaigns rather than 1 massive campaign
4. Ability to go multi-channel to increase response rates

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In 2025, the divergence between legitimate lead-gen agencies and pretenders is going to become very clear. As a client, always focus on the results - Are you generating quality leads at a reasonable price?

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3. The Rise of AI SEO

The rise of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are beginning to reshape SEO strategies.

[overlay pop-up images of ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft copilot]

As these tools deliver conversational, direct answers to users, businesses must adapt their content to stay visible. Here’s how AI SEO differs from traditional SEO and why it matters:

• Focus on Direct Answers: AI systems prioritize concise, well-structured content that directly answers user queries, reducing reliance on traditional SERPs.
• Conversational Keywords: Long-tail, natural language phrases now outperform generic keywords. Think "How do I write an engaging cold email?" instead of "cold email tips."
• Structured Data is Key: Schema markup (e.g., FAQ or How-To) helps AI tools extract and display your content in responses.
• Adaptability is Essential: AI search evolves rapidly. Staying updated with platform-specific developments (like Google integrations) will give marketers a competitive edge.

While traditional SEO will continue to remain valuable, SEO specialists need to prepare for a world where information is sourced through LLMs, rather than traditional methods. 

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4. AI Continues to Commoditize Knowledge Workers

AI is rapidly automating routine tasks like content creation, admin work, operational processes, and data analysis, making knowledge work faster, cheaper, and more competitive. The speed of this trend will only increase going into 2025.

Businesses that are able to harness AI to “do more with less” are going to scale faster with lower overhead. 

How Companies Can Stay Ahead:

1. Use AI to Scale: Automate repetitive work to free up your team’s resources for high-value activities.
2. Differentiate Your Brand: Build authentic connections and a memorable brand personality.
3. Adopt Early: Stay ahead of trends by talking to experts. Pay for consultations or project-based work to learn more while replacing existing processes.

AI will replace a lot of traditional work as we know it today, freeing us up to focus on more creative, high-level work. 

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Summary

AI is top of every marketer's mind heading into 2025. Finding ways to integrate it into your workflows, while maintaining a human-first approach to your sales & marketing efforts, is going to be critical throughout 2025.