In 2025, basic marketing and creativity skills will not be enough for a digital specialist. Artificial intelligence, legal literacy, and readiness for public speaking are becoming key skills that will help digital marketers stay afloat and develop their careers. Let’s talk about current trends in the industry.

New requirements for digital marketers

Use of AI

Confident use of artificial intelligence in work is already a basic requirement. AI is widely used to solve various problems — from visualizing creative ideas to analyzing information and preparing content. AI often replaces stocks, allowing you to select elements for design layouts: 3D, mockups, photographs, and illustrations; with its help, you can implement non-standard visual ideas. Important: a specialist does not shift their work to AI but does it faster and more efficiently.

By the way, digital marketers are not the only ones who use AI actively. Students turn to it to deal with their assignments faster or even to write admission papers. But we don’t recommend you use it for this purpose, as an admission committee will see immediately that your application essay was generated. It is better to get help from personal statement writers at CustomWritings, where they don’t use AI while writing.

Legal savvy

Legal savvy in the field of digital marketing is also important. It is essential to at least tangentially understand (or know who to ask/where to find) the law “On Advertising” and individual issues from the legal sphere (copyright, personal data, advertising labeling, additional requirements for pharmaceutical advertising, and so on), as well as actively follow the news.

Public speaking skills

There is the growing importance of public speaking skills and willingness to be filmed. Nowadays, more and more specialists, real people, are being attracted to filming rather than models, especially when promoting companies, agencies, and B2B enterprises. This is due to the global trend towards personal branding and ambassadorship among employees.

Basic skills remain important

In addition to the new requirements, we want to remind you about the importance of basic skills in digital marketing. Among them, we want to highlight the following:

1. Knowledge of the basics of marketing.

2. Ability to work with numbers and analytics.

3. High learning speed.

4. Creative thinking.

5. Ability to generate and test hypotheses.

One of the most important qualities for a digital specialist is respect for other people’s businesses. No matter how highly qualified a specialist you are, all new technologies and skills must be applied delicately, taking the specifics of the business into account.

Current trends and how the sphere may change in the coming years

Let’s talk about what is happening in digital marketing now and what are the prospects for the next 5 years. The following trends will increase in the coming years:

1. Monopolization of technological solutions. The owners and beneficiaries of modern platforms where marketing activities are carried out can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even a cursory glance at the market shows that most of the solutions we use belong to only a couple of dozen transnational corporations like Google or Facebook.

2. The increasing cost of attracting a client. Every year, a lead (a potential client’s appeal to your company) costs more and more. Most small and medium businesses can no longer afford advertising on big platforms because it will not play into the black with this method of obtaining leads.

3. Implementation of neural networks and reduction of the human factor. Neural networks have become an integral part of our lives. Just remember the algorithms of YouTube. You no longer need to search for content — just refresh your feed. It will probably contain everything you like.

4. The desire of monopolistic companies to diversify. The largest companies are noting a decrease in advertisers and budgets. The inexhaustible sources of billions of dollars that corporations earn from targeted and contextual advertising are beginning to weaken.

5. The principle of “a human buys from a human.” In the world of technology, corporations, government control, and the triumph of artificial intelligence, there is a place for living and real things, and this place will always belong to human beings. Now, this is called the H2H (Human to Human).

What does all this mean?

We see a trend that the profession of a marketer can suddenly become unclaimed. But remember: 50 years ago, every movie theater had an artist who painted posters. 150 years ago, there was a person who lit the lights in street lamps, and another worked as an alarm clock.

Tomorrow will not be like yesterday. The world is changing rapidly. We must change along with it, adapting to new realities and understanding how events are developing. That’s why digital marketers today should:

1. Learn to be flexible – not only apply the skills of a digital marketer to clients but also to your own projects, even for the soul.

2. Develop soft skills. A “human to human” is one of the main trends. Therefore, it is important not to be afraid to show your talents and competencies to meet new people. Responsible, hardworking, decent, and intelligent people will always be busy and respected.