Summary
- I learned the power of marketing from a young age, starting my first website at 16 and growing my skills out of necessity when a marketing firm failed to deliver results.
- Helping my first client, a power supply manufacturer, generate $25 million more in sales showed me the true impact of marketing.
- Honesty and overdelivering are key to building a strong reputation, as this approach has helped me work with major companies like Google and NBC.
- Even as digital marketing evolves, the fundamentals remain: generate more revenue by understanding trends and adapting strategies, like embracing AI and personalization.
- With digital marketing becoming more reliant on multifaceted channels, avoid relying on just one; instead, integrate and leverage multiple platforms for better results.
- AI is becoming crucial, but it’s not enough to just use it—you need to see real revenue improvements from it. Use AI for data and research to ensure efficient marketing.
- Understand that consumer expectations are high, with many willing to stop buying from brands after just one bad experience—focus on delivering excellence consistently.
- In 2025, expect marketing trends to continue emphasizing doing more with less. Optimize ad spend by focusing on platforms that match your skills and audience.
- Personalize but avoid being too creepy. Consumers prefer tailored experiences but value their privacy; balance is needed to stay effective.
- Stay informed about local privacy laws and regulations to maintain customer trust and avoid unnecessary legal troubles in marketing campaigns.
- The digital landscape is vast, and ensuring your presence across multiple channels will improve brand discoverability, especially as search engines evolve.
- For small businesses, leveraging multi-channel marketing that aligns with your abilities and audience needs is crucial for sustained growth.
- Building long-term relationships with customers, through authenticity and understanding deeper layers of consumer needs, will differentiate your brand.
- With new technologies like AI and visual search, businesses need to adapt quickly to maintain efficient customer journeys and seamless shopping experiences.
- The future of marketing involves integrating digital technologies with personal interactions to create a smoother, more engaging consumer experience.
Video
How To Take Action
I'd suggest starting with marketing fundamentals. Focus on honesty and over-delivering. This builds trust and a strong reputation, key for long-term success.
For immediate impact, embrace digital channels. Don't rely on just one. Use a mix of SEO, email marketing, and social media. Each channel supports the others, making your brand more visible.
Personalization is big, but keep it balanced. Offer personalized experiences without crossing privacy lines. Use AI to help, but ensure it adds real value, like better customer service or improved targeting.
Small businesses should also focus on doing more with less. Optimize your marketing spend by targeting the right platforms—those where your audience and skills align.
Collect first-party data responsibly. This helps tailor your marketing efforts more effectively in the changing digital landscape.
Finally, as AI and technology evolve, integrate these tools to know your customers better and provide smoother experiences. Keep learning about the latest changes in local privacy laws to avoid issues and maintain trust.
By focusing on these strategies, you can boost revenue and ensure long-term growth without spending a lot.
Quotes by Author
#### "I built my reputation by being honest and over-delivering"
#### "Nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed"
#### "People believe marketing is expensive and difficult; fortunately that's not true"
#### "Even if you don't have a technical bone in your body, you can get results"
#### "My mission is to share this formula with you"
Full Transcript
he [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more Revenue through digital marketing Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number one marketer in the world and they also said I created one of the 100 most brilliant companies I started my first website at the age of 16 I took all the money that I earned from working at amusement park and I paid a marketing firm the marketing firm provided no results and I quickly learned that I wasn't alone out of my frustration and from being broke I had no choice but to learn marketing my first client was a power supply manufacturer I helped him generate another $25 million in sales and from that point I realized the power of marketing I helped everyone that I could and I built my reputation by being honest and overd delivering I've helped companies like Google NBC Viacom General Motors eBay but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed I found a four multimillion our companies and I've learned all the mistakes that you should avoid I've written about them on Forbes entrepreneur Inc Fast Company and even on my own blogs it's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom over the years I've received awards from the president of the United States the House of Representatives and the United Nations people believe marketing is expensive and difficult fortunately that's not true there is a Formula even if you don't have a technical bone in your body you can get results and my mission is to share this formula with [Music] you hello everyone thank you guys for coming coming today my name is Neil Patel and we're going to be kicking it off by going over the predictions that we believe are going to happen in 2025 when it comes to marketing based on all the trends and the data we're seeing so let's Dive Right In All right so I mentioned we're talking about 2025 what to prepare and how you can do well U my name is Neil Patel I'm the co-founder of NP digital we're a global Ad Agency and today with me I have two of my colleagues um Brook you want to give a quick introduction of yourself and then rob you can go next sure hi everybody I'm Brooke Hess I'm the BP of paid media here at NP digital and excited to share some of our upcoming insights with you and my name is robon I'm the director of SEO at NP digital so representing the organic side and similar to Brooke really excited to talk about what we expect is going to happen and is already happening in some cases in marketing in 2025 as I mentioned at NP digital we're seeing a lot of trends for 2025 um we have clients all over the world we won a lot of awards um and just keep this in mind because when we're breaking down trends that we're seeing we're already starting to implement quite a bit of this stuff for our customers and we're seeing great results from it so first off 2024 was a year of big changes in marketing right everyone talked about Ai and personalization people talked about generative AI and what it's done for marketing specifically creatives and content people even started talking about search gbt which is out and you can go use it quick caveat most people don't know this a lot of the results from search GPT are actually pulled from B so whatever they don't have Bing is providing all of that to them uh and there was a lot of surveys done in the past most people have found Bing results to be more relevant than Google but most people are happy enough with Google results where they don't really care to use Bing uh but just keep that in mind because I saw a lot of comments online recently being like wow search GPT has amazing results I'm like a lot of it is actually coming from a traditional search engine