In the last few years, retail marketing has transformed from strategies that needed mass appeal to strategies that lean on hyper-personalization. In addition, consumer preferences are changing more often than most companies can keep up with, which is why retail marketers have a lot on their plates.

The solution? Purpose-built AI. In 2023, the global AI market in retail was valued at over $7 billion, and retail companies using AI outperformed competitors in 2023 and 2024, seeing 8% growth in their annual profits. 

Let’s examine the top questions marketers should ask when crafting a retail strategy for 2025, the best strategies to incorporate AI to drive success, and a practical use case. 

Considerations for Retail Marketing Strategies in 2025 and Beyond

Given the speed at which retail trends change today, crafting multiple successful retail marketing strategies throughout the year is challenging. Before you spend weeks planning your company’s next move, here are a few questions you should ask to ensure your efforts are focused in the right direction for growth.

Is there a system in place to track changes in consumer preferences?

McKinsey’s Consumer Pulse survey showed how varied and ever-changing US consumer preferences have become over the last few years. A staggering 90% of respondents said switching brands (based on price, convenience, and speed) will be the norm.

This loyalty shake-up shows how important it is for retailers to always keep an eye on shifting consumer preferences. While this can be near-impossible to do manually, AI tools that crunch large data sets can help you and your team proactively spot behavioral changes amongst your buyers (so you can stay ahead of the curve.)

How can AI be introduced to offload tedious marketing tasks?

Retail marketing strategies that don’t bring AI and automation into the fold can quickly lead to employee burnout, poor resource allocation, and higher overall marketing costs. Look for ways to tie in AI within the marketing department to work smarter, not harder. Doing so means you’ll get more out of your marketing budget at scale.

How are retail marketing overhead expenses tracked?

When you have a large catalog and sell products online and across physical stores, tracking all the associated overhead costs can quickly become a daunting task. Integrating AI automation capabilities into your existing tech stack can help you reduce these overheads by tracking KPIs and pinpointing where you can cut costs.

Examples of Successful Retail Marketing Strategies for 2025

Now that we’ve covered the basics and discussed the questions to ask before executing your brand's next retail marketing strategy, let’s look at a few examples to help you consider how you’ll tackle yours in the year ahead.

Executing brand-consistent content at scale 

Tedious marketing tasks, like writing product copy or marketing campaign content, have traditionally been slow-going work that drains human resources. But with AI-powered tools like Jasper, you can jumpstart these efforts with consistent, brand-specific marketing messages at scale that are both on-brand and less time-intensive. 

For example: Adidas used Jasper to help create brand-consistent copy for product pages. Beginning with 150 shoe models, they tested how they could speed up the product page copywriting process with Jasper—and saw a notable time reduction around this work.

Mobile-optimized shopping experiences

A global survey showed that using a retailer’s app while in-store is an increasingly popular retail marketing strategy that helps brands meet customers where they are. From checking for deals to redeeming discount coupons while in “ready to buy” mode, consumers want shopping experiences optimized for mobile devices and enhance the in-store shopping experience.

Brands like Zara are known for using their mobile app to enhance the in-store shopping experience. Whether the app is used for sourcing out-of-stock products in-store or tracking the customer’s loyalty program status, integrating this into their retail marketing strategy helps keep shoppers happy and engaged.

Gamified customer retention

Consumer retention is one of the most valuable investments a retail brand can make, and gamifying it with AI can help retailers stand out from the competition.

Leveraging first-party data offers the best ROI when it comes to returning consumers. By gaining knowledge about shoppers’ behavioral patterns, you can put this information into an AI-powered tool and have it crunch the numbers to spot important trends and patterns. 

We see this at work with Amazon, where they use AI-powered insights to introduce relevant product recommendations based on what customers with similar preferences bought as well as the individual shopper’s past purchases.

Monitoring ad spend efficiency

While organic growth is key to every retail marketing strategy, paid ads help accelerate a brand’s online and offline visibility. That said, manually tracking the success of ad spend can be tedious work. 

The good news: With AI-assisted data processing, you can offload this work (and the result is a more efficient allocation of a brand’s retail marketing budget.) By using AI tools to get deeper ad spend insights, marketers can devote precious resources to ads with the highest return on investment.

Prioritizing videos over static photos

Brands leaning into short-form video trends on apps like Instagram and TikTok indicate that retailers should focus their time and energy on this area. 

The boom in video performance is why more and more brands prioritize videos over static photos within their retail marketing strategy. Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing report shows that despite shrinking attention spans, short-form videos lead to enhanced brand recall, increased reach, and, ultimately, a higher ROI. 

If manually creating bite-sized, attention-grabbing content for each campaign isn’t feasible, retailers can also utilize AI for this work. Whether video scripts, on-screen text, or SEO-optimized captions, AI tools like Jasper can help speed up the marketing campaign creation process.

Retail Marketing Strategies: Get Prepared for 2025 and Beyond

We’ve seen how AI can boost operational efficiency while reducing manual labor and lowering the risk of human error, and this adoption will only increase with time. Tools like Jasper are already being incorporated into every part of retail brands' marketing strategies, from conception to execution and success measurement.

Jasper AI’s Head of Marketing, Meghan Keaney Anderson, recently sat down with Siddhi Saraiya, the Global Head of B2B Digital Product Management at Adidas, to discuss how Adidas is applying AI to stay on top of the innovation game.

Curious to learn more and find out how you can achieve the same success for your retail business? Watch the webinar recording here.

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