By the time you read this, more than 2.71 billion people would have shopped online. By 2025, this number is expected to reach 2.77 billion people.
Global B2B eCommerce is valued at $ US 36 Trillion and will grow at an annual compounded rate of 14.5%.
Plus, we suspect the sources of data by eMarketer and Oberlo don’t actually capture the sheer size of the worldwide eCommerce market and the exact number of transactions done worldwide.
In short: the numbers are bigger. That’s billions of people shopping and repeating their shopping over and over again.
This doesn’t include the much longer sales cycle streaks common for B2B Businesses.
You can do the math.
Competitive intelligence existed in the past. The present has opportunities for you, and so will the future. Competitive intelligence in 2025 is going to present more opportunities (as well as risks).
According to the Strategic Consortium of Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), unknown competitors can shatter norms.
Your market niche and industry is likely to see more competition. Forget existing competitors; your business is expected to face 77% more risk from an unknown competitor.
Old is gold.
The good ol’ static ads are back, and they are back with massive enhancements to how these ads are delivered -- thanks to major ad networks such as Google and Meta powering up their ad networks with new launches such as PMAX campaigns, AI-driven audience targeting, and more.
Forget existing competitors; your business is expected to face 77% more risk from an unknown competitor.
A slew of new search features on Google -- Generative AI in search, AI-organized results pages on Google, etc., for instance, also open up new opportunities for static ads (plus other types of ads) to show up.
As social networking sites get bigger (with more active users for each, more than ever), these social networks will make advertising their primary business model.
For businesses, that only means good news: more ad platforms, alternative traffic sources, and more opportunities than ever before.
Google’s increasing dominance is a thing of the past.
Say hello to social media networks as ad platforms with Twitter, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, and many others.
Plus, other search sources such as Boing Boing, Bing, and search functions introduced within dominant AI models such as ChatGPT and Perplexity (not including the role Google’s own Gemini will play in AI-driven search) only give you more options than ever before.
The question is this: Will you stick to what you know or will you diversify your ad networks and traffic sources?
According to DMEXCO 2024, eCommerce marketing trends, on top of the ever-present and relevant basics of marketing for eCommerce, are going to edge towards personalized experiences.
Personalization, however, won’t happen just because you’d use fancy tools in the future.
Personalization follows a bedrock of best practices such as tagging, segmentation, email list purges, and active management of your email lists (including casual subscribers, existing customers, and potential customers).
Omnichannel is the total of all experiences a customer will likely have with a brand, including:
Today, for eCommerce and otherwise, the omnichannel experience is a mandate (not optional) and yet, many brands don’t think much about it.
In 2025 and beyond, your success is going to be determined by customer omnichannel experience.
The use of AI across industries, with a wide variety of applications, is imminent.
It’s one of those strong and inescapable eCommerce marketing trends we foresee. From one-person businesses to large companies, AI will be omnipresent.
From writing up product descriptions with just a prompt to create AI images for products; from automatically creating social updates for your eCommerce business to automating entire workflows from order placement to shipment— these are all true cases of possible scenarios with generative AI and automation combined.
It has only begun now, and more businesses will aim to optimize workflow, increase efficiency, and boost productivity.
Honestly, this isn’t even the future; it’s happening now, as we write this.
Sephora allows customers to try on their products virtually. Ikea uses AR to let customers view furniture at their home (to answer questions like: Does it fit? Does it look good? Does the decor match?).
Meta is empowering brands to go the extra mile and provide shopping experiences for customers that beat having to go to a store.
For instance, BMW Mini's AR effect ad campaign reached 890k people, with a 11.25x greater lift in brand favourability, and a 6x greater lift in recommendation for the brand compared with regular campaigns.
Amazon already uses Augmented Reality (AR) to help provide a granular (while very personal) shopping experience by “seeing how it looks in your space” or room, or on your desk.
There’s more to come that we haven’t foreseen yet.
What’s to come in 2025 and beyond? What trends have we not foreseen yet? Only time will tell.
Static ads are simple, cost-effective, and often outperform complex designs by focusing attention on the message. They also load faster, making them ideal for platforms where quick engagement is key.
Competitive intelligence helps you understand your competitors’ strategies, identify market gaps, and refine your approach. Tools like Panoramata and Similarweb can provide real-time insights into ads, emails, and other marketing activities to keep you ahead.
Generative AI will enhance content creation by producing personalized ads, emails, and product recommendations at scale. Automation will streamline workflows, freeing up time to focus on strategic initiatives and improving customer experiences.
