Tips and How-To

Marketing Missives: 6 Months of Strategy in 6 Quick Hits

Fruchtman Marketing’s monthly column delivers one focused insight per issue. Here’s the first half of 2025.

Published

2 months ago

February 11, 2026

INSTORE Staff

Every month in INSTORE’s print edition, Fruchtman Marketing shares a single, actionable marketing idea in our “In Your Store” section. Here are the tips we featured from January to June 2025 — six quick reads on navigating AI search, video strategy, and keeping your brand fresh.

Search Shift

Google’s new AI-driven search feature is changing the game for paid ads. Advertisers need to focus on niche, high-intent keywords and create more compelling, transaction-focused content to capture attention. Keyword examples might be “custom design engagement ring,” while transaction-focused content could be “buy engagement rings”.

Marketing Missives: 6 Months of Strategy in 6 Quick Hits

Target high-intent keywords. Generic terms get buried by AI. PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO

Keep It Short

In 2025, short-form videos are essential for digital marketing, capturing attention, and expanding reach as well as connections through branded and user-generated content. Investing in platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok is now the preferred storytelling medium with minimal e ort and cost. Most videos are watched more than 40% of their duration.

Marketing Missives: 6 Months of Strategy in 6 Quick Hits

Get Personal

In 2025, in-person events are key to retail success, with 59% of professionals favoring face-to-face gatherings over digital alternatives, according to American Express. These events drive deeper connections and stronger brand loyalty. 66% of marketing professionals anticipate increasing their budgets with more relatable events.

In-person events are back. 59% of pros prefer face-to-face. PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO

Know Your Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) shifted from Universal Analytics’ session-based tracking to an event-based model, capturing every user interaction as an event. This approach provides more detailed and flexible insights, allowing for customized tracking of actions like clicks, video plays, and purchases, and it provides better insight on actual engagement levels on your website.

GA4 tracks every click and purchase. Worth learning. PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO

Stay Real, Stay Human

Authenticity is a local retailer’s greatest asset — and AI can’t deliver it. Customers crave real connections, not algorithm-driven interactions. While AI may promise e iciency, it can’t replace genuine storytelling, personal engagement, and the magic of a human touch. Don’t trade authenticity for automation — AI is important, but it has its place.

AI can’t replicate your story. Use it as a tool. PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO

Stay Fresh Online

Your brand presence extends past just the colors in your logo. And if your logo color is dark or outdated, it can make your website look stodgy. Consider creating a color palette for your site that complements your brand color with colors that brighten it up and keep you on trend!

INSTORE Staff

Since launching in 2002, INSTORE has won 89 international journalism awards for its publication and website. Contact INSTORE's editors at [email protected].

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