If you’re still unsure about what AI marketing tools to add to your marketing agency’s tech stack, you aren’t alone. A study by Smart Insights has shown that, surprisingly, despite all the hype around AI, many marketers are still lagging behind in implementing AI-powered tools.

The top two marketing areas where human employees are still largely behind the wheel are website development and video creation. 

Yet, as more marketers embrace AI to enhance their marketing services and gain deeper insights into its potential, the more AI marketing trends emerge.

This blog will share an overview of the top eight trends your marketing agency should consider following to provide your SMB clients with top-notch marketing services. The blog will also share tips and best practices to prepare you for success.

Table of Contents

• AI-Powered Personalization at Scale
• AI-Driven Voice Search Optimization
• Generative AI for Content Creation and Curation
• AI for Predictive Customer Behavior Analysis
• AI in Programmatic Advertising
• AI-Driven Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
• AI in Video Marketing
• Ethical AI and Data Privacy in Marketing
• AI Marketing Trends FAQs

1. AI-Powered Personalization at Scale

These days, your SMB clients’ prospective customers can no longer be satisfied with subpar marketing communications that feel generic and lack a unique brand identity and voice.

Customers want to experience the thrill of being appreciated as individuals, such as by being greeted with their first names in email newsletters or when receiving product recommendations that are in line with their purchase histories. 

Personalized marketing techniques offer indisputable advantages to SMBs:

• People are more likely to click on emails when they see their first name in the preview.
• When customers feel valued, they are more likely to become loyal to your clients.

So far, AI algorithms excel in personalizing the following marketing strategies:

• Email marketing
• Upselling and cross-selling through product recommendations
• Customizing websites to better align with current users, such as by updating homepage banners and product displays

There are many AI marketing tools available to achieve the level of marketing personalization your agency and your client SMBs need. Here’s an example:

You can resell Vendasta’s AI-powered white-labeled CRM to your clients to empower them to send out personalized email marketing campaigns.

Also, Vendasta’s white-label client portal leverages AI to offer your SMB clients insights and tips on what additional marketing services to purchase from your agency to boost their online presence. 

2. AI-Driven Voice Search Optimization

Another marketing trend that marketing agencies should consider is the increase in voice searches. In 2024, Huddle Creative noted the following trends:

• With 4.2 billion voice assistants in use in 2024, Demand Sage estimated that the number will reach 8.4 billion by the end of the year. 
• On average, 93.7% of search queries are answered by voice search assistants.

These trends are important because they underscore the importance of adapting your marketing services to facilitate voice searches. 

First things first, what makes voice searches unique? 

1. Length: Voice searches tend to be longer and more conversational, reflecting natural speech patterns. Instead of short phrases, users often ask full questions or provide detailed instructions.
2. Use of Personal Pronouns: Voice queries frequently include personal pronouns like “I,” “me,” or “my,” as they often relate to specific, immediate needs (e.g., “Where can I find coffee near me?”).
3. Focus on Local Information: Many voice searches prioritize local results, as users often seek immediate, location-based answers (e.g., “What’s the best pizza place nearby?”).

What tools can you use to make sure your marketing content for SMBs is voice search-friendly? 

AnswerThePublic is a tool that helps you discover questions and phrases people commonly use in voice searches. BrightEdge uses AI to identify consumer search trends and provide recommendations on how to update a website to better optimize it for voice search.

3. Generative AI for Content Creation and Curation

AI in content marketing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and others have revolutionized how marketing agencies create content.

Here are just a few trends:

• AI speeds up the process of writing blogs for your SMB clients by coming up with topic ideas, generating outlines, and writing paragraphs.
• Generative AI can craft social media captions, tweets, and posts.
• Generative AI can also write scripts for promotional videos, explainer videos, or even YouTube tutorials.

It’s a good idea to give your employees clear instructions on how to strike the right balance when using AI as their tool.