um marketers have also been going Allin with video you're seeing it with long form video short form video people just busting out their phones and recording Tik Tok you know buying on Tik Tok product Discovery that's been huge and consumers are increasingly being concerned more and more about privacy you know uh Google decided to retract uh uh what they're doing with cookies but nonetheless you know people are still concerned and we don't really know what's going to happen to marketing from a privac standpoint uh over the next few years because it's very reliant on government and platforms but we have some insights at least on it if you also think about channels we now rely on Omni Channel marketing it used to be where you can build a the business off of one channel drop box screw through invite your friends on social media right tweet this out share it on Facebook and we'll give you more free space Facebook grew just by saying hey send out email blast we're going to invite all your friends by scraping your address book and boom y up grew through SEO all these channels have become super saturated and competitive they still work but they're super saturated and competitive and it's hard to build a business or marketing just off of one of these channels on the flip side if you Leverage many of these channels you can do well in the long run and as you can see seo's Still The King when it comes to Roi and you know so is email marketing and paid ads and a lot of these channels are still extremely effective you also have to keep in mind attributions getting harder I'm on the iPad right now you guys can't tell because I'm using the iPad for this webinar but I can also pull out my phone and do a search and then maybe I go and buy on my my iPad or I go back to the website on my iPad sign up for email then when I'm home back in the States I'm in Germany right now but when I'm back in the States maybe I buy on my laptop it makes attribution really tough because now we're using a lot of channels we're using a lot of devices which is making the problem worse and worse over time and you're also seeing that things are really changing of what people are like okay this is really effective in 202 before um for example if I asked you in 2020 or 2021 people would have been like SEO paid ads in 20124 you have a lot more people going to in-person events than they did in some of the previous years a lot of this is because during covid people didn't go like I'm at an event in Germany called This is marketing they have double the amount of attendees this year than last year talking about five plus thousand people a lot of what helps is you know people are craving more in-person events especially in a world of AI I and human connection being less and less over time people are actually craving it more right organic social still there although the algorithms keep getting tougher emails still there seo's there a lot of influencer and Partnerships and collaborations have been super effective extremely high Roi with micro influencers as well and of course what took Center Stage this year was AI anyone in marketing who hasn't try to AI there's something wrong we all use it now the real question is is I ask you to ask yourselves and give yourself a honest answer you're using AI but have you actually seen an increase in traffic lead sales revenue profit from actually using AI most people will answer no when it comes to generating more revenue from AI they're saying it's cool they're able to do a lot of stuff and AI is great but if it's not improving your main Ki which stands for key performance indicators right the amount uh whatever is important to your business and in most cases it's Revenue if you're not seeing Revenue go up and profit go up well then are your AI efforts being wasted it doesn't mean AI is a waste it means you could just be focusing on the wrong things and of course the one I love talking about people of using AI for copywriting it has been super popular for email copywriting I remember my team tried to get me to record his script I was asking solo you know they send the videographer to my house and they're like oh you got to record the script I started reading it in front of the camera because we have teleprompt I'm like this is terrible did AI write this so I call solo I'm like this is like one of the worst scripts ever where'd you get this from he's just like chat gbt and I'm like dude don't ever give me a chat gbt script I had to rewrite it on the fly but people are using AI for a lot of these channels they're not always seeing the results but they are using it for it and people are going to be skeptical at the same time right only a quarter 26% of consumers say they trust organizations to use AI responsibly I don't blame them um people are always worried about stuff that they can't see we're seeing companies starting to use AI chat Bots and not letting people know it's AI That's not the right thing to do you want to be transparent or else it can backfire in the long run so things aren't going to slow down in 20 2 people are like 2024 you've had a lot of changes you're going to actually see changes coming at even a more rapid pace so the question is how do you prepare and what should you prepare for which we're going to go over we're going to go over the 16 marketing Trends to watch in 2025 cool and I'm going to start out with the first couple Trends and one of the largest trends that we're seeing even now is the idea of doing more with less right especially with the Advent of AI Fallout from covid economic uncertainty we're seeing that budget and lack of resources are some of the top listed challenges for marketers and companies and that forces us as marketers to find new and creative ways to keep delivering the same level of results or even more results with less money less budget U maybe even less people at your disposal so definitely a big Trend that we're seeing now and we expect that to continue in 2 as well and it's not only you know expectations on marketers but customers themselves are having higher expectations than ever right there's less margin of error and it's it's shrinking right 38% will decreased spending on a brand after a bad experience and 15% will stop doing business with a brand altogether so the barometer is getting higher the bar is getting raised even though there are less resources and budgets are ti than ever before so again doing more with less is hitting us from a lot of different angles as marketers uh both from the business side and from the consumer side Trend number two and this has been one that's been a trend for a long time but we're really starting to see it pick up even more um spark Toro so Rand fishkin did a study um that showed that in the United States about 60% of searches result in zero clicks to your website right this is because Google wants to keep users on Google there's overcrowded serps with map packs and image carousels and ecommer serps Google doesn't necessarily want you to click onto a website because it's taking you off their platform they're trying to deliver the answers and AI overviews right in the Ser so you don't have to go anywhere you can see all the products you can see images um again this has been a trend for a very long time but it's starting to get even more and more serious with the Advent of AI overviews in addition to all of those other Ser features that have been around for a while and perfect Segway here right just the Advent of new formats and features right so about 16% of Google surch show more images 62% of all Google searches now include