From Tactics to Strategy: How Digital Marketing Has Evolved for 2025

The way businesses market themselves online has changed in the last year. In 2024, success was often built on specific tactics like Local SEO or Geo-targeted PPC. Today, those tactics are still useful, but they work best when they are part of a single, unified digital marketing plan. Success is no longer about choosing one tool over the other, but about using them together with a clear understanding of your customer and current technology.

Here are the key shifts from the 2024 playbook to the strategy required for growth today.

THEN: SEO and PPC as Separate Efforts
NOW: A Coordinated Plan Using AI

In 2024, many businesses and digital marketing agencies treated SEO and PPC as separate projects. SEO was for long-term growth, while PPC was used for quick, targeted advertising campaigns.

In 2025, treating these as separate efforts is inefficient. The goal now is to make them work together. The question has become: “How can our SEO insights make our ads more effective, and how can our ad data show us new opportunities for our website content?” Artificial Intelligence is the tool that connects them. AI helps you use the information from your website traffic to create better ads, deliver more personalized messages, and predict what your customers might want next.

Adding to the challenge, AI-driven summaries, featured snippets, product listings, and knowledge panels now dominate the front page of Google—making it tougher than ever to gain visibility. We covered this growing trend in our recent post, ‘Your Website Traffic Dropped? Why Google’s AI is Changing the Game in 2025,’ where we break down the issue and share actionable strategies small businesses can use to stay competitive

The question has become: “How can our SEO insights make our ads more effective, and how can our ad data show us new opportunities for our website content?”

THEN: Focusing on Review Quantity
NOW: Building Authentic Community and Trust

In 2024, a major focus for local businesses was getting a large number of positive reviews their Google Business Profile. This is still a valuable sign of a quality business. However, today the focus is on the step that comes before the review: building a real community. In a world with so much automation, a real human connection helps you stand out. Customers are more likely to trust and buy from businesses and the people behind them who they feel connected to.

The 2025 approach is to earn that trust with authentic content, like behind-the-scenes videos or direct conversations with your audience and follow up with customers to make sure they are happy after the job is complete. When you build a strong community based on positive experiences, good reviews will follow as a natural result.

THEN: Technical Website Optimization
NOW: The Total Customer Experience (CX)

Previously, improving a website often meant focusing on technical details to help it rank higher in search results.

That technical foundation is still important, but the priority has shifted to the total customer experience (CX) from the moment a person visits your site. Your website design and development should be focused on being as helpful, intuitive, and clear as possible. A positive experience is what builds the trust and loyalty that turns a visitor into a customer.

This is more important than ever because browsers are phasing out the use of third-party tracking cookies. Your website is the best place to collect information directly from your audience through newsletter sign-ups or contact forms. This is key to building the direct, trusting relationships that are essential for business growth.

Building a Plan for Today

The main change in digital marketing is this: a shift from using separate tactics to having one cohesive plan focused on the customer. It’s not about doing more work, but about making sure all your marketing efforts work together.

At Enter Design, we help you build that clear, unified plan to help you connect with more customers.

Ready to build a marketing plan that works in 2025? Let’s talk.