Here are some examples:

1. While AI can follow instructions, such as mimicking brand voice, it may struggle to capture nuances. Give your employees a heads up to always give AI-generated content a second look-over before posting.
2. Your team should, at all times, fact-check AI-generated content.

What are some AI-powered content creation tools? Your marketing agency can use Vendasta’s white-labeled customer acquisition and engagement platform to offer social media management services more effectively. 

Specifically, your team can give Vendasta’s AI information about your SMB clients, and Vendasta’s AI will produce social media posts that align with each of your clients’ brands.

4. AI for Predictive Customer Behavior Analysis

AI can analyze various factors, such as seasonal demand, purchase histories, and market trends, to predict future sales performance. Based on these insights, your marketing team can identify the best times to run promo campaigns for your clients or pinpoint periods of downtime that you and your team can use to focus on developing and fine-tuning marketing strategies.

Retaining customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Predictive analytics helps businesses identify customers who are at risk of leaving by analyzing behaviors such as reduced engagement, prolonged inactivity, or reduced spending. These insights can help your agency to take preemptive actions, such as offering personalized incentives or running outreach campaigns.

Predictive models can also determine the best times to send emails to ensure high open and click-through rates.

5. AI in Programmatic Advertising

Your team no longer needs to manually set bids for Google and Bing ads and assess the marketing campaigns’ performance. AI in digital marketing makes it far more cost-efficient than traditional advertising with banners and other printed materials. 

AI-powered tools, such as Matchcraft, facilitate an efficient campaign creation process for multiple SMB clients under one roof, as well as intelligent ad spend allocation and automated conversion optimization. So, what’s real-time bidding, and what are the benefits of using it when running marketing campaigns for your clients?

Real-time bidding is a process that allows marketers to buy and sell ad impressions in real-time, within milliseconds.

Here’s how it works:

1. When a user visits your client’s website or app, it triggers an ad impression opportunity.
2. Publishers send information about the user and the ad space to an ad exchange, where advertisers bid for that impression.
3. The advertiser with the highest bid wins the auction, and the ad is displayed to the user instantly.
4. Advertisers only pay if they win the bid and their ad is shown.

The benefits of real-time bidding for your SMB clients are indisputable:

• Cost Efficiency: Instead of wasting budget on broad, non-targeted campaigns, you can reach prospects who are most likely to become your clients’ customers.
• Real-Time Flexibility: Unlike traditional advertising, real-time bidding allows you to adjust campaigns in real-time based on performance metrics.

6. AI-Driven Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

You’ve probably noticed that most websites these days are equipped with AI webchats that are ready to answer questions or collect your contact information to get you in touch with a sales rep.

There are several reasons why this trend toward equipping websites with webchats is unlikely to disappear and why it’s high time your marketing agency starts providing webchats to your clients. 

Here’s why webchats matter:

• 24/7 Availability: Unlike your human employees, chatbots provide round-the-clock support, ensuring that your SMB clients’ prospects and customers can get the help they need at any time, even outside of regular business hours.
• Cost Efficiency: By automating repetitive tasks like answering FAQs, you can free up human resources to focus on more complex issues, such as providing in-depth responses to critical reviews during reputation management.

If you don’t currently have the capacity to build and roll out your own in-house developed AI webchats, Vendasta’s white-label AI-assisted webchat can help. It captures prospects’ contact information, answers frequently asked questions, and helps with appointment scheduling.

7. AI in Video Marketing

The numbers speak for themselves. According to research, video content will account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2025. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels have become go-to destinations for entertainment and education. 

For your SMB clients, tapping into these social media platforms with creative and engaging videos means reaching customers where they already spend their time.

Here are some emerging video trends for SMBs in 2025:

• Short-Form Content: Platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels favor snappy videos.
• Live Streaming: Live Q&A sessions, product launches, or behind-the-scenes looks are trending.

So, what are some of the AI-powered tools that make creating and editing video content faster and easier for SMBs?

Pictory AI is one example of a collection of AI-powered tools for generating and editing videos.