the video carousels there's AI overviews there's map packs there's so many things which make it more attractive for users to stay on surf there's no argument that this isn't more helpful but what does that mean for business owners and marketers it's it's getting harder and harder to get eyes on your actual website because Google is pulling that content from your website or from other places and delivering it to people right within the search engine result page when you you know click that initial search button another Trend that we're really seeing explode this year is the Advent of new search platforms that work in tandem alongside Google I think it's important to note here that Google isn't Dying by any means in this graph you can kind of see that Google's market share actually increased slightly even while all these other platforms are increasing as well so you have you know search GPT which Neil just talked about perplexity all these different new search engines that are coming up and they're growing exponentially for sure um so it's going to play a role but I wouldn't say that you know Google is going anywhere it just means that you're going to have to worry about more platforms optimize for more places check referral traffic in your analytics and see how many users are reaching your site from all these different places and really just start thinking of expanding your net as all of these new search platforms uh are new and they're growing quickly as Neil said you know we'll search GPT kill SEO you know search GPT definitely has some advantages right now um as Neil said it also pulls a lot of information from being so it still relies heavily on normal search engines and Google still holds over 87% of the US search Market they also own YouTube so they still have you know a corner on the market in terms of search so it's unlikely it's going to surpass Google anytime soon but it's going to work in Tandem and you're going to want to test see what results you get on both and make sure that you're optimizing and thinking about both platforms and you know there's going to be a lot of uh disruptions over the next couple years right consumers expectations are changing for more streamlined and efficient answers they're going to want generative AI in search right s co-pilot search GPT they're going to want AI generated content right they want the answers quicker and faster than ever kind of like we talked about doing more with less people also want to see the information provided quickly and they want to see it you know in directly in their Ser where they can access it so um lots of disruptions an SEO expect in the next two years doesn't mean seo's dead right these llm models still need to find this information from somewhere so they can you know push it live to users so you're still going to need to create that information and you know worry about ranking for this type of stuff but you know users are expecting more um and that's definitely the case with AI and information directly in servs another Trend right search uh everywhere optimization SEO is Evol evolving right you can't just show up on Google anymore or Bing or Yahoo you have chat GPT to worry about search GPT you have YouTube Tik Tok uh the App Store all of these different channels right to Neil's Point earlier in the the conversation right each of these channels is so saturated you have to make sure you have visibility in all these you can't just do uh you know solo channel strategy you have to be thinking Omni Channel and for a lot of Brands you want to show up across a variety of different places um and take up all the Ser real estate that you can across all these different platforms and kind of like we had mentioned before right the messy middle is getting even Messier in terms of attribution you might search on your phone somewhere and go on YouTube and then go back to your iPad and then you're on Google and then on your phone now you're on Tik Tok right it's going to be really hard for people to understand where the actual conversions are coming from and it's moving away more from a keyword-based search to Discovery right you might be seen on one of these platforms and complete your journey on another platform or start your journey here and then complete it over there so um you know as language models start to understand semantics a little bit more and as attribution gets a little bit messy across all these platforms you're going to want to be discoverable across all these places even if you're not sure you know what the Tipping Point was to get someone to use your product or service you're going to want to be visible there because at the end end of the day if you're seeing more conversions and more people come to your site you know that you're doing the right thing like we were talking about right you just have to expand your reach right not only on AI platforms and Google search and social media uh but all across the internet to increase that engagement and make sure that you have broader visibility so make sure that you're everywhere right across all these different platforms make sure you're producing content that fits each platform right something that works on Tik Tok might not be as good on YouTube or might not be as good on on you know Google search um and just find stuff that's engaging right as long as you're getting eyes on your site and you're getting people to learn about your brand and learn about your products that's how they're going to discover you and they you know might find you a different way down the line but um as long as you're discoverable you're putting your name out there and hopefully they'll come and make uh conversion with you last Trend that going to cover is talking about search to sense leveling up so kind of redefining traditional search if we think of old school SEO right we think of the number of keywords on a page and how you're saying things if you're matching exactly plurals or singulars of a word right now semantic understanding and intent recognition is only going to increase with AI you you might not even use the right keyword but AI knows exactly what you're trying to say it might be a little bit more conversational right you're asking asking questions longer longtail searches but it's still going to understand what you mean similar for image-based search right there's so many Technologies out there that can deliver a result without you even saying one word at all so this is definitely a trend that we're seeing now and we expect to continue in 2025 like we had talked you know serps are becoming even more visual than they ever were before with videos and image carousels map packs all these things that are designed to attract your attention and that aren't word-based right so you know 10 plus billion visual searches processed by Google Lens in the last month visual search is expected to grow at least 177% in the coming years so it's not just a big shift for Brands but it's an easy entry to improve your visibility and stand out and search because Google and other platforms are like in like Pinterest and even Tik Tok it's all visual Instagram that's where you know humans are going we're visual creatures so things might not be based on words anymore and visual search is only going to continue to grow and to give you guys a quick idea when he's talking about the visual search here no one really talks about Google lens and what they're doing here but to give you a perspective it's probably close in popularity to something like Chad GPT right it's just like it's nowhere near talked about but it has a usage that