StoryPath Communications

Small Business Marketing Trends for 2025

It’s a new year, and that means new small business marketing trends for 2025. Or does it? Trends, yes. New… not exactly. Most of the trends we expect to see this year are carrying over from last year, though there may be new ways to leverage them in your business. 

The good thing about these small business marketing trends is you don’t need a huge marketing budget to make them work for you!

Here are four trends to watch in 2025.

AI in marketing

As a small business owner, there are many ways to utilize AI in your marketing. You can use a tool like ChatGPT to generate content ideas for social media, blogs, or email or help you analyze data. You can use an AI tool like Descript to break a longer video into small useable chunks plus transcribe the audio and turn it into draft social media posts.

While there are plenty of positives to using AI in marketing, there’s also the question of authenticity and trust. With AI filters, AI-generated content, and now AI profiles on social media, some customers of wary of AI in general. Staying authentic to your brand and showing up as a human being in your marketing can help you connect with customers and build trust, even amid concerns about fake content.

Community and collaboration

This one isn’t a new trend by any means – it’s been around since the beginning of time – but people are craving community, connection, and collaboration. Again, it’s important to do this authentically! Don’t force it by trying to mimic the latest high-profile influencer or trying to be something you’re not.

Think about things like engaging with other small businesses in your area and creating specific collaborations that appeal to both of your audiences or perhaps building your own online community that ties into your brand in a powerful way.

Optimizing for voice search

This one has been on the trends list for a bit, but it will continue to be high on the list. More and more people are using voice search, whether asking their Alexa or Google Home device for something or asking their phone or smart watch. Even if your current SEO strategy is strong, it’s worth exploring optimizing for voice search. Often those searches are more conversational than typed searches, and there may be steps you can take to improve results for your company.

Short-form and vertical video content

The emphasis on video isn’t going anywhere. Honestly, at this point it’s more just the norm instead of a trend, though there are certainly emerging trends within video marketing each year.

Video marketing gives audiences the opportunity to connect with you in a deeper way, whether you’re going live on social or pre-recording and scheduling videos. Video can be a more time consuming channel, but there are also ways to simplify the approach to take advantage of the benefits of video without spending hours every day on content.

Think about how you can use short form video content to give your audience additional insight into your business and who you are as a person.

If your business or nonprofit is thinking through how to leverage these small business marketing trends, let’s schedule an intro call and discuss how the StoryPath team can help you develop a marketing strategy that works for you.

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