Here’s a full list:

• Script-to-Video Conversion: Converts written scripts into dynamic videos by leveraging over 3 million royalty-free stock video clips, images, and music tracks. 
• AI Video Editor: Provides user-friendly editing tools that don’t require complex editing skills. 
• AI Subtitles and Captions: Automatically adds accurate subtitles and captions available in several languages to videos, improving accessibility and engagement. 
• AI Voice Generator: Generates realistic voiceovers, offering a variety of voices to match the video's tone and audience. 

8. Ethical AI and Data Privacy in Marketing

If you choose to implement white-labeled AI-powered marketing solutions, your best course of action is to opt for white-label SaaS providers who take data security seriously and have detailed policies that outline the guardrails they have in place to protect data from any leaks or mishandling, either intentional or by malicious actors.  If your marketing agency develops in-house AI-powered marketing tools, you should consider developing resources for your SMB clients that explain exactly how your agency plans to use AI to deliver the marketing services and how you plan to ensure your clients’ data privacy protection.

Atlas Marketing is an example of a marketing agency that has already hopped on the ethics in AI trend and developed its own AI policy. This resource is highly valuable in nurturing trust in client-agency relationships. Also, it future-proofs the agency as governments around the world continue to come up with legal frameworks to control AI use to protect consumers from possible harm. 

One of the biggest threats associated with AI is that consumers often can’t tell apart if a text or an image was generated by AI vs human. This poses threats of misinformation as well as robs human creators of well-deserved appreciation for their hard labor. There is a wide range of legislation already in place to ensure AI-generated content is properly identified. One popular example of a technology that can do just that is Google’s SynthID, which watermarks AI-generated images.

So, your marketing agency can stay ahead of the trends in the legislature by creating and adopting a comprehensive AI policy early. 

Conclusion

As we look to 2025, AI marketing trends range from AI-powered personalization and predictive analytics to programmatic advertising and voice search optimization. These trends are reshaping how SMBs connect with their audiences.

AI adoption is not just about adding AI technology to your tech stack. It’s about doing so responsibly and strategically. By leveraging white-labeled solutions like Vendasta’s AI-powered tools, you can provide your clients cutting-edge services while ensuring ethical practices and data privacy.

The future of marketing lies in the hands of agencies willing to innovate, adapt, and integrate AI thoughtfully. By staying ahead of the curve, your agency can empower SMBs to thrive. Request a demo today!

AI Marketing Trends FAQs

1. What is AI marketing?

AI in marketing refers to the process of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into marketing strategies to improve decision-making and automate repetitive tasks. 

Examples of AI in marketing are chatbots, predictive analytics, personalized content recommendations, and programmatic advertising.

2. Why is AI important in marketing?

AI automates repetitive tasks like data entry, email marketing, and ad placement, freeing marketers to focus on strategic initiatives. Also, AI analyzes vast datasets to uncover trends and patterns, enabling more precise targeting and hyper-personalized campaigns.

3. How can AI benefit SMB clients?

AI makes it easier for SMBs to analyze customer data, optimize campaigns, and make data-driven decisions without needing to have a large in-house marketing team.

4. What are the key challenges of adopting AI in marketing?

Both marketing agencies and SMBs that use AI in marketing need to ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR. They also need to provide their AI systems with accurate and well-structured data because poor data quality leads to inaccurate predictions or biased outcomes. Using AI systems requires ongoing evaluation and adjustments.

5. How can Vendasta help agencies leverage AI in marketing?

Vendasta provides a comprehensive customer acquisition and engagement platform for both marketing agencies and their clients. 

Vendasta’s AI employees provide real-time recommendations, predict customer behaviors, and suggest strategy adjustments to optimize marketing outcomes. Vendasta’s platform leverages extensive SMB data to help marketers create tailored marketing strategies and highly relevant marketing materials for their clients.

From lead generation to customer retention, Vendasta’s AI tools automate key marketing processes, saving time and boosting efficiency.