something like chat GPT has because chat GPT is at a few billion visitors a month right people may do a few searches within there some people don't do any searches but that's the power of Google lens and even when Rob was talking about the voice search that is going to take over text based search over time and if you anyone has kids what you'll find is we as adults grew up with text based search and voice got introduced to us if you're a kid you are growing up with voice search first because you learn to talk and speak into Alexa and all these devices before you learn how to type or even have a computer so the younger generation is actually starting with voice search and voice search is getting better with the implementation of AI into all these devices and that is going to be the norm for them and they are going to think we're crazy by searching by typing something out on a computer or a phone absolutely and like hit the nail on the head right here with voice search right there's more than 100 or 1 billion searches every month that are done via voice uh like I have a child too we have a Google home in his room I'll say like hey put on his lullab or hey do this that and the other thing so he's already hearing that we're talking with um you know these types of tools and that they're giving results right so um that trend is only going to continue and under the context of you know more contextual noner keyword-based queries that all this stuff is very conversational right I'm not thinking about keywords to try and influence I'm just saying hey find me this thing or you know based on a search I just did can you give me a followup right so um longer taale queries and kind of that semantic relation is only going to increase not only for Our Generation for younger generations and as you can see you know on the stats there to the right it's only going to increase and that number is already high as of today and this is what I was all alluding to before right conversational marketing is only going to get more sophisticated right um just like users are expecting more with less they're expecting answers quicker and they're just going to use the regular tone of voice and everything that they use to talk with friends and family right so conversational marketing it can increase conversion rates right that's how people are thinking and talking about things and by 2025 95% of customer interactions will happen through conversational marketing AI they'll think chat bots on site support uh threads and things like that where you're asking a question how do I do this that or the other thing and you're getting an answer back this type of trend is only going to increase in 2025 and kind of setting myself up here right better engagement enhanced personalization and 247 support right these are just examples of conversational marketing and action right engaging forms and chat bots on your site you know we work with clients all the time who ask us about chat Bots and it's like yeah you can give consumers the answer right there without them having to wait for someone to call them back or for them to get an email or something like that it's going to improve the user experience on site and we think that people are only going to expect this quick answer uh you know right in their face when they need it a trend to continue um and brands are going to have to adapt and make sure they can deliver that type of information that's accurate uh quick and efficient all right Trend number six the customer Journey will become seamless right now when you look at these devices they're being connected more and more together the platforms are starting to talk with each other even if they're not owned with each other like Amazon is plugging into some of these social platforms and they have Partnerships by the interactions all getting more and more connected what's going to happen is the unit journey is going to be more seamless easier and it's going to make it easier for people to sell online and conversions go up right just imagine you're on Tik Tok now what's happening is you can see products you discover you click a button it buys it automatically fills in your shipping information and boom you're off into the races uh it's kind of crazy how it works and you're going to see more and more of this just wait till they integrate into live and you can people can start selling by going live and others can comment or click a button and they also make a purchase as well you also want to turn your inbox into a Powerhouse so talking about seamless experiences you can use Zoo to sell through email and have it just blend in like here's an example right you can send an email with a product and they can literally click a button and buy all within the email and not go to your website and it's just a seamless user experience even with products they can select the size of the product and the color all with an email and it just flow like they're in Gmail or Outlook and not really be disturbed or see a dropping conversions by them going to your website one of my favorite trends when it comes to this experience that's all fit together is this FAL experience um the experience that most people can relate to is McDonald's not a fan of their food but let's go with McDonald's uh just healthwise although kids love it you go there and they have these monitors and you can order from a digital screen and it's really easy I was in Dubai a few weeks ago or a month ago or something like that at Blends in because I'm on the road so often like I'm in Germany right now and I head to I think Saudi Arabia in a few days but when I was in Dubai I was at one of their malls and they had the store I think it was H&M or something like that you could literally click on the monitors and it'll show you all the different kind of products they have and where they're located because they had a few H&M's I think it was like two or three kids men's and women um but it was a really cool user experience and you're also seeing the platforms blend in with each other so Google is starting to look more like Amazon with comparisons and reviews and ratings and Linkedin is starting to look like Tik Tok and Instagram I was on LinkedIn the other day and it just keeps trying to get me to swipe for more videos I'm like I'm not here to watch entertaining content on LinkedIn but I get what they're trying to do the platforms are all trying to blur and copy each other's features because with a lot of the government rules the US and Europe they can't just buy each other out which you would have seen happen if they wouldn't have these uh monopolistic laws and that is Trend seven Trend eight AI will shift from generating content to making efficient use of data people talk about Ai and content generation we did a study with I believe 68 websites 744 articles half AI half human Ren the A1 still had human intervention because it wasn't good enough after 5 months we saw the human Ren content get 5.44 times more traffic on average from organic search than AI you start thinking about ads we also ran an experiment with I forgot the budget amount but I think it was like six or seven million doar with ads we use Ai and human secrate ads humans won we took the winning variations of humans ads creatives popped it into AI told them to create variations of it and boom it ended up creating more variations of that and that eventually ended up winning which was AI combined with humans what you're going to see is writing content isn't a crazy skill it's not an expensive skill to pay people AI sure can do it fast but it's not always great um and but what you're seeing is data we have tons of data and not enough companies are leveraging the data making decisions in real time you know depending on the source that you look at some say 80 billion some say 100 billion some say 60 billion these are the rough dollar amounts that are being thrown at thrown out for ad wastage online just think about that for a minute using data to help stop a lot of that bleeding can make companies more efficient that saves way more money than using AI to write content versus humans and a great example we want a award for this we use AI for research and data analysis for University of Technical Institute this helped us optimize our content based on all the geographies and regions that they had because there are around 200 plus op Local web pages with images data you know videos scheme Market the list goes on and on and we were able to grow 41% increase in euror organic search sessions for new program expansion efforts as well as a 18% increase in organic search inquiries year-over-year uh and this was after a double digit loss pre in in the previous period so we made up a lot of traffic by using AI for research for localized uh content creation pages and again we did a lot of the research sent it to humans humans cranked out the content Trend nine AI will make personalization even smoother it's hard to personalize for everyone I know Walmart has bought quite a few companies around personalization they even had like a Labs uh section of their company and they struggle to create amazing personalized experiences but now with AI it's going to be easier and easier and 73% consumers prefer bands that offer personalized shopping experiences versus Brands offer generic ones like I don't have a dog Amazon doesn't show me dog information and dog food it would be useless I wouldn't buy anything it would just piss me off on the experience and i' go to a different platform but with the but with Hyper personalization it requires things like realtime analysis you know you have to create personalized content not just for a website but also for email messages personalize adapting messages for things like chat Bots you can focus on different verticals but the thing to keep in mind is hyper personalization at scale we're not really seeing that much of a Boos in conversions versus just personalization like yes you want it to be super personalized but you don't want it to be too personalized where it gets creepy right think like helpful versus creepy you don't want someone to visit your website and think of it as like creepy like a stalker you want them to think of it as helpful so sometimes we're seeing hyper personalization backfire just as a heads up a great example of someone who personalizes and they segment really well is fitbot they use AI to analyze your sleep patterns your activity your stress and then they personalize you know different coaching tips workout tips all to make your life better and it's worked out really well for them and it creates a lot of word amount marketing which is the best form of marketing it's actually not SEO it's not paid ads it's not social media is people just talking about it Word of Mouth Trend number 10 the B2B marketing it's going to get personal and here's the example when you look at that guy right there what do you think suit works at a corporation you know it's really binded up but that's not really the case as you can see here he enjoys motorcycles he enjoys tattoos he enjoys watching videos of Rock shows you know don't let uh the cover deceive you there's more inside to a person than just what you see on the outside and it doesn't mean that they're not that bunded up person people can have many different personality types Hobbies interests and you got to adapt to the deeper layers of people to really Target them and get to know them to generate the sale and you're going to see that more so in B2B that's going to happen versus what it happened prior it's important because in B2B long sales cycles and typically larger contracts and the decision-making shift isn't just in the older people people don't realize Millennials now make up 75% of the business buying teams and eventually that's going to be gen Z it's just a question of when and they prefer personalized offers and they value authenticity and what I mean by valuing authenticity 10 plus years ago when we saw commercials made for Super Bowl quality or Olympic style or FIFA World Cup they did really well but now when someone just takes out their phone and Records something and puts it online people feel that's authentic and we're actually seeing conversions for that higher than the highly produced stuff a great example is at our organization we run a commercial of tons of people who look like me Neil Patel they're willing bald caps both guys and females and they're running around the office dressed up as me we spent hundreds and thousands just on the commercial then we spent so much more on just ad buys and none of those campaigns covered as well as my team just taking random videos of me talking into a camera that they just took from Instagram or Tik Tok that you know those videos weren't even created for ad purposes and they just did better why because people felt they were more authentic and this is why you need to build long-term relationships if you look at what's happening with authenticity people want real stuff they want to buy from people they can relate to they want to buy from people that they can get to know you know there's less and less that separates companies from others right people have tons of options and long-term relationships is what's going to help you set yourself apart you want to understand the needs and goals a business has your customers have you want to focus on personalization you want to focus on delivering value even after you got that transaction and help them out why because they're going to recommend other people to buy from you other businesses to buy from you they're going to spr the word this is how you really grow a business and generate a lot of Demand with marketing in the long run for our 11th Trend it really highlights how shopping ad formats and search are changing they're becoming more visual more interactive uh they're leveraging AI to provide a more personalized shopping experience online Google recently rolled out a few new formats of their shopping ads including the three 60 product views for the 3D shoe spins virtual trons as well as shoppable video and these new ad formats and AI features enable advertisers to Showcase their products and deals to Shoppers in an effort to improve engagement rates higher quality leads and overall sales and these search results are becoming increasingly more visual to incorporate photos and videos so newer um oh I'm sorry back back to the slide um newer campaign formats like performance Max and demand gen use all image and video assets you provide to advertise the most relevant products and messages based on the individual user who's searching or consuming content across the Google and Microsoft ad networks but Google and Pinterest as we mentioned earlier they're really leading the way in visual search with their lens products to help identify elements of a photo taken by a user such as an object text products or even landmarks and Google said that there's nearly 20 billion searches uh throughout lens each month with um 20% of all lens searches being shopping related so shopping ads will appear above all um above and alongside visual search results in Google by the end of next year and with augmented reality ads advertisers can also overlay digital visual elements and sounds in a real world setting which offers realtime interactions with products so voice ads are not anything new as we we chatted about earlier but they're gaining more traction as consumers adopt Siri and Alexa any type of handsfree technology uh longtail search queries are coming from voice search they've been visible in our search results reports for quite some time now but advertisers can begin to adopt more conversational keywords in search that align with a natural language to offer more personalized and interactive experiences for consumers the next Trend uh advertisers advertising platforms are doubling down on is AI integration into their campaign formats so platforms like meta Tik Tok LinkedIn Snapchat there shifting away from advertisers being able to maintain control of their campaigns manually and they're pushing them towards automated campaign optimization so this includes things like adjusting creative or ad placements and even who they're targeting in terms of an audience based on the real-time signal from a user during the bidding process and in fact 15 million ads were created in just one month using using generative AI production tools so we don't expect this trend to slow down especially as more and more platforms offer this AI integration into their ad campaign options also privacy topics are not new to advertisers but this next trend is going to require even more consent from users as we head into 2025 users want their ad experiences personalized but they have to be willing to provide the new FCC on toone consent to each company that's going to start at the end of January when it comes to sending out messages via text or phone calls from an Advertiser these advertisers will be required to obtain and retain prior written consumer consent if you're using a rooc call or robox technology for marketing purposes so make sure to be aware of this new FCC requirement when you use these tactics to advertise in 2025 you want to know what's funny when it comes to laws and privacy I know the elections are happening today but I'm neutral I'm pretty much in the middle typically that's how I fall um but I have gotten no joke probably 30 to 40 text messages a day from both candidates or their teams telling me to vote and I keep clicking stop unsubscribe on my texts and they just keep sending them from different states Virginia Pennsylvania Nevada I'm like I live in California you guys all got the wrong State I get so many calls and I get so many text messages a day I'm like you guys should follow your own privacy uh laws and rules hopefully that will change next election time Neil I I well I'm hoping by tomorrow I don't get any more texts I'm getting literally like so many texts a day it just blows up my phone exactly I think we're all experiencing that right now yeah um in terms of our what what brands should be doing really making sure we're relying on what is called zero party data this is data that consumers are willing to share with Brands to better tailor their ad and website experiences while still respecting their privacy so as Neil mentioned earlier don't be too creepy but still leverage what you can um what you know about a user based on what they provide to you Neil also mentioned earlier our next Trend the 14th Trend ties social content to shopping as it becomes the new storefront social commerce revenues are forecast to surpass1 trillion US Dollar by 2028 so this trend is only going to continue to grow um influencers are at the Forefront of this content and product Discovery they are the primary source for users to discover this new content and new products across different social platforms they'll take a more prom role in 2025 when it comes to fostering direct sales using Advanced video formats and also leveraging interactive shopping features to encourage purchases and live streaming across social platforms offers influencers the opportunity to promote products live with an easy clickto buy option uh rolling out globally in the next year across multiple platforms live shopping is expected to become the norm and they're gonna push live video even harder because they're going to be getting a [Laughter] cut so Trend 15 integrating channels for consistency and Synergy using two or more channels in a campaigns led to 166% higher engagement rates uh we ended up working with Expedia Canada a long time ago we were doing an interesting study that uh we ended up finding and they shared with us even though people are familiar with the Expedia Brands when they leveraged multiple channels they integrated these channels together all of them Rose by more than 10% when it came to Roi that's huge right so you want to have these channels work together and be quote unquote Omni Channel versus multi- CH Channel where you're just using the channels but they're operating separately an increased awareness affects SEO performance so when you're leveraging Omni Channel and you're using these channels together and they're synergizing and helping you accomplish your main kpis what you find is you get more brand queries that's people going on Google and typing in your brand name seven of the top 10 queries on Google are brand names Amazon YouTube Instagram Facebook Gmail you guys get the point uh those actually are in the top 10 the last time I checked um although this year's report could be different but Brands matter so the more people that type in your brand name on Google and click to your site that's really important you need to have a high click through rate you'll find that your rankings for all your other Pages typically goes up as well and this is why cross chnnel crossplatform visibility is super important and search engines you know they factor in Social content as mentioned earlier from one of the sem Rush charts you know video carousels are predominant in more than 60% of the search queries and we're seeing similar stuff with our uberis data what's really interesting is people engage with videos more than any other type of content when it's ranked above the fold like if Google ranks a video and text above the fold even if text is higher more people click on the video than anything else from what we've seen Trend 16 building a strong brand based on values you know what's separating you from your competition we think the only moot left in business is your brand people can copy you create the release the same features the real only Mo that you have in the long run is brand what separates Jordan shoes from the others isn't the quality it's the logo and people disliking Michael Jordan right that's the power of a brand and being real and relatable we talked about you know being authentic earlier really helps you build a brand no one wants the company generated version of a ad people want the authentic influencer version and it doesn't even have to be from an influencer it's just real and it's more relatable you know it's like no one wants to see Neymar or Christian Ronaldo in a ad that's highly produced they rather just have Christian Ronaldo break out their phone and being like I used to have this problem with my body I use this soap check out my skin now here was before you got to check this soap out this soap is amazing and look at all these rashes that are gone or whatever acne or whatever you want to end up pitching right that's more relatable versus a highly produced campaign it's just like when Kylie Jenner is like I got some big news to announce or one of the Kardashians and then eventually she announced I have acne and I use Proactive or something like that and people like we don't care for this it's obvious this is paid give us something authentic and real you also want your marketing to have purpose and integrity you know Coca-Cola is a great example they showed their logo crumbled up because they want more people to recycle uh Starbucks has a page on putting people first you know talking about the environment or sustainability or social Equity you know it matters to a lot of people and organizations and if that's important to your customers you need a Leverage this more and be relatable or else you're going to lose these people to your competition so that was the 2025 Trends if you need help implementing any of these or any other marketing issues that you may need help with you can scan that QR code with your phone you just bust it out take the camera scan it and you can end up booking a call with anyone on our team uh we would love to work with you and help you grow um in addition to that we also have an upcoming webinar that you can see on the next slide I believe it's on the next slide uh which is happening November 19th at 8: a.m. Pacific time it's marking on a budget strategies that work without breaking the bank you know especially going to holiday seasons we want to cover some budget friendly strategies that provide amazing results if you want to register for that webinar again you can just take out your phone scan the QR code and boom you're Off to the Races and you'll be registered so now let's dive into some questions Colin good good stuff everybody hello happy Tuesday happy election day here in the US lots of questions I'm going to actually start with the very last one because I think that uh I saw it five or six times in the last 20 minutes Rob and ornal any quick tips to get better visibility in AI search whether it's AI overviews on Google search GPT any just what should we be thinking of about do the old SEO sort of best practices still apply there what's your cheat sheet if you if you will to get visibility uh with all these AI applications that are out there maybe we start with Rob and then Neil you pile on cool sounds good I mean a lot of the similar tactics that you're going to use for SEO are going to apply to AI overviews right you want to build your Authority getting link from places building your brand you're going to want to write content that answers questions fully but is also concise and pulls out the key points and is structured well um you know you're you're going to want to do a lot of the same things and SEO for AI overviews and crossover too with a voice search as well kind of like we talked about imagine that you're writing for Rich Snippets um and having you know key points listed near the top of your articles um but yeah there's a lot of crossover I think those search engine land or something did a study and it was like you know in 90% of serps um the links that are pulled out in AI overviews also rank within the top 10 of search results so that means that SEO and optimizing for AI are very similar there's obviously going to be some small differences but in general you're going to want to focus on a lot of the same things um then Neil if there's anything you want to add there yeah when we looked at what chat GPT was recommending a lot of it was they're pulling based on sites that have amazing reviews Amazing ratings reviews being like other websites talking about them ratings being um you know their star rating let's say four 4.7 stars out of uh five the other things that they're looking at is age you know Google also looks at age um but yeah a lot of similar factors brand mentions how many times is a brand or product mentioned around the web it just shows that people are talking about it hopefully in a positive light my guess is they're able to pull signals or sentiment to see if it's positive or negative but yeah these are some of the factors so we also talked about optimizing for voice and visual search do those same tactics strategies Rob sort of apply uh for for voice search like should we be creating more Q&A type content if mostly people are asking questions to Alexa or Google home any tips or thoughts there because that came up multiple times as well totally right like we talked about um in the intro or in some of the earlier sections the conversational phrasing right like Q&A FAQs like think of how people would ask a question using voice search right it's going to be a little bit more conversational it might not use the exact keywords it might use variations right you also want to answer questions directly right especially near the top of the page where you can like I said in FAQs you know using schema markup right there's you know all these different things that you can mark up your page and really let search engines know these are questions and answers or what the information on the page is so lots of crossover there for voice search and then you mentioned image search as well right A lot of the same factors right like you want to make sure you're using high quality images you're using alt text you're using structured data a lot of the nuts and bolts of SEO again are are still going to be very similar here um so you just want to make sure that you pay attention to those and it will help you rank for both these types of uh formats and AI as well search everywhere optimization all that stuff applies to Bing which was a question as well um so yeah optimize for everywhere um let's see here Brooke I don't know if you saw me drop this question in the chat earlier but we talked about doing more with less um the UTI case study that we showed earlier in the presentation was actually an earned media one we've got a paid media one that's all about doing more with less as budgets tighten what strategies can businesses use to ensure that their marketing spend is at effective as it possibly can be any tips or tricks to get more with less when it comes to the the paid media side of of marketing great question when you're on a budget we would always recommend from a paid media perspective starting off with the bottom funnel where are people actively searching for your brand if that becomes voice search if it is standard search that is probably the number one place that we would recommend to start however we did talk a little bit about attribution and once you tap out of the people looking for you you have to push your message out to people who are willing to uh buy and maybe they just don't know your brand so having that Omni Channel marketing approach is really where the magic comes in you're mixing uh people who are already going to buy your products and searching for your products with also messaging out to people who could best uh benefit from your product so a mixture of of different types of tactics from an ad perspective is the way to go add an SEO on top of it and you've got a full Omni Channel marketing approach boom and that's the that's the end goal right but Neil and lots of uh lots of smbs always tuned into our webinars question for you with so many channels uh and and everything that's going on what are your thoughts on where a small business should start because clearly when there's you know a founder or an owner that's also the CMO and the CFO where yeah like where what channel should that CMO that founder that CFO where should they start do they start small with Organic what what are your thoughts there first look at your skill sets what do you think your naturally the best at that'll help you decide what channel because most these channels work for most type of businesses is where are your competition what are the channels where they're focusing on heavily you may want to start with those first in combine with your skill sets so the way I like looking at it is skill sets where my competition going now you have a rough idea of what channels to start off with first but that still may be too many and I look at it as spaghetti you know what spaghetti you cook it you throw it against the wall if it sticks you know it's cooked so try a few different marketing channels out the ones that perform better and are just working with the least amount of effort focus on those and just ignore the rest I'm not saying that the rest can't work it's just double down on the one that's working scale it up and then once you get it going then slowly add in the other channels into the mix but you can do it one by one or two by two and then once you're pretty scaled up you're generating more revenue and then you can add in people to help you maintain and grow those channels even further awesome great great response let's go back to let's go to Rob Andor Neil uh just launched but initial thoughts on search GPT it's it's available to most if if not all like what do you what do you think are the results any good I mean myself personally I think the local results are not so great do you have any thoughts on uh what are your first impressions of search GPT and then there's a followup like when are they going to monetize it when are we going to start seeing ads uh so maybe we again start with Rob for his thoughts and then Neil and Brooke I don't know if you've got anything else to to pile on there as well yeah I've only tested with it a little bit but like you Colin I wasn't impressed by the local results um and you know that's going to be important for a lot of local businesses right you want your map packs searches that are close by you um and I think what it excels at is what chat GPT already kind of excels at now right some of those long form answers complex questions um you know I like asking it like math questions and things like that I think search GPT does a really good job of those so you know your howtos your step-by-step processes it does a really good job of that but struggles a little bit more on the local business side and finding things that are maybe you know closer by in your area um those are kind of my initial reactions Neil any thoughts yeah so few thoughts one the results are okay in some areas but there's a lot of edge cases where it's not that great uh locals example uh when you're trying to find products to buy there's just a lot of random edge cases but that's search like try searching for flights on search GPT it's not that great um but when you look at a lot of these options what you'll find is or these queries you as a user type in these edge cases all the time you just don't realize it you know I believe around 40 plus% of the search queries are local queries 8% are questions it it really excels at questions overall I think Google is still dominant and much better um we run a lot of surveys we've been producing a lot of charts that you can see on Twitter if you follow me we're star to put them on LinkedIn and Instagram and stuff what's interesting is we're seeing a lot of people tell us that Google is implementing chat GPT uh interesting stat Google talked about how a billion plus people use their AI platform right because AI overviews are and quite a bit of search results billion plus users and people are now starting to tell us when we're talking to them yeah we love using chat GPT we see it integrated into Google all the time and I'm like uh that's not Google but all right you know um and I do think Google will end up coming up on top and just taking the still have the line share of the search Market because for most people its version of AI overviews or whatever you want to call it because they keep changing the name it answers most questions extremely well yeah I mean there's the the AI engines and the llms but there's also a lot of AI website features and tools um any thought I mean we talked about personalization and the customer experience Neil one more for you sorry to put you on the spot again but how will AI continue to transform the personalization and customer experience of marketing on websites in 2025 any general thoughts there we a couple people asking about virtual trons do you have any thoughts there because it sounds like there's a couple people that are implementing that now virtual trons you're going to see more people experimenting with quote unquote augmented or virtual reality whatever you want to call it where people are in this virtual world and they're able to communicate with others that's going to be more and more realistic with AI they're going to end up creating a better version of goggles met already has one uh compared to the Vision Pro that's going to change marketing it just needs to be light enough and more affordable enough um another thing that you're going to start seeing in 2025 with personalization is people who have first-party data not third party but first party their own data they'll be able to personalize more so I highly recommend businesses collect more first-party data uh and then from that you can Delight people create better AI chat Bots which is going to really boom in the next 12 months um you're also going to see AI agents boom in the next 12 months when it comes to uh marketing because you can have some of these AI agents just focus uh on personalization which you know should end up boosting your conversion especially with ad cost continued Rising it's important to get your conversions up yeah great response and we're at the very top of the hour um there will be a replay of of the webinar so everyone will get a copy of that that was another ask and always is um that's all we have time for and I think we're good thank you thank you everyone appreciate you guys for joining robra Colin as usual uh and any of you guys need help with your marketing check us out at NPD digital.com thank you everyone go out and vote go out and vote my name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more Revenue through digital marketing Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number one marketer in the world and they also said I created one of the 100 most brilliant companies I started my first website at the age of 16 I took all the money that I earned from working at amusement park and and I paid a marketing firm the marketing firm provided no results and I quickly learned that I wasn't alone out of my frustration and from being broke I had no choice but to learn marketing my first client was a power supply manufacturer I helped them generate another $25 million in sales and from that point I realized the power of marketing I helped everyone that I could and I built my reputation by being honest and overd delivering I've helped companies like Google NBC Viacom General Motors eBay but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed I founded four multi-million dollar companies and I've learned all the mistakes that you should avoid I've written about them on Forbes entrepreneur Inc Fast Company and even on my own blogs it's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom over the years I've received Awards from the president of United States the House of Representatives and the United Nations people believe marketing is expensive and difficult fortunately that's not true there is a Formula even if you don't have a technical bone in your body you can get results and my mission is to share this formula with you [Music]
